Hundreds of thousands of people in southern Brazil voted last weekend to secede and form a new country, in a sign of citizens' anger about corruption and taxes. (Gustavo Roth/AFP/Getty Images)RIO DE JANEIRO — Hundreds of thousands of people in the south of Brazil have voted in an unofficial plebiscite to separate from South America’s biggest nation and form their own country, organizers of the ballot said. Organizers had said their target was a million voters — or 5 percent of those eligible to vote in the three states. The south of Brazil was colonized by immigrants from Italy, Portugal and Germany, and many take pride in a European sense of organization. The sweeping investigation into Petrobras corruption is based in Curitiba, capital of Paraná, one of the states that voted in the plebiscite.

Source: Washington Post October 05, 2016 20:26 UTC