Our goal is to better understand the evolution of the Earth's outer shell in northeast Brazil. We analyze the propagation properties (anisotropy) of distant seismic waves in order to look for subsurface, large-scale deformation structures. Results show that structures visible at the surface can be traced down to ~100  km depth, that the imprint of the opening of the Atlantic Ocean can be detected along the coast and that the continental interior is anomalous due to a complex deformation history.