Sertão

The sertão (Portuguese pronunciation: [seʁˈtɐ̃w], plural sertões) is the "hinterland" or "backcountry" of Brazil. The word refers both to one of the four sub-regions of the Northeast Region of Brazil or the hinterlands of the country in general (similar to the specific association of "outback" with Australia in English). Northeast Brazil is largely covered in a scrubby upland forest called caatingas, from the Tupi language, meaning white forest. Leaves fall during dry season and most of the vegetation, mainly bushes and small trees, is reduced to bare branches and trunks in characteristic pale grayish, or off-white, hues. The regional borders are not precise. Due to lengthy and unpredictable droughts, the region is economically poor but it is well known in Brazilian culture for its rich history and folklore.

The sertão is described fully within Os Sertões (The Backlands), a notable book written by Brazilian author Euclides da Cunha.

Originally Portuguese explorers used the term for the vast hinterlands of Asia and South America that they encountered. In Brazil, sertao referred to backlands away from those Atlantic coastal regions where the Portuguese first settled in the early sixteenth century. A Brazilian historian once referred to colonial life in Brazil as a "civilization of crabs", as most settlers clung to the shoreline, with few trying to make inroads into the sertão.

In modern terms, sertão refers more specifically to a semi-arid region in northeastern Brazil, comprising parts of the states of Alagoas, Bahia, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, Maranhão, Piauí, Sergipe, and Minas Gerais.

Geographically, the sertão consists mainly of low uplands that form part of the Brazilian Highlands. Most parts of the sertão are between 200 meters (660 ft) and 500 meters (1,600 ft) above sea level, with higher elevations found on the eastern edge in the Borborema Plateau, where it merges into a sub-humid region known as agreste, in the Serra da Ibiapaba in western Ceará and in the Serro do Periquito of central Pernambuco. In the north, the sertão extends to the northern coastal plains of Rio Grande do Norte state, while to the south it ends gradually in the northern part of Minas Gerais.

Two major rivers cross the sertão, the Jaguaribe and further east the Piranhas. To the south, the larger São Francisco River flows in part in the sertão. Smaller rivers dry up at the end of the rainy season.

The term sertão is also used in Portuguese to refer to the Brazilian hinterland in general, regardless of region. It is this sense that corresponds to sertão music, música sertaneja, roughly "country music". To avoid ambiguity, the region in the northeast is sometimes called the sertão nordestino, while the Brazilian hinterland may also be called the sertânia, the land of sertões.