Matias Cardoso is a municipality in the north of the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil.

[1] The municipality contains the 6,358 hectares (15,710 acres) Jaíba Biological Reserve, a fully protected conservation unit created in 1994.

The main agricultural crops were cotton, peanuts, corn, manioc, sorghum, sugarcane, and mamona—castor oil plant.

This municipality is extremely isolated from major population centers and suffers from drought and poor soils.

The date was chosen because it is the day of the patron saint of the municipal parish church, built in 1664.