Roraima, Brazil

Roraima, Brazil

I want to preface this by restating that while South American flags are generally pretty bad, their designers do try. Asia – I’m looking at you – you’re a continent of cop-out flags with few subnational designs.

Anyhow, back to this one. The blue is for the air, the white is for peace (both of these first two are hackneyed.) The green is for forests and fields. That’s been done. The star represents the fact that Roraima is a Brazilian state, among all the others. And finally, a bit of more rare symbolism – the red line represents the equator, which runs through the state. Most of the state lies north of the equator, hence the red line is about 2/3 of the way down this flag.

The diagonal bands of color are pretty distracting; horizontal would have been much better, especially because the blue band represents the air, and the horizon in Roraima is just as horizontal as most places. And while the placement of the red line makes sense geographically, setting the star on it has a Mario Brothers feel to it; like if you jump from under this flag and hit it with your head, you get an extra life.

Espirito Santo, Brazil

Brave, brave choice, Espiritu Santo. Not many flags can pull off a pink bank, let alone one that takes up a third of the space. And to pair that with baby blue – that takes guts. “Trabalha e Confia” means Hard Work and Confidence. It takes a lot of confidence to fly this one over the provincial capital. The end result looks like a flag that could be hung outside a baby shower for fraternal twins. Fun fact: this is the only known flag that has a field of pink, and it represents a color found in the sunset in this tropical Brazilian state. Conflicting reports attribte the rose shade to the Virgin Mary’s dress and the feeling of joy.

Brazil (historic)

Really, Brazil? This one didn’t remind you of something? Hmmm. 13 stripes. They must stand for the original 13 colonies or colonias, maybe. Oh wait… And the stars on a  blue field in the upper left corner… God, I know I’ve seen that before, but where? At least they had the good sense to change it. I guess as a new nation state, you had a couple of things to worry about other than flag design. If there had been a Brazilian equivalent to Betsy Ross, she was a total fraud. Look how lazy she was with the stars.  And kind of a tramp, too I heard (the Carnivale costume… and all) But that’s neither here nor there.