Empire of Brazil (the Symphony That Never Ends)

Stretching from the Orinoco to the Salado/La Plata rivers, from the Andes to the sea, the Empire of Brazil dominates South America on a map almost as totally as it dominates it in the real world of politics and economics. While Spain and France treated the Americas as a source of minerals and grain, the Brazilians pursued their own development from an early stage, and entered the 19th century beholden to no European master. They passed through the Industrial Revolution a little later than Britain and France, inventing mass-production techniques on the way, and found themselves economically dominating the Americas almost by accident. 
Although Brazilian economic dominance has eroded, the 530 million subjects of Sebastian IV still enjoy the world's highest average standard of living ~ albeit with extreme variation between rich and poor. Brazil's small army and large navy are very professional, and are backed by a large aerospace force and the world's strongest nuclear arsenal. 
In most other ways, however, Brazil is barely a state at all (its CR is 1). The Brazilian multinational corporations always had a tendency to act semi-independently. The government was able to retain their support until the religious movements around the millennium. In Brazil, they inspired revolutionary violence, growing in power throughout the 1980s and 90s. The government's crude attempts to maintain order only made it an increasingly ineffectual object of hatred from all sides. Matters finally came to a head in 2002, when waves of violence reached the proportions of civil war in most of the major Brazilian cities. On "Red Tuesday," corporate security forces bloodily intervened, decapitating most of the revolutionary organizations and forcing the rest underground. The courts legitimized the quasi-independence of the megacorps over the next few weeks and the national government lost effective control of its own territroy. 
The cosmopolitan natives of Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Porto Allegre took the collapse of civil authority in stride. Even ordinary Brazilians approach life with reckless abandon, making it a point of pride to dismiss the occasional car bombing or running gun battle as trifles beneath their notice. Distractions like these only add spice to the challenge of free enterprise. When Brazilians relax from the press of business, they spend their profits with equal gusto. Fads in recreational drugs and body cosmetics seem to sweep society on a weekly basis, while the samba is fresh forever. 
Brazilian society is extraordinarily tolerant by Shikaku-mon standards. Brazil has the most complex racial mix on the planet, but its society is not racist. The Catholic majority lives peacefully with small Muslim and Protestant groups and Jews that number almost a third of the populations. Even sexism is rare. Toleration is in part an achievement of history, and in part due to a gulf between rich and poor that dwarfs all other considerations.
Category:Nations
Category:South America
Category:Brazil
Category:The Symphony That Never Ends