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),
Brazil and the United Nations Brazil and the United Nations Federative Republic of Brazil is a founding member of the United Nations and participates in all of its specialized agencies. Brazil is among the twenty top contributors to United Nations peacekeeping operations, and has participated in peacekeeping efforts in the Middle East, the former Belgian Congo, Cyprus, Mozambique, Angola, and more recently East Timor and Haiti. Brazil has been regularly elected as a non-permanent member to the Security Council since its first session in 1946 and is now among the most elected UN member states to the UNSC, with the most recent successful election in