Brazil Brazil. However, the decentralized and unorganized tendencies of the captaincy colonies proved problematic, and in 1549 the Portuguese king restructured them into the Governorate General of Brazil, a single and centralized Portuguese colony in South America. In the first two centuries of colonization, Indigenous and European groups lived in constant war, establishing opportunistic alliances in order to gain advantages against each other. By the mid-16th century, cane sugar had become Brazil's most important export, and slaves purchased in Sub-Saharan Africa, in the slave market of Western Africa (not only those from Portuguese allies of their colonies in Angola and Mozambique),
Angola–Brazil relations and Portuguese, and Brazilian merchants in the then-illegal transatlantic slave trade. Music and dance A "cross-fertilization" of musical cultures and dances occurred in the Atlantic triangle beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries via cultural exchange. As a result of this exchange, both countries share a rich history of mixed Afro-Iberian musical traditions, such as the prevalence of the guitar, or "viola". An example of early dance exchange is the "umbigada", or belly blow, a "basic feature of many dances imported to Brazil and Portugal from the Congo-Angola region". Angola–Brazil relations Angola–Brazil relations refers to the historical and current bilateral