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Can anyone explain to me what this template is doing in this article? I'm Brazilian, and as far as I'm aware, though there is some racial prejudice, there is no segregation. There are no "things for black people" or "things for white people". I want to make it clear that I may have missed the point, so I'd like an explanation, or else the removal based on my argument. Thanks in advance. And please send me an e-mail (vitorcassol AT gmail DOT com) when answering, because I rarely check my Wikipedia account.

Vítor Cassol 06:14, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I removed it. It has nothing to do with the article. Opinoso 17:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


86%

86% of Brazilians have at least 10% of their genes coming from Africans.

what? this is the only line in the statistics that has no source. it's kinda difficult. there are lots of white brazilians wich arrived from europe from not enough time to have mixed so much.

in fact, those statistics are very crude, since some genetic studys was made just in 200 'white brazilians', and 200 is not 200 million. And also should be noticed that the notion of race changes from region to region. many people considered white in São Paulo are considered non-white in Rio Grande do Sul, for exemple. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.2.134.75 (talk) 04:35, August 21, 2007 (UTC)

This statistic DOES have source. Opinoso 01:01, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

But, the source is not cited. It should be removed until it's authenticity can be verified. dragoon 18:45, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Problems in this page

Pictures

I think the pictures in this article are problematic.

They center on the three ethnical groups that historically set the roots of the current Brazilian population. In this sense, they are correct. However, I think an article titled “race in Brazil” which carries emphasis on IBGE’s data should have pictures of the three main current groups, which are white, brown (pardo) and black (although blacks are a minority at roughly 6% if we consider the official data).

The second problem is that these are pictures of unknown people. How are we supposed to know they are really from Brazil? If they are actually known people, I apologize for this remark, but I kindly request someone identifies them.

I have two alternative proposals:

a) We remove the pictures altogether; b) We replace them for pictures of white, brown (pardo) and black people of well known Brazilian celebrities.

I personally favor proposal “a”, because it avoids trouble.

Sparks1979 15:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


IBGE does not focus on a person's race, but in skin color. Brazilian culture does not consider ancestry that much to say a person's race. If the person looks European, he will be considered White by the society, no matter if his parent was half Black, for example.

The racial base of Brazilians are three (European (White), African (Black) and Amerindian (Mongoloid). Most Brazilians do share a racial mix of these peoples in their genes, even though some do know about it, others try to hide it and "pass as white", or others, for the fact that do not have another race's features assume they are 100% White or 100% Black, etc.


Others are racists and try to "pass as white as they can". This is obvious in the IBGE census, where a mere 6% of Brazilian classify themselves as Blacks. Over 4 million slaves were brought to Brazil and it is mathmatically impossible to be only 6% of Blacks in this country.

Some people are so "White-washing" that belive Brazil is 6%, even though the government considers 45% of Brazilians to be Black.

I think some users would be happy if we post the pictures of blond supermodels to represent Brazilians. But, of course, it is not possible, so some prefer to just erase the picture of the Black and Amerindian men.Opinoso

It is well-seen that some people still live in the 19th century and think the "European race" is superior to the others. 16:37, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

The official census data has only 6% black and that's a fact. The government can't "consider" anything different than that because that's the official data. If someone does then what this someone is doing is racism, i.e., bringing back the mentality of the XIX century, still alive in the US and Europe, of "racial purity". It is stupidity to consider someone "black" just because they have some "black ancestor", unless your mind works in terms of Nazi standards for race. If you are a Nazi then I would understand your obsession with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.27.58.196 (talk) 06:15, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Title

I think the title "Race in Brazil" should be replaced with "Ethnical groups in Brazil". The prevailing modern scientific approach favors the expression “ethnical group” whilst disregarding “race” as a scientific method of demographical analysis. Therefore, I suggest we change the title to “Ethnical groups in Brazil”.

Sparks1979 15:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it looks like people aren’t participating in this talk page, so I will just go ahead and make the changes.

Sparks1979 12:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I just copied the contents of the talk page in "Race in Brazil" here. Sparks1979 12:21, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, I think race in brazil should be maintained. We know that their are a variety of ethnic groups in brazil, but what we need to know is how race is constructed. Belonging to a certain ethnic group is not the same as belonging to a certain race. In the US African Americans have are also part ethnic Europeans but are constructed as black. Muntuwandi 01:31, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
The article cites percetage of genes, some without sources, and it has gone far beyond of how the races are constructed. If you are willing just to talk about how races are constructed then remove the DNA misinformation from there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.26.89.207 (talk) 21:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


Overall writing style

I don't know how to flag things, but can someone please see to it that this is worked over for grammar? There are some really bad parts here.

Something doesn't add up

Literally. Under the section "Ethnic groups," if you add all the percentages together, you get 100.3%. Josh (talk) 22:40, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

It's correct now. Opinoso (talk) 01:36, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Schooling

Opinoso, I think you're doing a good job with this article.

But I have a question regarding these statements: "24.2% of whites were studying in a College or University, compared to 8.4% of blacks and brown. In 2007, 57.9% of white students between 18 and 24 years old were attending a University or a College."

Unless the statements apply to very widely separated years, or, unless the first statement is talking about all whites (of any age, i.e.), aren't they mutually contradictory? SamEV (talk) 22:49, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello SamEV. I'm sorry I did not answer your question before, because I only noticed it 5 minutes ago! (I'm almost 2 months late...) And yes, the first statement is talking about whites of different ages, which may include college students of 60, 70 or 80 years old. The second statement talks about students between 18 and 24 years old. Opinoso (talk) 01:55, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
All right, thanks. Sorry for the late reply, too. I'm just back from a three–month break. SamEV (talk) 22:25, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

"Pardo" not is all browns

Pardo = mestizo("mameluco" = white male + amerindian female in the colonial period) or zambo(blacks + amerindians) or mulatoe or the tree races and not only "brown"(mulattoe = white male + black female in the colonial period)!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.52.147.65 (talk) 19:51, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to split to "Race in Brazil"

As readers here may already realize, a number of articles on matters of ethnic affiliation, "race", "color" etc in Brazil have been the sites of edit wars and other skirmishes. The most recent of these (as far as I know) is "White Brazilian". This article is now fully protected, but although tempers on its talk page have cooled a lot in the last few days, and although a majority (I believe) of those who frequent the talk page are deeply dissatisfied with the current version, there's little enthusiasm for unprotecting. Rather, there seems to be a consensus that:

  1. White Brazilian, Pardo and Black Brazilian may be obnoxious subjects, or subjects of exaggerated importance, but even if this is so these articles will never be deleted via AfD or any other process.
  2. If these three articles survive, then, in order not to mislead, each must start either (a) by summarizing the matter of "race"/"color" in Brazil, or (b) by referring the reader to some summary; of these two options, the latter is much less wasteful.
  3. Although "race"/"color" and "ethnic group" in Brazil are not unrelated -- for example, whatever "Black Brazilian" and "German Brazilian" may mean, there are few Black German (German Black?) Brazilians -- they are very different.
  4. Although Ethnic groups in Brazil starts off with a (confused) discussion of race and ancestry, it is not the right article for a discussion of race or color (and arguably not for a discussion of non-immediate ancestry either)
  5. Ethnic groups in Brazil is in a sub-sub-sub- (or thereabouts) category of Category:Ethnic groups, whose top article is Ethnic group; this both (a) describes an "ethnic group" in a way that clearly does not cover (for example) the group of "White Brazilians", and (b) makes it very clear that ethnicity and race are very different.

and therefore that there should be an article titled Race in Brazil or similar. You can see the discussion here.

If Race in Brazil were a redlink, one could just go ahead and create the article. But of course it isn't: it's a redirect to Ethnic groups in Brazil. I fear that, if not explained and OK'd beforehand, a bold conversion of this into a separate page on "race" would be interpreted as an ideological fork, and therefore bring it up here.

My own suggestion at here was that people should concentrate on each of several stages with a gentlemen's agreement not to mess with the others. One implication of this would be that the article Ethnic groups in Brazil would continue to discuss "racial" matters while Race in Brazil was being worked on. One way around that might be:

  1. create Race in Brazil somewhere like Wikipedia:WikiProject Brazil/Sandbox until it's fairly good and stable;
  2. move it to mainspace;
  3. remove the stuff about race from Ethnic groups in Brazil;
  4. revise the material about ethnic groups within Ethnic groups in Brazil.

Comments welcome. -- Hoary (talk) 01:17, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Support. "Races" and "ethnic groups", whatever they are, are certainly not the same thing. This article confuses those things; it starts by saying that the "ethnic groups" in Brazil are "White, Black, Pardo, Yellow and Amerindian"; and then moves to a table where the "ethnic groups" listed are, instead, "Africans, Portuguese, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Japanese, Syrians and Lebanese, and Others". Ninguém (talk) 02:18, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Some considerations about this article

There aren't problems with this article; rather, this article is a problem.

I have now added a definition of "ethnic group", directly copied from the Wikipedia article on ethnic groups. Before this, the article simply hadn't any definition of "ethnic group"; instead, its lead stated that

Brazil is a racially diverse and multiracial country.[1] Intermarriage among different ethnic groups has been part of the country's history.

which leaves us without knowing what we are talking about. Apparently, to this article, "ethnic groups" and "races" are the same thing, or at least have some relation to each other. But we very well know that "ethnic group" and "race" are very different things (Englishmen and Spaniards both belong to the same "race", but they certainly aren't members of the same "ethnic group"); and the relation between these two different entities isn't explained nor even linked somewhere else for an explanation. There is another confusion in the highlighted sentence, namely between "intermarriage" and "miscigenation", as if miscigenation in Brazilian society was not primarily linked to out-of-the-wedlock relationships.

Sticking a coherent, Wikipedia-endorsed definition in the beggining of the article, as I did, however, doesn't solve much, because the article as a whole is written in a confused way, sometimes referring to "ethnic groups" as a synonim to "race" (for instance, the section "Ethnic groups" tells us that the "ethnic groups" in Brazil are "White", "Brown", "Black", "Yellow" and "Indigenous"), and other times referring to European "ethnic groups" (for instance, the section immediately below, "Brazil's population history", starts with a table about immigration to Brazil (which, of course, confuses immigration with colonisation and enslavement), in which the "ethnic groups" are no longer the aforementioned, but, instead, "Africans", "Portuguese", "Italians", "Spaniards", "Germans", "Japanese", and "Syrians and Lebanese".

Of course, "Portuguese", "Italians", "Spaniards", or "Germans" are "ethnic groups" in Europe; in Brazil they are not. On the other hand, "Africans" is not an "ethnic group", either in Brazil or Africa.

Besides the table, the "history" of Brazilian population is made of four sentences, three of which are remarkable; one tells us about the pre-Columbian population of Brazil, including a false statement (that those people were living in what is now Brazil for 12,000 years - when the main "ethnic group" the Portuguese found in Brazil, the Tupi-Guarani, were in fact quite recent in the region); the second says that "during several decades afterwards, the country remained sparsely inhabited by Europeans, mainly Portuguese" (apparently nothing happened after those "several" decades to the Brazilian population?); the third says that "another important instance of forced migration has been the Atlantic slave trade", which is very strange since no other instance of "forced migration" was ever mentioned before.

(The "several" decades during which the country remained sparsely populated, if anyone is interested, were three.)

After this "history" of "several" decades, we are immediately transported to the 19th century, to an "Immigration discussion and policy in the 19th century" subsection, as if the second half of the 15th and the whole 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries had absolutely no importance to "Brazil's population history"!

The "Immigration discussion" is confuse and seems to have nothing to do with "ethnic groups"; instead, it is a discussion about race and racism and includes some absurds, like the idea that Brazil was the target of European racism (evidently, in the hierarchy of "racial" evils of European racism, Brazil fit in a quite secondary place, after Africa, China, India, or Jews), or the notion that Brazil was a former "European colony" (which, of course, it wasn't; it was a Portuguese colony), or the false information that Japanese and Arab immigration only started after the 1920s (in fact, by that time, more than half of the Arab immigrants to Brazil, who started arriving in the 1880s, had already arrived, and Japanese immigration started in 1908). In all, it seems to downplay the most obvious motivation for fostering immigration - the need for a larger workforce - and ignore the obvious constraints imposed by the realities of potential emigration countries (Europe had a considerable relative surplus population, Africa did not).

An even more confuse and further removed from the subject of "ethnic groups" follows, under the section entitled "Government's racism". Indeed, not only it has nothing to do with "ethnic groups", but its discussion of governmental racism is quite lacking; it is centered in a discussion about a text published along with the results of the Census of 1920, written by Oliveira Vianna (who is nowhere acknowledged as the author; in fact, the article even refers to "the authors" of this text, as if it were a collective work). A bit worse, the only legal texts discussed in this section are two "projetos de lei" forbidding the entrance of African emmigrants and restricting the entrance of Asiatics to 5% of those already in the country. The article doesn't even do the obvious: informing us whether those projects were passed or rejected in the Brazilian Congress. On the other hand, the (in)famous "Decreto-lei 528" of 1890, which effectively forbade the entrance of African and Asiatic immigrants without Congressional permission, isn't cited.

Another section completely unrelated to the subject of "ethnic groups" comes after, entitled "Gilberto Freyre's work". It makes an otherwise reasonable appreciation of Freyre's work, which, of course, is about "race", not about "ethnic groups", but ends abruptly by stating that Freyre was later criticised by other anthropologists, and naming Darcy Ribeiro as one of them, though Ribeiro, of course, isn't among Freyre's first, main or more radical critiques (Florestan Fernandes, Abdias do Nascimento, Carlos Hasenbalg, etc.).

The following section, "Racial makeup and genetic studies", again has nothing to do with "ethnic groups", but is an (again) confuse discussion of "race"; in fact, "races" are taken for granted as "ethnic groups": "Nowadays, most Brazilians classify themselves as being Whites, closely followed by the Brown group. Recent genetic studies found a high degree of racial admixture in all ethnic groups of Brazil, concluding that the vast majority of Brazilians have some amount of European, African and Amerindian ancestry". The implication is obvious: "Whites", "Browns", etc., are "ethnic groups".

A subsection on "Admixture" follows, always under the belief that "races" are "ethnic groups". Then come two subsections, respectively about "Descendants of colonial settlers" and "Descendants of immigrants", apparently relying on the idea that those two groups are mutally exclusive, which, of course, is far from true, most "descendants of immigrants" being also "descendants of colonial settlers". The first of those subsections also informs us that Amerindians are colonial settlers (!), and that "at least 50% of the Brazilian paternal ancestry would be of Portuguese origin" (the given source is now a broken link, but it is about Portuguese Y chromosomes, not about "paternal ancestry" (if someone's father is the grandchild of one Portuguese paternal grandfather and three German other grandparents, his Y chromosome will be Portuguese, but evidently his "paternal ancestry" is 75% German and only 25% Portuguese). The subsection on "descendants of immigrants" ends with two tables, the first being one of these infamous tables that report fantastic figures for descendants of immigrants from varied nationalities: 25 million "Italian Brazilians", 15 million "Spanish Brazilians", 18 million "German Brazilians", and the other a table giving the figures for immigrants of varied nationalities arriving through the port of Santos.

The following section is again about "race", "Racial disparities". Then comes a section about "Races and ethnicities by region", with subsections for each of the geographic regions of Brazil. It discusses the "racial" composition of the population, including a table with "race" percents in each Brazilian state, with the percents for "Amerindians" and "Yellows" summed into a single category.

The subsections by region are extremely confuse. They attempt to describe the historical formation of the population in each region (which should have been discussed in the "Brazil's population history" section), but they have trouble in even following a chronological order (for instance, this: "The whole region of Vale dos Sinos was populated by Germans. During the 1830s and part of the 1840s German immigration to Brazil was interrupted due to conflicts in the country (War of the Farrapos)" evidently gives the impression that the Sinos Valley was already densely populated with German immigrants in 1830 - but, by then, only 3,000 German immigrants had arrived in Rio Grande do Sul).

The section about the Southeast starts by saying that the region is the most "ethnically diverse" part of the country, but gives figures, again, about "race" instead of "ethnic groups" to make the point. It misdescribes the colonial population of the Southwest, which is fancied as speaking the Língua Geral, contrary to historic evidence, that shows Portuguese was always the public language, even in São Paulo, not to talk about Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. In further confusion, Língua Geral is described as "a language that mixed Tupi and Portuguese words", when, if fact, it is a Tupian language - even though with Portuguese borrowings - not a pidgin, creole, or patois. Other gems include "By the late 18th century, Rio de Janeiro was an "African city": most of its inhabitants were slaves" (of course, an "African city" might have plenty of African slaves, but it would certainly have not a White elite, a European architecture, a population speaking an Indo-European language, etc., as Rio de Janeiro certainly had). Data about Brazil at large, which were already reported elsewhere, are repeated here: "Brazil attracted nearly 5 million immigrants between 1870 and 1953". Absurd figures are peppered here and there: "Northeast São Paulo is 65% Italian, for example" (the given source is unreliable enough, being one of these sites that acritically repeat inflated misinformation about the population of immigrant origin in Brazil, but it at least doesn't say this absurd; it states that 65% of the population of Northeast São Paulo is of Italians descent, nowhere implying they would be of unmixed Italian descent). Quem conta um conto aumenta um ponto, those who tell a tale make it taller. Also "the city of Bastos, in São Paulo, is 11.4% Japanese" (evidently not - 11.4% of its population would be of Japanese descent, but it is an a 100% Brazilian city); "the city of São Paulo is home to the largest Japanese population outside of Japan itself" (very doubtful - it may have the largest population of Japanese descent outside of Japan, but Japanese immigration ceased too long ago to make the population of Japanese significant in São Paulo); "the capital of São Paulo is also home to the largest Arab population outside the Levant region" (seems completely farfetched even if "Arab population" is replaced by "population of Arab descent"; Paris seems a better guess).

There isn't even uniformity among the regional subsections. While those about the South and Southwest mostly deal with with immigrants and their "ethnic groups" (on the assumption, I suppose, that they remained separate ethnic entities in Brazil instead of being absorbed by the larger populace), the subsection on the Northeast deals exclusively with "race", again confused with "ethnic group". Besides that, it induces the reader into believing that the Northeast has always been the poorest part of the country (which it wasn't until the 19th century). Ninguém (talk) 19:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Why "racial disparities" don't belong in an article about "ethnic groups"

This article is a problem, because it does not define what "ethnic groups" are, and consequently talks about different things: "race", and ethnic origins. In some sections, the "ethnic groups" in Brazil are assumed to be "White, 'pardos', Black, Yellow, and Amerindian". In others, with no transition, they are assumed to be "Italian, Portuguese, Germans, Spaniards, Arabs, others".

As Wikipedia article on Ethnic groups says, "An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or assumed- sharing cultural characteristics[1][2] This shared heritage may be based upon putative common ancestry, history, kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance. Members of an ethnic group are conscious of belonging to an ethnic group; moreover ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness." But, in Brazil there is no such thing as a "White" group of people identifying with each others through a common heritage, etc; so "Whites" are not an ethnic group. The same goes for the other "racial" categories of the IBGE, except for Amerindians (who also are not one ethnic group, but a diverse array of many ethnic groups). There is also no such thing as "Spanish" group of people identifying with each others through a common heritage, etc; while Spaniards constitute an ethnic group in Europe, in Brazil they don't.

And, as "races" are not ethnic groups (at least in Brazil; perhaps they are so in other countries), all the material about "races", Whites, Blacks, Yellows, "pardos", is misplaced here, unless it can be somehow related to actual ethnic groups - which doesn't happen in this article (which, to be earnest, doesn't mention even one single actual ethnic group in Brazil). "Racial disparities" is among the material unrelated to "ethnic groups"; it only talks about "races", doesn't even mention ethnic groups, etc. So I removed it, and, in the absence of any discussion pointing to a possibly synonimity of "races" with "ethnic groups", I am going to do it again. Ninguém (talk) 12:33, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

No comments? Ninguém (talk) 13:03, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Why the figures of hyphenated Brazilians are unencyclopaedic

The interned is full of sites giving varied figures of "Italian Brazilians", "Arab Brazilians", etc. These figures were reported in this article, formatted as a table. Unhappily not one of those sites gives any explanation on where and how do they get such figures. As such, this information is unverifiable.

There is no systematic research on ethnic origins of Brazilians. The most recent reliable, national survey is the July 1998 PME, and its results are clearly incompatible with the figures in the table in this article. The figures in the table are also incompatible with the known data for immigration to Brazil; if true, they would imply totally abnormal prolificity rates of some groups of immigrants, and totally abnormal geographic distributions of their descendants (such as, for instance, being less representative in areas where they historically settled than among the general population). So these figures are not only unverifiable, but they are also, for the most part, mistaken. As such, they have been criticised by demographers and other social scientists, such as Miguel Angel García or John Tofik Karam - who constitute actually reliable, academic sources.

The sites reporting such figures are also a problem. They usually belong to either the diplomatic system of the countries of immigrant origin, or to bilateral commercial associations; in both case they are not "neutral", as these figures have political and economical implications in which these entities have direct or indirect interest.

An encyclopaedia should be a recollection of knowledge, not of mythologies. So I have removed those fantastic, unverifiable "data", and, if there isn't a way to source them to verifiable sources - sources that point to actual surveys, or at least to verifiable calculations based on the actual figures and dates of immigrant arrivals and acceptable return, birth, and mortality rates, I am going to remove them again. Ninguém (talk) 12:54, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Here, for instance, about "Arab-Brazilians": Another Arabesque. Pages 10-11 would be the most interesting for this discussion.
Here, for "Italian Brazilians": Immigrazione Italiana nell’America del Sud (Argentina, Uruguay e Brasile) (PDF, in Italian, the relevant discussion in note 38, page 31.) Ninguém (talk) 14:16, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
No comments? Ninguém (talk) 13:04, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Oliveira Vianna's racist drivel and its "interpretation" in this article

First, Vianna's paper doesn't, of course, belong in a discussion of "ethnic groups"; it is about "race", and "races" aren't ethnic groups. So it should be moved somewhere else.

Second, a subsection titled "Government's racism" should perhaps focus on legal documents, or administrative decisions, not on pretensely "scientific" analysis such as Vianna's. So, even if it stays, the section needs to be rewritten. There is a persistent myth that while racism is widespread in Brazil, there was never actual legislation enforcing it. It is a half-truth, as certainly Blacks have been denied, in the past, access to certain public functions. This is something I can do - but only if this is no longer in an article about "ethnic groups".

Third, the text as it is now grossly misinterprets Vianna, attributing him views that a minimal reading of his paper shows are not spoused by him. For instance, he is reported as saying that all the Portuguese colonists in Brazil were "dólico-louros", tall, blonde, aristocratic descendants of the sueves and visigoths. But he says that of the first colonists in the 16th Century; he quite clearly says that from the 17th Century on most colonists were "brachyoides" or "dolicoides morenos", short, dark-haired, and lower-class, descending from Celts or "íberos". Perhaps this has to do with the general tendency of all Wikipedia articles about Brazilian demography to pretend that the 17th and 18th Centuries didn't exist (see, for instance, the section "Brazil's population history", that jumps fantastically and with no transition from 1550 to 1850). Anyway, while I have absolutely no sympathy for Vianna's racist and unscientific musings, it is obvious that, if he is going to be quoted, then his reasoning has to be adequately reported, with no misinterpretations. I am by no means interested in dealing with Vianna; if there isn't other editor willing to read his text (in Portuguese; I don't think there is an easily accessible English translation) and summarise it without distortions, I suggest the whole thing is erased. Ninguém (talk) 16:43, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I have moved it to Race in Brazil, where it belongs, and am in the process of rewriting it. In so doing, I discovered that the word "brachyoide" had been mistranslated into "branchyoid"; apparently someone thought that it was related to "branco", Portuguese for "White". Frankly...