Discovery of Brazil

The first landing of European explorers to the territory of present-day Brazil, which was already inhabited by various Indigenous communities, is often credited to Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral, who sighted the land later named Island of Vera Cruz, near Monte Pascoal, on 22 April 1500 while leading an expedition to India. Cabral's voyage is part of the so-called Portuguese discoveries.

Although used almost exclusively in relation to Pedro Álvares Cabral's voyage, the term "discovery of Brazil" can also refer to the arrival of the expedition led by Spanish navigator and explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who reached the Cape of Santo Agostinho, a promontory located in the current state of Pernambuco, on 26 January 1500. This is the oldest confirmed European landing in Brazilian territory.

The use of the term "discovery" for this historical event considers the viewpoint of peoples from Europe. They recorded it in the form of written history, and the record expresses a Eurocentric conception of history. Some people in Brazil call this event the invasion of Brazil. The term "discovery" disregards the presence of Indigenous civilizations in Brazil before the arrival of the Portuguese, treating the European arrival as an act of unveiling rather than as an invasion that triggered a violent process of colonization and genocide of the original peoples. This Eurocentric view reflects the colonizers' narrative and conceals the historical reality from the perspective of Indigenous peoples; therefore, the concept of the "coloniality of knowledge" is discussed, denouncing how the historical narrative is shaped by a Eurocentric bias that silences and erases the knowledge, practices, and resistance of Indigenous peoples in the face of colonial violence.