Page "First Brazilian Republic" Paragraph 19

Brazil's dependence on factory-made goods and loans from the technologically, economically, and politically superior North Atlantic retarded its domestic industrial base.

Farm equipment was primitive and largely non-mechanized ; peasants tilled the land with hoes and cleared the soil through the inefficient slash-and-burn method.

Meanwhile, living standards were generally squalid.

Malnutrition, parasitic diseases, and lack of medical facilities limited the average life span in 1920 to twenty-eight years.

Then, in no open market could Brazilian industry compete within the comparative advantage system against the technologically superior Anglo-American economies.

In this context happened the Encilhamento, an Boom & Bust process that occurred particularly between 1889 – 91, whose effects, positive and negative ones, were felt in all areas of the Brazilian economy throughout the subsequent decades.