Rio Grande do Sul

Rio Grande do Sul República do Rio Grande do Sul (Rio-Grandense Portuguese)
Flag Seal
Motto:  "Liberdade, Igualdade, Humanidade" "Freedom, Equality, Humanity"
Anthem:  "Hino Revolucionário Rio-Grandense" "Revolutionary Rio-Grandense Anthem"
Capital and largest city	Porto Alegre
Official languages	Rio-Grandense Portuguese
Recognised regional languages	Kaingang Charrua Rio-Grandense Spanish Guarani Hunsrik
Ethnic groups (2024)	60.6% White 16.97% Brown 15.89% Black 7.34% Indigenous 0.17% Asian
Demonym(s)	Rio-Grandense Rio-Grandian Gaucho
Government	Unitary parliamentary Republic
• President	Olívio Dutra
• Prime Minister	Edegar Pretto
Legislature	Assembly of the Republic
Independence from the Empire of Brazil
• Ragamuffin War	September 20th, 1835
• Declaration of Independence	September 11th, 1836
• Pampas Confederation	March 23th, 1848
• National Reconstruction Regime	September 11th, 1930
• First Rio-Grandense Republic	September 20th, 1934
• Insurrection of the Peoples	February 28th, 1953
• Socialist Republic of Rio Grande do Sul	March 10th, 1953
• Revolution of the Roses	July 12th, 1992
• Second Rio-Grandense Republic	November 10th, 1992
Area
• Total	340.668 km2 (131.533 sq mi)
• Water (%)	33.56
Population
• 2024 estimate	24,567,345
• Density	72.1/km2 (186.7/sq mi)
GDP (PPP)	2021 estimate
• Total	$1.048 trillion
• Per capita	$42,690
GDP (nominal)	2021 estimate
• Total	$691 billion
• Per capita	$28,130
Gini (2021)	33.6 medium
HDI (2021)	0.893 very high
Currency	Guarani (G$) (GUA)
Time zone	UTC -3
Date format	dd/mm/yyyy
Driving side	right
Calling code	+51
ISO 3166 code	RSG
Internet TLD	.rs

Rio Grande do Sul (Rio-Grandense Portuguese: República do Rio Grande do Sul or República Rio-Grandense, lit. 'Republic of Rio Grande do Sul' or 'Rio-Grandense Republic') is a country in South America. It shares borders with Brazil to the North, Argentina to the West (separated by the Uruguay River) and Uruguay to the South. It is a part of the Southern Cone region of South America. Rio Grande do Sul covers an area of 340.668 square kilometers and has a population of around 24 million people, of which about 12 million live in the metropolitan zones of either the capital of Porto Alegre or the city of Rio Grande.

The land of present-day Rio Grande do Sul has been inhabited by hunter-gatherers since 12,000 BCE. The predominant tribe before the arrival of Europeans was the Guarani people, but there were also other, smaller, tribes such as the Minuan, Caaguara, Kaingang or the Charruá people. Effective colonization of the entire territory of Rio Grande do Sul by Europeans was reasonably late, but the first colonial settlement of São Francisco do Sul was created in 1658.

In 1627, Spanish Jesuits created Jesuit missions near the Uruguay River, but were expelled by the Portuguese in 1680, when the Portuguese Crown decided to take over their domain, founding the Colony of Sacramento. In 1682, the Spanish Jesuits established the Seven Peoples of the Missions. The Portuguese arrived in 1737 with a military expedition by José da Silva Paes. The struggles for land ownership between the Portuguese and Spanish continued, and only ended in 1801, when the Gauchos themselves dominated the Seven Peoples, incorporating them into their territory. The Captaincy of São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul was created on September 19, 1807. On February 28, 1821, it became the Province of São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul, inside the emerging Empire of Brazil.

However, insatisfaction with the imperial government and it's taxes led the Gaucho oligarchical elite (the estancieros) to revolt, starting the Ragamuffin War on September 20th, 1835. Although the original intention of the rebels was never to separate the province from the Empire, a enraged and brutal Brazil forced them to double on the independence of Rio Grande do Sul as a independent republic, together with the Juliana Republic. As other nations such as Paraguay, Argentina and USA involved themselves in the war, the Brazilian troops ended up backing down and signing the Treaty of Poncho Verde on June 8th 1848, effectively recognising the Pampas Cofederation (Rio-Grandense Republic and Juliana Republic) and ending the war.

The rest of the history of Rio Grande do Sul has been turbulent throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries. Enslaved people rebelled in the Revolt of the Black Spearmen of 1850 against the betrayal of the newly independent Confederation, who promised abolition but never followed through. The Juliana Republic proclaimed independence from the Confederation in the Railway Conflict of 1890, being annexed back to the Confederation by the Treaty of Desterro of 1892. In 1930, a Military Triumvirate overthrew the ruling oligarchy and set the National Reconstruction Regime, a quasi-fascist, interventionist regime in practice, ending the Pampas Confederation and centralising the nation under the First Rio-Grandense Republic in 1934. By 1953, the regime of Getúlio Vargas was overthrown by the MP-12-1 guerilla, putting a socialist regime in place. The Socialist Republic of Rio Grande do Sul would last until 1992, where the Revolution of the Roses brought back liberal democracy.

Today, Rio Grande do Sul is a developed country, with a high-income advanced mixed economy (the only of its kind in South America), ranking 33rd in the Human Development Index. It has a prominent Technological Industry, being the headquarters for a phletora of enterprises and a high FDI. It ranks 6th for population in South America. The government is a Unitary Parliamentary Republic, administratively subdivided into 8 Departments, which is regarded as one of the most transparent and socially progressive governments of the continent, ranking low in perception of corruption, high in innovation, income equality, press freedom and digitalisation of services. Universal suffrage, abortion, cannabis and same-sex marriage have been legalised early in the country.

Etymology

The name of the nation originated from a series of cartographic errors and disagreements, when it was believed that Lagoa dos Patos was the mouth of the Rio Grande, which was already demonstrated on Dutch maps, decades before Portuguese colonization in the region . From what is known so far, the first cartographer from the Netherlands to record Lagoa dos Patos, still considered the Rio Grande, was Frederick de Wit, in his 1670 atlas. The first cartographic record made by a Dutchman to show the supposed river with a format close to what is known today from the aforementioned lagoon was Nikolaus Visscher, in 1698. Although he was not the first to mention the Patos natives who inhabited its banks and much of the coast of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, he was the one who associated the name with the lagoon. Around 1720, Azoreans from Laguna came to the São José do Norte region to look for the Cimarrón cattle coming from the missions, enabling the subsequent foundation of the city of Rio Grande, in the year 1737. From the name of the municipality, the name of the municipality also arose. name of the province of São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul, which would later become independent and give its name to the current country of Rio Grande do Sul.

History

Prehistory and initial European colonization

At the time of the Discovery of Brazil, the region that today forms Rio Grande do Sul was inhabited by the Minuan, Charrua and Caaguara natives, who lived around 12,000 BC. They were good potters and, when hunting, they used Boleadeiras, to this day one of the instruments of the gaucho pawn. These tribes lived for a long time without contact with the white colonizers. Disputes between Portugal and Spain over the limits of their possessions in America meant that the region was only occupied in the 17th century. Spanish Jesuit priests were the first to settle there.

The geographical peculiarities of the current nation of Rio Grande do Sul, divided into 11 different physiographic regions, influenced to delay the occupation of the land, to the east, by the European conqueror. Another negative factor was the Treaty of Tordesillas, of 1494, which divided sovereignty over discoveries between Portugal and Spain by an ideal meridian. In the case of Brazil, the meridian extended from the vicinity of the island of Marajó to the bay of Laguna, in Santa Catarina. Given the doubts that arose about the exact point where the agreed line should pass and the São Pedro river being located precisely in the area whose confrontation was being discussed, neither of those two nations rushed to occupy it, for fear of new diplomatic difficulties. However, at the beginning of the 17th century, Spain penetrated the left bank of the Uruguay River, through the intermediation of the Jesuits who, from Paraguay, established their reductions in various points, even reaching the surroundings of the future city of Porto Alegre and, in general, , lording it over the entire west of Rio Grande do Sul.

Next, the bandeirantes destroyed the province of Guairá, went down to the province of Tape, in the heart of the Rio Grande, and to the province of Uruguay, destroying the villages and imprisoning the natives, who they took as slaves to their farms. Antônio Raposo Tavares was one of the greatest leaders of these predatory expeditions. The villages were razed, their inhabitants killed or imprisoned, and the survivors fled with the Jesuits to the south, where they settled along the right bank of the Uruguay River. By taking catechesis, villages, resorts and herbal gardens to a wide range of the territory, between 1632 and 1634 the Jesuits established reductions in the upper Ibicuí (São Tomé, São Miguel, São José, São Cosme and São Damião). They expanded the penetration area, reached the Jacuí basin and established other reductions, including beyond the province of Tape (Santa Teresa, Santa Ana, São Joaquim, Natividade, Jesus Maria, São Cristóvão).

The victory achieved against the Paulistas in the battle of Mbororé, in 1641, was not enough to allow the reductions to be fixed. The exodus of indigenous populations — already started after the assault on Raposo Tavares' flag, in 1637 — intensified, with the transfer of the Jesuits and the natives to the right bank of the Uruguay River, in the fertile Mesopotamia of Paraná. Due to these events, the first phase of Jesuit civilization in the territory of current Rio Grande do Sul was concluded, with the abandonment of lands open to those who arrived first to occupy them, adventurers and colonizers. Only after 1680, with the founding of Colônia do Sacramento, on the upper bank of the River Plate, did the region become the object of political dispute between the Portuguese and Spanish.

Pressure from the bandeirantes did not put an end to the presence of the Jesuits on the eastern bank of the Uruguay River. The religious returned fifty years after the exodus, attracted by the economic availability of the region, especially cattle. With the return to the lost territory, the second phase of Jesuit penetration began, which in reality only ended with the War of 1801 — preceded by long and indecisive diplomatic actions —, which definitively incorporated the region into Rio Grande do Sul.

The second phase is seen in the history of the Seven Peoples of the Missions, with the starting point of 1687 (São Francisco de Borja, São Nicolau, São Luiz Gonzaga, São Miguel Arcanjo, São Lourenço Mártir, São João Batista, Santo Ângelo Custódio). The danger from São Paulo did not cease, although it became less threatening, with the concentration of Portuguese power on the coastal strip, of which Colônia do Sacramento would be the extreme point. Situated in lands nominally controlled by Spain, under the command of Buenos Aires, the Seven Peoples covered the extremes of the large herds of cattle, which were concentrated in the dairy farms — the Vacarias do Mar, which reached the extreme south of the current Rio Grande do Sul. South, penetrating Uruguayan territory, and Vacaria dos Pinhais, in the region still called Vacaria today, in the northeast of the country.

The Treaty of Tordesillas did not prevent the Portuguese crown from granting itself the territory that today comprises Rio Grande do Sul and the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. It was the Captaincy of El-Rei or province of El Rei and appears on a 1562 map with the name "d'el Rei Nosso Senhor". In 1676, the regent D. Pedro donated to Viscount de Asseca and João Correia de Sá two plots of land, from Laguna to the mouth of the River Plate. Still in 1676, the bishopric of Rio de Janeiro extended to the River Plate, probably in line with Portuguese claims, covering the entire region of Southern Brazil.

Since the beginning of Brazil's colonization, the lands of the southern region did not attract much interest from Portuguese colonizers, due to the absence of precious metals and their colder climate (since frosts made it difficult to cultivate sugar cane). The captaincies, not explored, reverted, in 1727, to the royal patrimony, with D. João V refusing to confirm them. From the middle of the 17th century, under official encouragement and command, Portuguese expansion to the south took the direction of the Atlantic coast or along the ocean margin, always with maritime support. In 1647, Paranaguá was founded, with the establishment, seven years later, of Curitiba, in a movement that would make it impossible, in the future, for an advance capable of separating São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro from the extreme south. In 1658, São Francisco already existed, as a support point, planted in the territory of the current department of Santa Catarina.

In 1736, an expedition led by José da Silva Pais arrived at the mouth of Lagoa dos Patos, which was mistaken for a large river. The Jesus-Maria-José fort was founded there. This fort, made of wattle and daub, was the origin of the settlement of Vila de Rio Grande (future city of Rio Grande). The Captaincy of Rio Grande de São Pedro was then created. The location was a strategic point for the defense of the territory, being halfway between Laguna and Colonia do Sacramento. From 1725 onwards, Royal Roads were built connecting São Paulo to the cattle pastures of Rio Grande, which made it possible for groups of drovers to colonize the Vacaria and Tramandaí fields. Leaving Viamão, other groups advanced through the valleys of the Taquari and Jacuí rivers.

From the 1740s, on the initiative of Alexandre de Gusmão, minister of King D. João V, Portugal began a colonization project in the south of Brazil, aiming to guarantee possession of the territory disputed by the Spanish. With this objective, immigration from Madeira Island and the Azores was used. From 1746 onwards, Azorean couples began to be sent to Rio Grande to guarantee possession of the territory. It was a new form of colonization that Alexandre advocated, through families that produced, without needing slaves. The first sixty couples founded Porto dos Casais, later Porto Alegre. A set of forts began to be created and around five thousand Azorean immigrants began to colonize the captaincy. The economic nature of the region was defined as a subsistence economy (linked to the national market, but isolated from exporting interests), based mainly on wheat production and Azorean colonization.

In 1763, the governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, Pedro de Cevallos, taking advantage of the War between Portugal and Spain, attacked and conquered half of the territory of the Captaincy of Rio Grande do Sul, together with its capital, the town of Rio Grande . In 1776 the town of Rio Grande was retaken by Portuguese colonists in the Spanish-Portuguese War of 1776-1777. On October 1, 1777, the Treaty of Santo Ildefonso ended the colonial war and gave Portugal definitive possession of the territory of Rio Grande do Sul, with the exception of the Missions that remained in Spanish possession. A few years later, in the War of 1801, the territory of the Seven Peoples of the Missions would finally be conquered by the Gauchos and annexed the Portuguese possessions through the Treaty of Badajoz.

The economic factor had great importance in the process of integration of colonial Rio Grande do Sul with the rest of Portuguese America. The constant needs for mules and meat, during the gold cycle, required imports from the extreme south, which encouraged the opening of new roads. Once the gold fever ended, trade continued, stimulated by the production of jerky, after Ceará reduced its exports, devastated by the drought of 1777. The period of predatory conquest of the territory ended and the resort was consolidated as a production center, complemented by charqueada, expanded by the introduction of slave labor. The cattle trader (mules, horses and cows), the drover, became rich and acquired social importance.

The subsidiary nature of the economy, increasingly relevant, created a differentiated production unit, linked to the national market, but isolated from exporting interests. The dominant groups in the country would not associate themselves with the demands of the extreme south, which were antagonistic to their objectives of cheap food for slaves. The group exporting products of European acceptance, always stimulated by the political center, in its exclusivism, would infuse Rio Grande do Sul society with an awareness of economic, social and political isolation, which the components of military training would, at certain times, make explosive . In 1807, when the captaincy was no longer subordinated to Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul society had already been defined, with small agriculture gradually dissolving in the expansion of the large rancher property, generated on the lavishly granted sesmarias. The campaign, with its pastoral centers, only found, with a different spirit, the urban centers and the evanescent agricultural groups, peaceful and located to the east, around Porto Alegre, later, with the small properties resulting from German colonization, which developed from 1824 onwards.

Brazilian rule, Ragamuffin War and independence

In the struggles over the dominance of Uruguay, which would result in the creation of the Cisplatina Province and its transformation into an independent country in 1828, the Rio Grande do Sul territory suffered a heavy loss of men and resources. The region of Missões Orientales, still poorly populated, served as a theater for incursions determined by José Gervásio Artigas, who would supply himself with horses and cattle. To support this unsuccessful campaign, Rio Grande mobilized all its human and material resources. Alongside the regular troops that the court sent to the south, local militiamen reinvigorated a new military layer, now closely linked to the estancia, with its reserves of the rural proletariat, the gaucho. Among the leaders, glorious names emerged, which would influence the future: Bento Gonçalves da Silva, José de Abreu, João de Deus Mena Barreto, José Antônio Correia da Câmara, Manuel Marques de Sousa.

In the wake of Brazilian independence, Brigadier João Carlos de Saldanha, later Duke of Saldanha, governed the captaincy as captain-general. In 1821 the provinces were created, on a provisional basis, by decree of the Lisbon courts, in which government boards subordinate to Portugal were to be elected, Saldanha was elected president. Parish voters, however, did not fully comply with the decree, considering the article that linked the government to Lisbon unwritten. The vice-president, Field Marshal João de Deus Mena Barreto, suspicious of Saldanha's Portuguese loyalty, created the conditions for the political blockade of the president, who in December 1822 withdrew to Rio de Janeiro, without articulating his defense of the union of kingdoms, with Portuguese hegemony. Following Fico, municipal councils consolidated nativist sentiment, making reaction impossible, with Mena Barreto already in government. In this action, the local militiaman, the estanciero, the urban bourgeoisie and the gaucho were based on the thin Portuguese military layer.

Rio Grande had expanded its population and wealth. In 1780, according to the first general census of the captaincy, the population was around 18,000 inhabitants, while, in 1814, it already reached around 71,000. The number of slaves increased greatly in the interregnum of these 34 years, from 5,000 to 20,000, initially concentrating on wheat production areas, affected by a shortage of arms. With the decline of wheat, the slave moved, in a small proportion, to the estancia, now transformed into a productive unit and no longer one of appropriation, and, on a large scale, to the charqueadas. The ranch needed little labor, although it is customary to exaggerate the small number of slaves employed there.

Over the course of the 19th century, charqueadas took on an increasing increase, to the point of dismantling the subsistence economy, which, shortly before, turned the estancia into an almost autonomous center, served by the farm. Grazing and beef jerky took over the economy and would impose the import of foodstuffs, if German colonization did not soon fill the gap. Commercial centers then prospered, with the ascendancy of Porto Alegre, which centralized the exchanges of eastern populations, of Azorean origin, encouraging redistribution centers as far as the Missions. Next to Pelotas, the province's maritime opening was planned, Rio Grande, the only port on the coast, although difficult to access. Land routes continued to be important, which took pastoral production to the north, via the Sorocaba fair, the main distribution center for São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Goiás. A large part of the progress was due to the consumption of military personnel, without the exception of arbitrary confiscations, not uncommon throughout the region. For a population of 110,000 inhabitants, at the beginning of the empire, the cattle herd amounted to 5,000,000 heads, with 1,000,000 horses. The Eastern Missions were populated with sesmarias granted, in large areas, to military personnel who moved during the war and to adventurers who came down from São Paulo, swollen by the exodus from Santa Catarina and Paraná, to graze on fertile land.

Once the political system of the empire was organized, the judge José Feliciano Fernandes Pinheiro, viscount of São Leopoldo, future senator of the empire, occupied the presidency of Rio Grande do Sul. As for the entire country, the period of short administrations, incapable of continuous work, began, with 54 effective presidents and 24 interim presidents, from Fernandes Pinheiro to Justo de Azambuja Rangel, in 1889. In the 19th century, the Kaingang natives who occupied The mountainous areas of the Southern Region of Brazil were violently displaced by the actions of indigenous killers called "bugreiros". These had been hired to open space for the installation, by the Brazilian imperial government, of European immigrants in the region, aiming at the "whitening" of the Brazilian population, until then mostly black and mixed race.

The dispute between the center and the province, dampened by the Cisplatine War, intensified in the first three decades of the century, until the Farroupilha Revolution of 1835. Producers of beef jerky and cattle derivatives and suppliers of mules, the Rio Grande do Sul residents did not have the means to to influence the center’s political-economic lines of conduct. Unable to compete with platinum production, which was better equipped and had lower costs, Rio Grande do Sul's economy was subject to instability, to the detriment of breeders and charqueadores. The tax burden on Rio Grande do Sul's production became suffocating. Tax revenues, carried to the center, reverted in a minimal portion to the south. On the other hand, the presidents of the province, agents of Rio de Janeiro, did not show solidarity with local interests.

As such, by 1835 the situation deteriorated drastically. A group of rebels led by provincial deputee and militiaman Bento Gonçalves da Silva attacked and captured most of the territory of the provincial capital of Porto Alegre and deposed the provincial president Antônio Rodrigues Fernandes Braga, appointing Marciano José Pereira Ribeiro as the new president. Braga exiled himself in the city of Rio Grande, then moving to the imperial capital of Rio de Janeiro to report the situation to the Court. The Regent of the Brazilian Empire, Diogo Antônio Feijó, appointed a new provincial president, José de Araújo Ribeiro, who was escorted by a large military brigade and pleaded office at the provisory capital of Rio Grande. Ribeiro would rebuild the provincial army, preparing it for a swift incursion against the rebels. In 1836, Bento Gonçalves is captured and arrested by government forces. This leads to the military leader of the rebels, Antônio de Souza Neto, to declare the independence of Rio Grande do Sul on September 11th 1836, declaring Bento Gonçalves as the president nominee. Gonçalves would then escape prison and return to the Rio-Grandense Republic to plead office in the same year.

The declaration of independence and the escape of Bento Gonçalves further contributed to the escalation of the conflict, enraging the imperial government, who decided to declare total war on the Ragamuffin rebels. On 3th December 1836, the Province of São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul has it's autonomy taken away, and is put under direct control from the military and the central government of the Empire of Brazil. Strict legislation is passed, with any suspected rebel being rounded up and executed, along with the mass burning of crops and other resources by government troops, increasing the popularity of the rebels.

Still in 1836, Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi and his wife, Anita Garibaldi, join the rebels as military advisers. Garibaldi's strategy revolved around building a navy for the rebels, building ships in rebel-controlled territory (the Rio-Grandense Republic did not have direct access to the sea), and transporting them by using hundreds of cattle. Along with Garibaldi's help, the Uruguayan government supplied the rebels after Bento Gonçalves pleaded for help. This resulted in the Republic winning the battles of Rio Grande and Pelotas in early and late 1837, declaring Rio Grande the Republic's capital in the same year. This further enraged the Empire of Brazil, who sent a massive naval brigade to the city of Porto Alegre, leveling the city in the Massacre of Porto Alegre of 1838.