BRAZIL
RELIGIOUS
Religion in Brazil has a higher adherence level compared to other Latin American countries, and is more diverse. The dominant religion of Brazil historically was and still is Christianity. Brazil possesses a richly spiritual society formed from the meeting of the Roman Catholic Church with the religious traditions of African slaves and indigenous people. This confluence of faiths during the Portuguese colonization of Brazil led to the development of a diverse array of syncretistic practices within the overarching umbrella of Brazilian Roman Catholicism, characterized by traditional Portuguese festivities. Until recently Catholicism was overwhelmingly dominant.
In 1891, when the first Brazilian Republican Constitution was set forth, Brazil ceased to have an official religion and has remained secular ever since, though the Catholic Church remained politically influential into the 1970s. The Constitution of Brazil guarantees freedom of religion and strongly prohibits the establishment of any religion by banning government support or hindrance of religion at all levels
CULTURE
The culture of Brazil is primarily Western, but presents a very diverse nature showing that an ethnic and cultural mixing occurred in the colonial period involving mostly Indigenous peoples of the coastal and most accessible riverine areas, Portuguese people and African peoples. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, together with further waves of Portuguese colonization,Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Levantine Arabs, Nipponics, Poles, Helvetians and Ukrainianssettled in Brazil, playing an important role in its culture as it started to shape a multicultural andmultiethnic society.