Geography - Mrs. Woodhull's Global Studies Webpage



|World Geography |Name: | | |Score: |

|Chapter 12 – Brazil | | | |_______ |

| | | | |10 |

|Section 2 – Critical Thinking |Date: | | | |

|Ms. Woodhull | | | | |

An Unusual Brazilian City

Governador Valadares, a city located in the interior of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, has close ties with the United States. Some call Governador Valadares “Brazil’s best American town.”

Directions: As you read the passage below, look for cause-and-effect relationships. Then, answer the questions that follow. Write your answers on a separate sheet of paper.

Governador Valadares is a thriving city of 250,000 people set in a vast, dry region of cattle ranches. Among its high-rise apartment buildings is one called the Empire State Building. In the central square of the city, teenage girls shop for clothes at Benetton, and boys on park benches read Mad Magazine in Portuguese. Most of the families in the city have a relative working in the United States. The city’s ties with the United States began during World War II. American planes flew to Governador Valadares to load up with mica, an essential material for manufacturing radios. In return for the mica, the U.S. government helped the city build a water and sewage system to control the spread of malaria. After the war, the city became a trading center for semiprecious stones and a magnet for American entrepreneurs.

When the tropical forest around the city was cut down in the 1960s, unemployment became a serious problem, particularly among loggers. Young, single men applied for visas and traveled to the United States in search of jobs. Migration northward increased substantially during the 1980s when Brazil’s economy worsened. Most Brazilians migrated not to settle permanently but to earn enough money for a better life in Brazil. The estimated 10,000 residents of Governador Valadares who now live and work in the United States are believed to send back home more than $20 million annually. One Brazilian, for example, used to earn $25 driving a milk truck. Working in a Boston restaurant, he was able to earn $800 a week, of which he sent home $400. He is now building himself a two-story house next to his parents’ home. His family has invested the money he sent home in cows—a Brazilian’s favorite protection against inflation.

1. How did the relationship between Governador Valadares and the United States begin?

2. Why have so many residents of the city migrated to the United States?

3. How has the city been affected by the migration of many of its residents?

4. What might cause the migration of Brazilians to the United States to slow down?

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