The lower house of Brazil’s Congress, the Câmara dos Deputados, is a remarkable source for learning about communication, history, and the Portuguese language. The Câmara dos Deputados has the necessary employees, funding, and consciousness of its own significance to carry out ambitious efforts to catalog its documentary, aural, and visual history.

Its page dedicated to speeches and stenographers’ notes, Discursos e Notas Taquigráficas, is a searchable database of every speech given in the Câmara, dating to 1990. More recent speeches are available in HTML format. Older speeches are available via a link to the Diário da Câmara dos Deputados, the daily printed report of the Câmara’s proceedings. Speeches prior to 1990 are not searchable, but the archive of the Diário da Câmara dos Deputados contains PDF files of every issue of the Câmara’s proceedings since 1890.

Since 1970, the Câmara dos Deputados has meticulously recorded the audio of every speech given in the chamber, along with selected speeches dating back to the early 1950s. The Arquivo Sonoro of the Câmara provides global access to the recordings in digitized, searchable, downloadable format.

Since late 2013, the Câmara has also placed video recordings of sessions on its website. The footage is provided by TV Câmara (the Câmara’s equivalent of C-SPAN), which also provides live feeds of Câmara sessions and committee meetings on both its website and its YouTube channel.

All transcripts, audio recordings, and videos are in the public domain and may be reproduced freely, as long as appropriate attribution is provided.