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Blended Cultures Emerge: The native Brazilian people lived a simple hunting-and-gathering life for centuries both in the interior and on the coast. Recent calculations suggest that between one and six million Native Americans lived in Brazil prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500. However, as a consequence of war, enslavement, and introduced diseases, the indigenous population decreased rapidly. In the 1990s, Native Americans made up less than one percent of the population, living in isolated groups in remote regions of the rain forest.
Population increased when the Portuguese brought slaves from Africa to Brazil to provide labor for the sugar plantations and gold mines. More than two million slaves arrived during the colonial period. By 1800 Brazil's total population was estimated at around 3.25 million, of which about 1 million were Europeans, two million were free or enslaved Africans or of mixed race, and about 250,000 were Native Americans.
Immigrants from Italy, Portugal, Germany, and Spain settled in Brazil after 1850. Brazil is widely regarded as a racially open society, with few ethnic tensions, and there is no recent history of legal discrimination. However, whites tend to occupy positions at the top of Brazil's social structure, while blacks often occupy the lower economic levels of society.
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