HyperlinkEssayBrazil

The "hyperlink essay" is simply a 500 word essay with at least five and at most ten hyperlinks to WEB sites relevant to your topic. The essay must be in *.html format. You can write it in Mozilla composer or in Word or any other word processor so long as you save it in "web page" or html format. The links should be embedded (as they are in this document, e.g., this link back to our course page).

You can post these on your own WEB site if you have one or would like me to show you how to create one. You should also email me the file so I can post them on our course WEB site.

For examples, you can look at the essays posted by the students in my Sociology of Communications class last semester. Just click on each students' name to find his or her web site which should still have a link to the essay. For the structure of the essay, you can use a standard five paragraph essay format.

Here is a quick and dirty sample:

Native Brazilians

by Ted Goertzel

There were hundreds of native tribes in Brazil when the Europeans arrived. No one is sure of the total population, but it was probably several million. Many of these tribes still exist. They can be divided into four main language groups, the Tupí-Guaraní, the Gê, the Carib and the Arawak. The Tupí-Guaraní including the Tupinamba lived largely along the Atlantic coast. The Gê, including the Kayapo, lived on the open central plateau. The Caribs and the Arawak lived in the Amazon basin. The Caribs were the most warlike. Most of the Indians lived in temporary villages and moved frequently. There were no animals that could be domesticated and the soil was weak discouraging planting. (Levine and Crocitti, 1999: 12.)

Recently, there has been great interest in the Yanomano Indians who live in remote Amazon regions of Venezuela and Brazil. They are believed to be one of the most primitive "stone age" people still living in an intact culture in the world today. They do not have the wheel and the only metal they use has been obtained through trading.

Metal for axes and knives was one of the main things the Indians obtained from the first Europeans. They used the metal to cut down Brazilwood trees to sell to the Europeans. The native women were apparently quite receptive to sexual advances from the Europeans and eager to have their children.

An anonymous writer in 1587 made the following observations about a Tupinamba village (Levine and Crocitti, 1999: 25-32). I am not sure how accurate this is.:

they lived in villages with one person recognized as a leader
the houses last for three or four years until the palm trees used for the roof wear out, then they move
the men have one wife, given to them by her father, but are free to cohabitate with other women. The women are proud when they lose their virginity and have many partners
the men prepare the fields for planting, working only in the morning. They use slash and burn techniques. The women plant and cultivate the fields
they make baskets and pots beads, but do not make cloth.
they fight very violent wars with neighboring villages and kill as many as they can, cutting off their private parts and eating them. They also enslave people from other villages. They sometimes fatten the captives up to be eaten on ceremonial occasions.

Today, Indians represent less than 0.2% (two thousandths) of the Brazilian population, or about 345,000 people as estimated by the National Foundation for the Indians which is responsible for protecting them. They are much less integrated into Brazilian society than are the Indians in countries such as Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia and Mexico.

References:
Robert Levine and John Crocitti, The Brazil Reader, Duke University Press, 1999.
Joseph Page, The Brazilians, Addison-Wesley, 1995.