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Southern Region, Brazil
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The Southern Region of Brazil is one of the five administrative regions of Brazil. It includes the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul and covers 576,300.8 km ², being the smallest portion of the country. It is a great tourist, economic and cultural pole.
It borders Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay as well as the Center-West Region, the Southeast Region and the Atlantic Ocean.
The region received large numbers of European immigrants during the 19th century, who have had a large influence on its demography and culture.
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Encyclopedia
The Southern Region of Brazil is one of the five administrative regions of Brazil. It includes the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul and covers 576,300.8 km ², being the smallest portion of the country. It is a great tourist, economic and cultural pole.
It borders Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay as well as the Center-West Region, the Southeast Region and the Atlantic Ocean.
The region received large numbers of European immigrants during the 19th century, who have had a large influence on its demography and culture. The main ethnic groups of Southern Brazil are Brazilians of Portuguese, German and Italian descent.
History
Pre-Columbian History
By the time the first European explorers arrived, all parts of the territory were inhabited by semi-nomadic Indian tribes, who subsisted on a combination of hunting, fishing, gathering, and agriculture.
Portuguese colonization
European colonization in Southern Brazil started with the arrival of Portuguese and Spanish Jesuits. They lived among the Indians and made them become Catholics. Colonists from São Paulo (Bandeirantes) arrived in the same period. For decades, the Portuguese and Spanish crowns disputed over this region. Due to this conflict, the King of Portugal encouraged the immigration of settlers from the Azores Islands to Southern Brazil. Between 1748 and 1756, six thousand Azoreans arrived. They composed over half of the population of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina by the late 18th century.
German settlement
Soon after Brazil's independence from Portugal (1822), the first Germans came to Brazil. Settlers from Germany were brought to work as small farmers, because there were many land holdings without workers. To attract the immigrants, the Brazilian government had promised large tracts of land, where they could settle with their families and colonize the region. The first immigrants arrived in 1824, settling in the city of São Leopoldo. In the next five decades, another 28 thousand Germans were brought to Rio Grande do Sul to work as small farmers in the countryside. By 1914, it is estimated that 50 thousand Germans had settled in this state.
In Santa Catarina, most German immigrants were not brought by the Brazilian government, but by private groups, such as the Hamburg Colonization Society, which were promoting the immigration of Europeans to the Americas. They created rural communities or colonies to these immigrants. Many of these German colonies had a great development and became large cities, such as Blumenau and Joinville, the largest city in Santa Catarina.
Considerable numbers of immigrants from Germany arrived at Paraná during the 1870s, most of them coming from Santa Catarina or Volga Germans from Russia.
War of Tatters
The War of Tatters was a Republican uprising that began in Southern Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina) in 1835. The rebels, led by generals Bento Gonçalves da Silva and Antônio de Souza Netto with the support of the Italian warrior Giuseppe Garibaldi, surrendered to imperial forces in 1845. This conflict occurred because in Rio Grande do Sul, the state's main product, the charque (bovine dried and salted meat), suffered the hard competition of charque from Uruguay and Argentina, which had free access to Brazilian market while the gauchos had to pay high taxes inside Brazil. The Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi joined the rebels in 1839. With his help the revolution spread through Santa Catarina, in the northern border of Rio Grande do Sul. After many conflicts, in 1845 the peace negotiations finished with the war.
Italian settlement
Italian immigrants started arriving in Brazil in 1875. They were mostly peasants from the Veneto, but also from Trento and Lombardia, Northern Italy. They were attracted to Southern Brazil to get their own lands and populate the South. Most of the immigrants worked as small farmers, mainly cultivating grapes in the Serra Gaúcha. Italian immigration to the region lasted until 1914, with a total of 100 thousand Italians settling in Rio Grande do Sul in this period and many others in Santa Catarina and Paraná.
In 1898, there were 300 thousand people of Italian origin in Rio Grande do Sul, 50 thousands in Santa Catarina and 30 thousands in Paraná. Nowadays, their Southern Brazilian descendants are 9.7 million, composing 35.9% of Southern Brazil's population.
Demographics
Racial groups
Curiosity
Vehicles: 10,014,081 (March/2007);
Telephones: 6,919,000 (April/2007);
Cities: 1,188 (2007).
Climate
Southern Brazil has subtropical or temperate climate. The annual average temperatures vary between 12°C (53.6°F) and 22°C (71.6°F). It can snow in the mountain ranges, although very little.
Characteristics
The region is highly urbanized (82%) and many cities are famous for their urban planning, like Curitiba and Maringá. It has a relatively high standard of living, with the highest Human Development Index of Brazil, 0.859 (2007), and the second highest per capita income of the country, $13.396, behind only the Southeast Region. The region also has a 94% literacy rate.
Languages
Portuguese, the official language of Brazil, is spoken by the entire population. In more isolated rural communities, dialects of German or Italian origins are also spoken. The predominant dialects are the Hunsrückisch and the Venetian (or Talian). There are Polish language and Ukrainian language speakers in Paraná as well
Palaeontological tourism
The Rio Grande do Sul has a great potential for palaeontological tourism, with many paleontological sites and museums in Paleorrota. There is a large area in the center of the state that belongs to the Triassic. Here lived Rhynchosaur, thecodonts, exaeretodons, Staurikosaurus, Guaibasaurus, Saturnalia tupiniquim, Sacisaurus, Unaysaurus and many others.
See also
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