Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (in Portuguese: Federative Republic of Brazil), is a sovereign country of South America that includes the eastern half of the subcontinent and some groups of small islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

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With an area estimated at more than 8.5 million km², it is the fifth largest country in the world in total area (equivalent to 47% of the South American territory). Delimited by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km.10 It borders the French overseas department of French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana and Venezuela to the north; to the northwest with Colombia; to the west with Peru and Bolivia; to the southeast with Paraguay and Argentina, and to the south with Uruguay. In this way it has a border with all the countries of South America, except Ecuador and Chile. For the most part, the country is comprised of terrestrial tropics, so climatic seasons do not feel radically in much of it. The Amazon rainforest covers 3.6 million km² of its territory. Thanks to its vegetation and its climate, it is one of the countries with more species of animals in the world.

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Brazil, until then inhabited by indigenous people, had its first contact with the Europeans in 1500, by a Portuguese expedition led by Pedro Álvares Cabral. After the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Brazilian territory was the segment of the American continent that corresponded to the kingdom of Portugal, from which it obtained its independence on September 7, 1822. Thus, the country went from being the central part of the kingdom of Portugal to an empire for finally become a republic. Its first capital was Salvador de Bahia, which was replaced by Rio de Janeiro until a new capital, Brasilia, was built. Its current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines Brazil as a presidential federative republic.8 The federation is formed by the union of the Federal District, the 26 states and 5565 municipalities.