With the admission of Arizona and New Mexico to the Union in 1912, the continental United States attained an area of 3,022,341 sq. Miles, 8 percent smaller than Brazil’s 3,286,470 sq. Miles. The admission of Alaska and Hawaii to statehood in 1959 increased the area of the United States to 3,615,191 sq. Miles, 10 percent larger than Brazil.

The main topographical feature of Brazil’s interior is highlands plateau; vast plains cover much of the interior of the U.S. Both countries have a long Atlantic coastline. Major rivers – the 4,087-mile-long Amazon in Brazil and the 2,350-mile Mississippi in the U.S. – create centers of life and commerce for entire regions. The Amazon carries forest products to the Brazilian coast while the Mississippi, the principal river in the U.S., today primarily transports bulky items such as petroleum products, chemicals, gravel, and limestone. The Amazon River is the world'’ second longest after the Nile and the world’s largest river in volume of water. The combined Missouri-Mississippi system ranks as the third longest river system after the Nile and the Amazon.

Communications and transportation made possible the exploitation of the huge plains in both countries. Brazil’s southernmost State of Rio Grande do Sul is the equivalent of the American West. Both areas have cattlemen and vast ranches. In the U.S. cattle hands are called cowboys; in Rio Grande do Sul they are gaúchos.

Both Brazil and the U.S. have spectacular waterfalls. Iguaçu Falls, which separates Brazil from Argentina, has two main sections composed of hundreds of waterfalls separated from each other by rocky islands along a 3-mile escarpment. The highest fall is 210 feet high. Niagara Falls separates the U.S. from Canada. An island splits the cataract into the American Falls and the Horseshoe of Canadian Falls. On the American side the Falls is 167 feet high and 1,060 feet wide.

As the 20th century began the new Brazilian republic started to forge more links with the United States. Personalities such as Joaquim Nabuco, Brazil’s Ambassador to the U.S. (1905-1910), gained wide respect in America. In 1995 the Joaquim Nabuco Chair of Brazilian Studies was created at Stanford University to honor his achievements.

An interesting association between Brazil and the U.S. in this period is Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt’s expedition to the Amazon. Roosevelt liked to take on challenges and in 1914 he decided to travel to Brazil where he began a close friendship with Colonel (later Marshal) Cândido Rondon. Rondon was a well-known Brazilian naturalist and explorer who founded the Indian Protection Service, one of the most humane organizations of its kind in the Americas. Accompanied by Roosevelt’s son Kermit, the two men went on two scientific expeditions financed by the Museum of Natural History in New York to collect examples of animals and birds in the Pantanal and the Amazon.

In 1917 Brazil was the only South American country to participate with the allies in World War I by deploying a naval division to patrol the South Atlantic. In addition, Brazilian officers served in French regiments and Brazilian pilots cooperated with the British Royal Air Force. After World War I both societies faced transformations and in each country the rights of women became a major concern. In 1920 the nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted nationwide suffrage to women. A new Constitution in Brazil in 1934 gave women the right to vote well before women had such rights in France, Belgium, or Switzerland.

American investments in Brazil increased significantly after World War I with many U.S. companies opening Brazilian subsidiaries. In 1927 American businessman Henry Ford sought a less expensive source of rubber for tires. After a worldwide search, his technicians advised Ford that Brazil’s Tapajós Valley in the lower Amazon was the best place to plant an extensive cultivated rubber plantation to meet the needs of his automobile factory. As early as 1919 Ford Motor was assembling cars – the Model T – in Brazil. Today Ford’s Brazilian subsidiary is extremely successful as are General Motors’ and other international carmakers.

Political difficulties in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s provoked an intellectual and artistic emigration both to Brazil and to the U.S. both countries were havens of liberty and opportunity. This immigration helped make each country less dependent on European culture and was responsible for the formation of a new generation of local artists who were more autonomous and sophisticated. In 1923 two architects who were to become pioneering modernists emigrated; Russian Gregori Warchavchik went to Brazil and German Richard Neutra went to the U.S. In the next decade Lithuanian painter Lasar Segall and Austrian Axl von Leskochek, a print maker, went to Brazil. Leskochek taught his art to a generation of Brazilian artists. In 1941 Austrian poet and novelist Stefan Zweig also emigrated to Brazil. Among the influential Europeans who went to the U.S. during the 1930s were physicist Albert Einstein, pianist Vladimir Horowitz, painter Piet Mondrian, composer Kurt Weill, and architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The 1930s were also years in which Americans and Brazilians increasingly took notice of each other. Movies like Flying Down to Rio with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers presented the first popular images of Brazil to an American audience. Other Hollywood movies followed with stories set in Brazil. However, these films were never shot on location; they were filmed on Hollywood’s backlots. One of the best known early films which simulated a Brazilian locale is Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.

Several Brazilian classical artists were active in the musical life of the United States. Pianist Guiomar Novais’ highly successful United States concert career began with a performance in 1915 and continued for more than three decades. She appeared frequently with the New York Philharmonic and other major American orchestras. Brazil’s most famous opera singer, Bidú Sayão, spent much of her professional career in New York where, starting in 1937, she sang leading soprano roles with the Metropolitan Opera. After her final Met performance in 1952 she sang with the San Francisco Opera and with the Chicago Lyric Opera.

In the 1930s Heitor Villa-Lobos’ compositions were starting to be included in the repertory of American orchestras. Villa-Lobos’ music incorporates Brazilian folkloric melodies, rhythms, and popular musical instruments into symphonic and chamber works. His guitar music is regularly featured in classical guitar concerts. Over the course of his career Villa-Lobos made many trips to the U.S. where he conducted American orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

While on a visit to Brazil, American artist and writer Rockwell Kent had the opportunity to see and appreciate the work of painter Cândido Portinari. This encounter lead to Portinari being introduced to the American public. His works were used in the first large architectural commission of Brazilian architect Lúcio Costa: the Brazilian pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair designed jointly with another Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer. Portinari’s first solo exhibit was in 1940 at The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. His six largest murals are in the U.S. – four painted in 1941 are at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and two, painted in 1948, are at United Nations headquarters in New York.