Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

History

The history of Rio de Janeiro dates back to the discovery of Brazil. The city was first encountered when a Portuguese expedition led by Gaspar de Lemos, the captain of a ship in Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet—the explorer who discovered the country on April 22, 1500—arrived at Guanabara Bay on January 1, 1502. By that time, the area was already inhabited by indigenous groups of different nations, including the Tupi, Puri, Botocudo, and Maxakalí. About 50 years later, French settlers led by Nicolas de Villegaignon occupied one of the islands of Guanabara Bay, attempting to establish the France Antarctique colony.

The city of Rio de Janeiro was properly founded by the Portuguese Estácio de Sá on March 1, 1565, who named the city São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, as a tribute to the Portuguese monarch, Dom Sebastião. Until the 18th century, the city was threatened or invaded many times by pirates and buccaneers, mostly French, such as Jean-François Duclerc and René Duguay-Trouin. In 1763, it became Brazil's capital when the colonial administration for Portuguese America was moved from Salvador to Rio, occupying this status until April 21, 1960, when the capital was moved to Brasília.

In 1808, the Portuguese royal family and most of the Lisbon nobles, fleeing from Napoleon's invasion of Portugal, arrived in Rio de Janeiro, transforming it into the kingdom's capital. It was the only European capital outside Europe. This transformation was one of the main drivers of the population explosion that followed this process and the beginning of a chronic urban problem of insufficient infrastructure and lack of adequate urban planning. As there was no physical space and no infrastructure available at the time, many inhabitants were simply evicted from their homes in order to accommodate the nobles who were arriving from Portugal. There was also a large influx of African slaves to the city. Even after the independence of Brazil in 1822, Rio de Janeiro continued to be the capital of the country.

In this sense, the process that started in the 19th century is one of the main causes of the social disparities that are part of the city's history. By 2010, approximately 20 percent of Rio's population lived in shantytowns, called favelas. They can be defined as highly consolidated invasions of public or private land developed by the poor on lands lacking infrastructure and without following any kind of urban planning. They exist in large numbers and are spread across the city.

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