I'll be a retard and necropost. Feel free to give me the clock emoji.
They love futbol, they have jungles and wild exotic animals, some of their women are attractive
You want our trannies, don't you?
The really attractive women dwell in upper-class neighborhoods isolated from the common people. In most places you'll find either average looking gals, fat ugly gals with greasy skin or thinny ugly gals who may or may not be an alocholic/drug-addicted with acute mental issues.
Also:
and their cities historically exhibited an exotic aura around them
If by "exotic" you mean "crime stricken dystopia" then, yeah, it is as exotic as it gets. Get around any big city in Brazil and you'll see what Max Payne 3 was all about.
They’re ranked in the top twenty for murder rates and crime is rampant there. They also have the same degenerate ills as the west like fags, troons, and troonshine all being present in Brazil.
Since early 20th century Brazil is part of 'Murica's sphere of cultural or political
imperialism influence. Unlike South Korea and Cuba though we never came close of becoming an amusement park for Americans. Instead, we became a yes-man to whatever they say.
Brazil wanted to align with the Axis powers in WWII and was only prevented by American threats of invasion. So Brazil sucked it up and became part of the Allies.
the government, similar to Japan, has a long enough history with cartels that is not so easy to stamp out
Yakuza's influence on Japanese government and society has been overblown thanks to movies and media. They haven't done anything worthwhile of becoming a security threat for the past 60 years and nowadays they're nothing but old crooks who still think they got shit and lost a lot of their influence to the Chinese mafia.
Brazilian government OTOH has been reaping what they sown for the past 40 years by letting crime syndicates unite in prison and get stronger with time. Comando Vermelho was made out of an alliance between regular criminals and guerilla communists because they were doing time in the same prison system. The military goverment at the time did jack shit to keep this from happening and did much less when they were grooming people in slums for recruitment.
That was during the 70s where simultaneously urban violence and drug dealing began to rise in metro areas and once more the government turned a blind eye to that.
Fast foward to present day crime syndicates have strong relationships with government officials and public servants alike and are suspected of having a say in elections and law passing. Ghetto Evangelical Churches have lots of former syndicate members as preachers although they certainly still have connections to them anyway. Most will save face saying cliché things like "Don't join a syndicate. Crime is bad, mmkay?" or something.
Because instead of them having 10% of the population being 80% African by ancestry like the United States did, they decided to go with 80% of the population being at least 10% black.
Genetics testing proves the majority of self-declared Brazilian whites have some African ancestry outside of the far south. Ironically, the Brazilians who self-identify as black are whiter by ancestry overall than American blacks with Bahia being the exception. One drop rule saved America from mass wiggertry.
Brazilians are the equivalent of a stray mutt when it comes to genetics and ancestry tracking and I say this not only because most are Mischlings but we also have children
not knowing who their father is. We have generations of literal bastards being the result of a one-night stand. But the paternal side is not the only one to blame since there was a time lots of young moms were deliberately leaving the father out of the birth certificate to raise the kids alone and only charge alimony from them.
Apart from that race is and isn't an issue here. Since colonial times society had dun goofed attempts at ethnic cleansing through breeding with Indians and Black slaves: Pardos are the end result of this. Also we have similar profiling habits as Americans.
But at the same time you have the majority of the population with at least some African blood. Plínio Salgado for example was a pioneer of Brazilian fascism (see
Integralismo) and wanted to copy Nazi ideas but gave up knowing that he would be excluding a huge portion of Brazilians if ethnic purity was included though anti-Semitic views were endorsed.
The Amazon has never been a good place to farm or transport goods through.
And yet the military government wanted to waste away tax money by building a fucking highway there.
I believe they were, under Emperor Dom Pedro II, a rather advanced society like Argentina was. Pedro was sacked more or less because he freed the slaves and the aristocracy unseated him out of spite.
92% of the population was illiterate, we were technologically backwards compared to America and Europe and riots were all over Brazil. The slavery issue was a different matter because while UK was pressuring Brazil into outlawing slavery Dom Pedro didn't want the agragrian elite (the actual rulers of this country) to cause a riot that could dethrone him since Brazilian people were majorly pro-slavery. Not to mention, the Emperor wasn't keen on Freemasons.
But the main reason for the downfall of the Empire was the Emperor himself. His only heir to the throne, Princess Isabel (who actually abolished slavery) was not acknowledged to be a capable ruler (because pussy) and the man himself was unenthusiastic regarding his duties because by the 1880s the parliament were already full of crooks. It was a matter of time until the Empire fell. After the abolition the agragrian elite along with the military organized a coup d'etat to which Dom Pedro reacted with "Yeah, whatever."
But the best answer to the question is:
Because it is full of Brazilians
