n immigrations. The large numbers of slaves brought into Brazil from Africa have maintained their influence in Brazil A black population of around 8.5 million lives in Brazil today. Resembling the mixing of European and Amerindians in Mexico, racial mixing has effected Brazil’s population. 67 million Brazilians can trace their ancestries to European, African, and Amerindian bloodlines. A slim majority of Brazilians are of European decent. These people are the ancestors of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Portugal, Germany, and Italy. Brazil also has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan (254).Despite the differences in their ethnicity, the populations of these regions are both highly urbanized. In Brazil eighty percent of the population resides in urban areas (Microsoft Encarta). Nearly seventy-five percent of Mexico’s people are urban dwellers (de Blij and Muller 220). The largest cities of these regions are Mexico City, Mexico (221) and Sao Paulo, Brazil (259). Mexico City is the home of a little more than twenty-five percent of Mexico’s total population. Mexico City’s population grows by amazing amounts each year; the city will probably soon be the most populated city on Earth. Right now the population of Mexico City is twenty-eight million (221). Sao Paulo in Brazil is also growing remarkably fast. Presently the population of Sao Paulo is Twenty-three million Sao Paulo’s population has more than doubled in the past thirty years (259).Sao Paulo and Mexico City are facing some of the same problems. Sao Paulo and Mexico City are both marked by areas of great economic contrasts. Mexico City has more than five hundred areas that can be called slums. Areas with even worse living conditions, known as barrios or ciudades perdidas, which translates to “lost cities”, surround the outer rims of Mexico City. Sao Paulo has areas that are equally as poverty stricken as the ciudades perdidas o...
