[citation needed] The history of Embu began in 1554, with the arrival of a group of Jesuits of the aldeamento or settlement of Bohi, later M'Boy, halfway between the sea and the São Paulo hinterlands.

As the Jesuit missions in the interior of Brazil, the primary objective was to convert the native population to Roman Catholicism, in an attempt to use them as farm workers in the region.

The artistic vocation of the city started to project itself in 1937, when Cássio M'Boy, "santeiro" – sculptor of religious images – in Embu, gained first prize at the Exposition Internationel d'Arts Techniques du Paris.

Before that, Cássio had been the professor of some renowned artists and received illustrious representatives of the Modernismo movement of 1922, including Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, Oswald de Andrade, Menotti Del Picchia, Volpi and Yoshio Takaoka.

One of the top Nazi torturers, Josef Mengele was buried in the Nossa Senhora do Rosario cemetery in Embu under his false identity, Wolfgang Gerhard,[5] as the southern region of the city of São Paulo and its borders are known for a sizable German-Brazilian population.