History of Rio Grande do Sul

[2] In the first half of the 19th century, after many conflicts and treaties, when Portugal obtained definitive possession of the lands that today make up the state, expelled the Spanish, dismantled the reductions, and massacred or dispersed the Indians, a society with a Portuguese matrix was established and an economy based mainly on charque and wheat began, leading to a cultural flourishing in the biggest centers of the coast - Porto Alegre, Pelotas, and Rio Grande.

Even though there are many challenges to be overcome and great regional differences, in general, the state has improved its quality of life reaching indexes higher than the national average, has projected itself culturally throughout Brazil, and has begun a process of opening to other scenarios in the face of globalization, while it has started to pay more attention to its historical roots, its internal diversity, the minorities, and its environment.

Founder, with his father, Domingos de Brito Peixoto, of the Laguna settlement, Francisco took his adventures and discoveries into the territory [...] in search of gold or silver deposits, either going down to the South, to the great La Plata estuary, capturing cattle and horses, perusing in these ventures lands that, under the domination of the Indians and Jesuits, belonged in fact to the Castilian sovereignty.

In 1732, the first sesmarias (abandoned land belonging to Portugal and handed over for occupation) were granted,[8] and in 1737, a Portuguese military expedition, commanded by Brigadier José da Silva Pais, was charged with helping the colony, taking Montevideo and building a fort in Maldonado.

[3][9] The first settler families would arrive later that year, but the stretch between Rio Grande, Tramandaí and the fields of the Vacaria region, in the northeastern highlands, were also being settled independently, a situation made easier by the extension, by the tropeiros, of the Estrada Real Road from São Paulo to the Campos de Viamão.

[3][9][13] With the peace of Santo Ildefonso treaty, the granting of sesmarias to those who had distinguished themselves in the war increased, and this class of soldiers, now landowners, was the origin of the gaucho pastoral aristocracy, consolidating the estancia regime as one of the economic bases of the region, but also giving rise to a large number of abuses of power, as the land owners lacked sense of justice, law, and humanity.

In these meetings, the folklore of Rio Grande do Sul began to form, in the telling of causos (accounts of feats and extraordinary facts) around the fire, in the horse races, in the exchange of experiences about the countryside life, in the absorption and transformation of local indigenous myths.

They lived in bands on their own, eating meat and drinking mate and moonshine, dressed in simple clothing adapted to constant life on horseback, facing days of intense cold in the winters, having to sleep, as a rule, in the open air.

[3][4] In 1822, with the Independence of Brazil, the captaincy became a province, the first elected Assembly was constituted and received its first civilian governor, José Feliciano Fernandes Pinheiro, the author also of the first general history of the state, the Anais da Província de São Pedro.

[18]The year 1824 was marked by the beginning of German colonization in the state, an initiative of the imperial government to populate the south, which aimed to dignify the manual labor, form a middle class independent of the landowners, swell the forces of defense of the territory, and boost the supply of the cities.

The bulk of the contingent, however, headed to the region north of the capital, concentrating around the Sinos River, forming the initial nuclei of cities such as Novo Hamburgo and São Leopoldo, and clearing the surrounding woods to settle rural properties.

After the transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil in 1808, there were changes in the power relations between the government and the local rural-military elite that shook the old alliance that was in place during the time of the conquest of the Rio Grande territory, and increased competition between different sectors in search of closer ties to the monarch and the favors he dismissed.

Even so, the colonization as a whole prospered, brought the cultivation of potatoes, citrus, and tobacco, introduced beer, promoted industrialization, handicrafts, private education, and polyculture, and founded a series of other cities, such as Estrela, São Gabriel, Taquara, Teutônia, and Santa Cruz do Sul, which soon became the largest tobacco-producing centers.

[19] Despite the predictable difficulties of occupying a virgin region, and the limited government support to the settlers, the enterprise was successful, and until the end of the century, about 84 thousand Italians would arrive in the state, besides smaller groups of Jews, Poles, Austrians, and other ethnicities.

[25] According to Ester Gutierrez, "besides all the rudeness of the work and the treatment given to the slave population, the continuously reigning bad smell, the dirt and the presence of beasts and poisonous and pestilent animals, the internal space of the charque production accompanied the macabre, grim, fetid and pestiferous picture that dominated its environment.

The abolitionist campaign was gaining ground in the streets and Castilhos immediately took the lead in the movement, at the same time that he created a differentiated Republican Party, the Partido Republicano Rio-grandense (PRR), inspired by Positivism, whose communication medium was the influential newspaper A Federação.

He reorganized the tax system and finished the reform of the Judiciary started by Castilhos, encouraged production by immigrants and small industry, and supported improvements in municipal services by expanding water, electricity, and sewage networks, nationalized railroads, and the port of Rio Grande.

In view of these oppressive conditions, from very early on urban workers and rural settlers were forced to find guarantees and assistance on their own, through mutual aid associations and unions, which strengthened the class, giving it the opportunity for articulation and public expression.

[30][31][32] In a rapidly changing scenario, the old pastoral oligarchy, which had become enormously rich and ennobled during the empire, and still maintained at the end of the 19th century the monopoly of the most important means of production, faced with the growing concentration of commercial and industrial activities in the urban centers, found itself losing money, political space, and influence.

[3] The first big cultural events of the 20th century happened in 1901: the foundation of the Rio-Grandense Academy of Linguistics aggregating many journalists, poets, and writers, such as Caldas Júnior, Marcelo Gama, Alcides Maia, and Mário Totta, and the realization of another general exhibition in Porto Alegre, with three thousand exhibitors showing the most modern technologies and products that moved the economy.

[35] In music, the activities of the Club Haydn of Porto Alegre stood out, organizing many recitals promoting European and Brazilian authors, complementing the schedule at Theatro São Pedro, where stars such as Arthur Rubinstein and Magda Tagliaferro performed, and the first operas from Rio Grande do Sul, Carmela, by José de Araújo Viana, and Sandro, by Murillo Furtado, were staged.

Theatrical and opera companies circulated frequently in the countryside theaters, small vocal and instrumental ensembles of erudite repertoire already existed in several cities, and the consolidation of regionalist and popular musical expressions of the Hispanic-Portuguese, the blacks, and the descendants of immigrants in their colonies was noticeable.

In Rio Grande do Sul, the opposition found strength in José Antônio Flores da Cunha, the intervenor appointed by Vargas himself, and in intellectuals such as Dyonélio Machado, one of the local leaders of the left-wing National Liberation Alliance (ALN).

Between the end of the previous decade and the years preceding the coup in '64, avant-garde theater plays were staged, with polemic approaches that challenged the status quo; the plastic arts showed a realistic/expressionist feature, often of a social, regionalist, and pamphleteering nature, with artists such as Francisco Stockinger, Vasco Prado, Iberê Camargo, and members of the Bagé Group (active in the capital) and the Porto Alegre Engraving Club standing out.

He articulated decisive connections with national leaders and, on the afternoon of April 1, 1964, transferred the state government to Passo Fundo, in Operation Farroupilha ("Ragamuffin"), in order not to be deposed by the resistance that was being organized in Porto Alegre by the forces loyal to João Goulart.

At this time, the municipality of Porto Alegre instituted the Orçamento Participativo (Participatory Budget) program, to share with society the responsibility for decisions, soon to become an administrative model for other cities; the MERCOSUR was articulated, and given its strategic geographical location, the state assumed a prominent role.

The 2.3 billion reais he raised from the privatizations were not applied to direct economic development but were spent mainly on amortizing the public debt, and the lack of government incentives caused the industry to enter into crisis, bankrupting several small and medium-sized companies.

Without the means for major investments, Rigotto devoted himself to raising external resources to cover the debt, reduced government spending, and established alliances with the other southern governors, seeking to create strong lines of dialogue with the various sectors of society.

The main leaders of the protestatory activity of the time gathered there, people with different ideologies, who lived utopias transformed into lifestyles - such as punks, rockers, along with filmmakers, philosophers, and poets - which would result in the definition of the identity of an entire generation.

And like them, the Jews, the Poles, the blacks, and other minority groups have been revisiting their history leading to the rewriting of large portions of the official historiography of Rio Grande do Sul and, in the dialogue between such distinct cultures, to greater internal integration and the synthesis of new forms of expression and art.