Rio Grande do Sul

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Rio Grande do Sul (in Portuguese, Rio Grande do Sul) is one of the twenty-six states that, together with the federal district, make up the Federative Republic of Brazil. Its capital and most populated city is Porto Alegre.

It is located in the extreme south of the southern region of the country. Its limits are: the Uruguay River to the northwest, which separates it from the Argentine Republic and the state of Santa Catarina (respectively); the Atlantic Ocean to the east; and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay to the south, to the trifinio of the Brazilian Island, where its border with Argentina begins. With 281,737 km², it is the ninth largest state —behind Amazonas, Pará, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás and Maranhão— and with 11,228,000 inhabitants. in 2014, being the fifth most populous, behind São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia.

Rio Grande do Sul is also the fifth state with the highest HDI in Brazil. With approximately 11.3 million inhabitants, about 5.4% of the Brazilian population lives in Rio Grande do Sul. The state had a total PIB of R$480.5 billion in 2019, which represents 6.6% of Brazil's national GDP.

History

The current territory of Río Grande del Sur was, in colonial times, included within the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, constituting the center and center-north of the great Eastern Band of the early colonial times. It encompasses the former regions of the Río Grande to the east, the Misiones Orientales to the northwest, and territories of the Oriental Province (present-day Uruguay) to the southwest (from the Ibicuy river to the Cuareim river and the sources of the Negro river) and to the south (northwest coast of the Merín lagoon), annexed by Portugal (later Brazil) definitively after the Brazilian War and the Great War (as part of payment for debts contracted by Uruguay during it). The influence of time as a River Plate territory still draws attention in the current state (due to its traditions and customs), in addition to the strong influence of Spanish in the region that is preserved in the form of expressions in Spanish that are spoken throughout the state, and the use of portuñol or riverense portuñol.

In the middle of the XIX century, the province of Río Grande do Sul became an independent state under the name of Republic Riograndense.

Rio Grande (territory)

The name Río Grande originally referred to a region on the Atlantic coast of the Banda Oriental, in central-southern South America, belonging to Spain. Its limits were the Jesuit Missions to the west, the Ibiazá region to the north, and the Río de la Plata region of the Banda Oriental to the south.

Eastern Missions

The Jesuit ruins of "San Miguel Arcángel", declared since 1983 a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Misiones Orientales were the area of the Jesuit Missions located east of the Uruguay River, in the Banda Oriental. There were the so-called Seven Towns of the Missions: San Borja, San Nicolás, San Luis, San Lorenzo, San Miguel, San Juan and Santo Ángel. To the south was the Estancia de Yapeyú, whose limits reached the Negro River.

After the dissolution of said Jesuit Missions, the extreme south of the Eastern Missions became the Department of Yapeyú (including San Borja), and the north formed the Department of San Miguel (including the other six towns). These departments were under the orbit of the Buenos Aires government, but the influence of the Montevideo government reached as far as the Ibicuy river. Since then, the "Misiones Orientales" like the eastern territories to the north of the Ibicuy.

See also: Governance of Guaraní Missions

Portuguese-Brazilian penetration in Río Grande

Portugal had begun to enter the territory of the Banda Oriental through the region of Ibiazá (also known as Mbiazá or Ybiazá, the coastal area of the current Brazilian states of Paraná and Santa Catarina), to the southwest of the continental limit that marked the Line of Tordesillas and put an end to the Portuguese possessions in America. Already in 1534 the Portuguese king had awarded that territory to the Captaincy of Santana, reaching Laguna as the southern end. The Portuguese incursions in the Banda Oriental reached the coast of the Río de la Plata, founding in 1680 Colonia del Sacramento in front of the city of Buenos Aires.

In 1737 a Portuguese military expedition was sent with the purpose of guaranteeing possession of the rich Spanish lands located south of the Portuguese territory of Brazil. That year the Portuguese founded the city of Río Grande, at the mouth of the San Pedro River that connects the Laguna dos Patos with the ocean and in 1742 the town of Porto dos Casais, the current Porto, was founded. Cheerful.

In 1750, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Madrid. Since when Portugal had been tied to Spain, it had expanded her dominions in America beyond the Tordesillas line. This treaty intended to consecrate the territories that each kingdom actually had in its power, as a way of appeasing the parties. Thus, Spain had to renounce most of the Banda Oriental (Ibiazá, the Eastern Missions and Río Grande del Sur) and in return would receive Colonia del Sacramento and recognition of its occupied territories in Asia.

But on the one hand, the Portuguese did not intend to renounce Colonia del Sacramento and on the other, the Guarani confronted the Portuguese power. This would result in the signing of a new treaty in 1761 that restored the Eastern Missions to Spain, although it did not modify the situation of Río Grande.

Spain's late reaction

Spain decided to improve its administration in the southern zone of America by dividing the Viceroyalty of Peru and creating in 1776 the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. This included the territories of present-day Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay, plus the northern part of Chile and part of southern Brazil (western Rio Grande do Sul and southern Mato Grosso do Sul).

Pedro de Cevallos was his first viceroy, and when he was appointed he received the order to stop the Lusitanian expansion. At the beginning of 1777, Cevallos and his men attacked and recovered the island of Santa Catarina, off the coast of Ibiazá without firing a single shot, because it was abandoned by the Portuguese squadron. On April 21 they arrived in Montevideo, from where they went to Colonia del Sacramento, conquering it. Then they also took the fortress of Santa Teresa in the current Uruguayan department of Rocha and advanced on the town of Río Grande. It was then that they received news of a peace treaty signed between Spain and Portugal that forced them to withdraw.

Treaty of San Ildefonso

As established in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, signed in October 1777 between Spain and Portugal, the latter abandoned Colonia del Sacramento in exchange for definitive possession of Río Grande. The limit of Río Grande with the Spanish possessions was established from the mouth of the Pepirí River (also called Pepirí-Guazú) in the extreme northwest, continuing from there until reaching the sinuous mountain line that divides the La Plata basin from the the Laguna de los Patos and which reaches the headwaters of the Río Negro in the south and from there to the Laguna Merín, continuing along its coasts to its southern point, and from there, to the mouth of the Chuy stream in the Atlantic to the southeast.

But in 1801 the people of Rio Grande do Sul invaded the seven towns of the Missions, de facto incorporating the Eastern Missions into their territory. In 1807, before the transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil, the Portuguese gave their new territory of Río Grande the category of “captaincy”, heavily militarizing it, thus forming the Captaincy of San Pedro del Río Grande from the south.

Resistance of the Eastern Band

In 1811 José Gervasio Artigas, maximum leader of the Orientales, liberated from Spanish power the region of the River Plate of the Banda Oriental, the only one that kept this name since it had been freed from the Portuguese occupation. In 1813 it was renamed the Eastern Province within the Federal League that Artigas forged and led. Artigas also planned the reconquest of the Eastern Missions, but that was a dream that he could not materialize.

In 1816 Portuguese forces invaded the Eastern Province and in 1820 Artigas was finally defeated and went into exile in Paraguay. In 1821 Portugal officially annexed the eastern territory, naming it Cisplatina Province and uniting it with Brazil, to which it remained tied after the country's independence.

In 1825, eastern patriots and other adherents to the cause (the Thirty-Three Orientals), crossed from Buenos Aires to the eastern coast to begin the Liberation Crusade for the territory and on August 25 in the Florida Congress proclaimed the Law of Independence, the Law of Union (by virtue of the specified independence, the Eastern Province met with the other provinces of La Plata) and the Law of Pavilion. After the Eastern Province was accepted by the Congress in Buenos Aires, Brazil - then independent from Portugal - declared war on the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, breaking out the war known as the Brazilian War - or Guerra da Cisplatina for the Brazilians– (v: Battle of Ituzaingó).

The Brazilian War and its repercussions

The Brazilian War would take place for about three years. Despite not being able to subdue the people of the River Plate, imperial Brazil was not willing to put aside its claims that its territory reach the Río de la Plata, which closed the doors to an agreed end to the confrontation. On April 21, 1828, the oriental Fructuoso Rivera (who was the first president of the future independent Uruguay), crossed the Ibicuy with an army of five hundred men, to which indigenous missionaries would join, and thus reconquered the Missions in just a few days. Orientals.

This dramatic reversal of the war situation ended up forcing Emperor Pedro I of Brazil to accept peace talks. But the discontent of the Orientals over the return to centralism by Buenos Aires and the British interests in trade in the area would, however, end up undermining the successes of the people of the River Plate and the final result would be the independence of the Oriental Province. The Preliminary Peace Convention of 1828 would end up consoling Brazil, in any case, by establishing that the Eastern Province would definitively lose the Eastern Missions in favor of that country. In 1852, after the internal divisions generated among the Uruguayans and fostered by Argentines on one side and Brazilians on the other that led to the Great War, the Defense Government established in Montevideo signed five agreements with Brazil, including the resignation to the territory between Ibicuy and Cuareim, also losing the sources of the Río Negro and control over the Laguna Merín.

Internal instabilities with international connections

During the 19th century, Río Grande do Sul was the scene of different federalist revolts and participated in conflicts with Argentina and Uruguay. The War of the Rags against the Empire of Brazil developed for ten years, giving rise to the Republic of Rio Grande do Sul (1835-1845). After the crushing of the Republic of Rio Grande do Sul and the reincorporation of the territory into the Empire of Brazil, the area of Rio Grande do Sul was used as a catapult for the military campaigns of 1852 against the Uruguayan government of Manuel Oribe and immediately afterwards against the governor of Buenos Aires Juan Manuel de Rosas, supporting Justo José de Urquiza, governor of Entre Ríos, later the then province of Río Grande served as one of the Brazilian bases at the beginning of the Paraguayan War (1864-1870).

Local political disputes increased with the beginning of the Republic and only in the national government of Getúlio Vargas from Rio Grande do Sul (1930) was the state pacified.

The rule of criminal factions

Since 1990, the phenomenon of urban violence has intensified. There are currently at least seven criminal factions that dominate the region.

The largest of these is Os Manos founded by the owners and employees of the RBS Group and state politicians.

The influence of the group is demonstrated by the affiliation of three state governors, a former justice minister, federal supreme court minister, judges, broadcasters, sports commentators, businessmen, among other local public figures.

From Rio Grande to Rio Grande do Sul

The current name of Rio Grande do Sul (Rio Grande do Sul) was given to differentiate this state from another "Rio Grande" located in the Brazilian northeast.

Culture

Feast of grapes in Caxias do Sul.

Typical dance in a CTG (Gasps Tradition Center)

A typical meal of Rio Grande do Sul with wine, bread, cheese, pasta with beef and salami.

Chimarrão is a traditional drink that you get by submersing the dried leaves of the species of Ilex acebo paraguariensis in hot water.

Rio Grande do Sul is known as one of the richest cultural territories in Brazil. The culture of the state is eminently from the River Plate, since gaucho customs have existed in this region since the period before the "division" of the Banda Oriental between Spanish and Portuguese. The usual clothing of the gauchos such as panties, boots, hat and poncho are widely used by the peasants in their daily work. In the past, the chiripá and boleadoras were also used for such purposes. The traditional culture of the gaucho is cultivated in the cities through the Centers of Gaucho Traditions (CTGs), where dances and gaucho culture in general are taught to young people. Rio Grande do Sul commemorates the Farroupilha Revolution in the week of September 20, being the most important state holiday, which celebrates the courage and audacity of Rio Grande do Sul gaúchos in their struggles against the centralizing power of Brazil. On this date there are parades with knights and in some cities there are simulated fights and intercourse in the manner of the XIX century. The population actively participates in the demonstrations. The symbols of the Rio Grande do Sul Republic are still present on the Rio Grande do Sul flag, as well as in its republican anthem, which is sung by soccer lovers before the start of the matches of Sport Club Internacional and Grêmio Foot-Ball Porto Alegrense, the two teams more important. Many Río de la Plata rhythms such as the chamamé, the milonga, the polka, the guarania, and the chamarrita can be heard on radio stations specialized or not in gaucho music.

In the 19th century, European immigrants settled in Rio Grande do Sul. The Germans settled along the Río de las Campanas from 1824, creating agricultural colonies based on a very favorable land distribution policy that lasted until 1850, which turned them into small landowners. After that date, the distribution of land Land in Brazil has become more restricted and German settlers began expanding in search of new lands to places beyond, bringing their culture from Germany through the state. The mountainous region was colonized by immigrants from Italy, they began to settle in the region from 1875. The offer of land was more disputed, because most of the land was already occupied by the gauchos or by German settlers. The Italians brought their customs and introduced viticulture to the region, which today is the basis of the economy of several municipalities. Germans and Italians adopted a large part of the gaucho lifestyle, although they also maintained their traditions.

The penetration of the mass popular culture of the central states began with the rise of mass media such as radio and television from the middle of the century XX. Since then, samba, sertanejo and other typical rhythms have spread, as well as rock, electronic music and others.

Division

The state is divided by geographic regions:

Central-West Region
Centre-Oriental Region
Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre
Northern region
Northwest region
Southeast Region
Southwest region

Geography

The city of Gramado in Rio Grande del Sur.

Itaimbezinho Canyon.

The most important cities in the state are: Porto Alegre, Caxias do Sul, Pelotas, Canoas, Río Grande, Santa María, Novo Hamburgo and Passo Fundo. The relief is made up of an extensive plain, dominated to the north by a high plateau. It has an area of 282,062 km², which in terms of extension is similar to Ecuador.

The hydrography of Rio Grande do Sul can be classified into three large regions: The Uruguay River Basin, whose main tributary is the Uruguay River; the Guaíba Basin (where the tributaries flow into the Guaíba River); and the Litoral Basin (whose waters flow into the Laguna de los Patos, the Laguna Merín or simply the Atlantic Ocean). Among its main rivers are: Uruguay, Taquarí, Ijuí, Yacuy, Ibicuy, Pelotas, Camacuã and the dos Sinos river.

Climate

Due to its latitude, Rio Grande do Sul is the Brazilian state with the lowest thermal values in the entire country, being the only area that perceives a temperate climate. San José de los Ausentes and Buen Jesús stand out as the cities with the lowest temperatures, being able to drop to -8 °C and even less in winter, although on very rare occasions.

Although much of the state lies within the south temperate zone, the climate is predominantly humid subtropical (Cfa, according to the Köppen climate classification). The climate is subtropical altiplano (Cfb) in the highest areas.

There are four relatively well-defined seasons, and precipitation is well distributed throughout the year, but occasional droughts can occur. The winter months, from June to September, are characterized by heavy rains and by a cold wind to the southwest, called Minuano, which sometimes manages to lower the temperature to below zero °C, especially in mountain municipalities, where they can snowfalls occur.

The lowest temperature recorded in the state was -9.8 °C (14 °F) in Buen Jesús on August 1, 1955. In the summer, the temperature rises to 37 °C (99 °F), and heat-related injuries or health problems are not uncommon.

Demographics

Porto Alegre, state capital, at night.

Rio Grande do Sul is one of the most Europeanized states in Brazil, and its population comes mostly from 19th century European immigration and colonization XIX. The first immigrants were Spaniards and Creoles from the Banda Oriental who, out of their own interest, ventured into those lands (Spain never formally established settlers in the territory of present-day Rio Grande do Sul). After the capture of the regions of Río Grande and the Eastern Missions by Portugal, the Luso-Brazilians began to increase. Already in independent Brazil, the colonization of Rio Grande do Sul was carried out by the Portuguese, the Spanish, Italians and Germans. But in addition, the state received the arrival of Polish, Irish, Swiss, Austrian, French, English, Russian, Dutch, Jewish, Lebanese, Ukrainian, Turkish, Lithuanian, American, Japanese, Argentine, Uruguayan, Chinese, Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian immigrants among others.

Ethnic groups

The last PNAD (National Survey by Household Sample) counted 8,776,000 white people (80.80%), 1,495,000 brown (multiracial) people (13.77%), 529,000 black people (4.87%), 43,000 Amerindian people (0.40%), 11,000 Asian people (0.10%).

People of Portuguese descent - the vast majority from the Azores - predominate in the coastal region. The southwest, on the other hand, was originally populated by Pampean Indians. Like the other gauchos of the Cuenca del Plata, the population there was the result of mixing Spanish and Portuguese men with Amerindian women of possibly predominant ancestry. Spanish and also a significant African contribution, giving rise to a population that is 81.20% white.

Minority languages

Municipalities where the talian is co-official in Rio Grande del Sur.

In addition to the Portuguese language, languages such as caingangue or mbyá-guaraní are spoken in Río Grande, among the few remaining indigenous people, located in indigenous reserves protected by the government.

A considerable part of the gaucho people (generally the descendants of German and Italian immigrants, among others) also speak the following languages:

Riograndenser Hunsrückisch (a regional language of South America spoken in Rio Grande for almost two centuries by the majority of German-Gauchos), also known as German Hunsrückisch (dialect of the region of Hunsrück / Simmern, Germany). Today the number of speakers is about 3,000000 people.

Plautdietsch or Plattdütsch, which is a cross between the dialects of bas-German in a single language. It is spoken in parts of the Netherlands, in southern Denmark, in northern Germany, and in north-west Poland, with its linguistic existence officially recognized by the European Union. It is also the dialect spoken in several regions of Rio Grande, in the small town of Doña Otilia, located in Roque González.

Platdeutsch, term used in Germany to distinguish Hochdeutsch (formal or normative German) of the dialects, like all those mentioned under the name "Plattdeutsch". The Plattdeutsch or Lower German comes from northern Germany.

Talian, gaucha version of véneto, spoken mainly in the region of Caxias, Bento Gonçalves, and other cities and towns in the Italian region of Rio Grande.

Spanishconstitutionally recognized, it is quite spoken in the border regions of Rio Grande with Argentina and Uruguay. Also used is "portuñol".

To a considerably lesser extent, there are several other language groups and dialects in the Rio Grande, such as Polish, Lithuanian, Arabic, and Yiddish.

Economy

The economy of the state is based on agriculture (soybean, wheat, rice, and corn, among others), livestock, and industry (leather and footwear, food, textile, lumber, metallurgical, and chemical). It is necessary to highlight the emergence of important technological poles in the state in the 1990s and the beginning of the XXI century, in the petrochemical areas and information technology. Industrialization in the Rio Grande do Sul is increasing its participation in the Brazilian GDP, bringing investment, labor and infrastructure to the state. Currently, Rio Grande do Sul is in fourth place on the list of the richest states in Brazil.

Agriculture

Vineyard in Rio Grande do Sul

Tobacco in Rio Grande do Sul

Soybean planning in Novo Barreiro.

Rice cultivation in Mariana Pimentel.

In agriculture, the state stands out in the production of soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, tobacco, grapes, apples, cassava, and yerba mate, as well as producing oats, barley, oranges, peach, figs, tangerines, persimmons, and strawberry.

In 2020, the Southern Region produced 32% of the national total of cereals, vegetables and oilseeds. There were 77.2 million tons, the second place in Brazil, losing only in the Center-West. Rio Grande do Sul (14.3%) was the third largest producer in the country.

Rio Grande do Sul is the largest rice producer in the country, with 70.5% of Brazil's production, close to 7.3 million tons in 2020.

Rio Grande do Sul is the largest producer of tobacco in Brazil, and is the largest exporter in the world. Brazil is the world's second largest producer and leader in tobacco exports since the 1990s, with 98% of Brazilian production in the Southern Region.

Rio Grande do Sul is responsible for 90% of the national grape production, and produces 90% of the wine produced in the country, 85% of the sparkling wine and 90% of the grape juice, mainly in the area from Caxias do Sul and its surroundings: 664.2 thousand tons in 2018.

In soybeans, Rio Grande do Sul is the third largest producer in the country, with around 16% of the national production. It produced 19.3 million tons. In 2017, it was also the third largest producer of corn.

Rio Grande do Sul is also the largest national producer of wheat, with 2.3 million tons in 2019.

The South Region is also the largest producer of oats in Brazil. In 2019, national production was close to 800 thousand tons, almost all of it made in the South (Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul).

The three southern states of the country are responsible for 95% of the national apple production, and Santa Catarina appears at the top of the production list, competing with Rio Grande do Sul. Rio Grande do Sul harvests 45 % of Brazilian apples and is the largest exporter of apples in the country. The region near Vacaria is the highlight: it concentrates 88% of state production and 37% of national production.

In cassava production, Brazil produced a total of 17.6 million tons in 2018. The state was the fourth largest producer in the country, with almost 1 million tons.

As for orange, Rio Grande do Sul was the fifth largest producer in Brazil in 2018, with a total of 367 thousand tons.

Rio Grande do Sul is the largest producer of peaches in Brazil, with half the volume harvested in Brazil in 2018. It is also the largest producer of figs in the country, according to 2018 data. In 2018, Rio Grande do Sul was the third largest mandarin producer in Brazil. Rio Grande do Sul is also responsible for 19% of persimmon production, being the second largest national producer. In 2019, in Brazil, there was a total production area of around 4 thousand hectares of strawberries. Rio Grande do Sul was the third largest producer.

In 2019, Brazil produced around 900 thousand tons of yerba mate annually. Paraná is the largest producer in volume and Rio Grande do Sul in plantation areas (and where the sector is more industrialized). According to data from 2017, Paraná harvested 301,000 tons of yerba mate by extractive method, while Rio Grande do Sul harvested 17,000 tons. On the other hand, while the gauchos harvested 302 thousand tons of planted grass, the Paraná harvested 237 thousand tons with this method. The productive potential of yerba mate is still little explored in Brazil, with a good part of the harvest carried out by the extractive system and with low levels of productivity. However, many new producers are adopting more professional and efficient production systems, with technical management acumen and globalized market vision. This tends to increase Brazil's export of this product.

Won

Expointer in Esteio is considered the largest cattle fair in Latin America.

In 2018, the state's cattle herd had 12.5 million head, seventh in the country, 6.5% of the cattle herd in Brazil.

In 2019, Rio Grande do Sul produced a total of 4.5 billion liters of milk, making it the third largest producer in the country, with 13.0% of the country's total.

In sheep farming, in 2017, the Southern Region was the second largest in the country, with 4.2 million heads. Rio Grande do Sul has 94% of the country's wool production.

In pork, the 3 southern states are the largest producers in the country. Brazil had 41.1 million head in 2017. Rio Grande do Sul (14.6%) is the third largest producer.

Amethyst do Sul

The Brazilian poultry flock, in 2018, was of the order of 1,500 million heads. In 2017, the main poultry producing states in Brazil were Paraná (25.3%), São Paulo (14.0%) and Rio Grande do Sul (11.0%). In terms of chicken, in 2017 there were 242.8 million heads in the country. Among the states that were the largest producers, São Paulo led with 21.9%, followed by Paraná (10.1%) and Rio Grande do Sul (8.8%). In egg production, the state ranks fifth in Brazil, with 8% of national production. There were 354 million dozen in 2018.

The southern region was the main honey producer in the country in 2017, representing 39.7% of the national total. Rio Grande do Sul was the largest producer in the country, with 15.2%.

Mining

In terms of mining, the state is a major producer of precious stones. Brazil is the world's largest producer of amethyst and agate, and Rio Grande do Sul is the country's largest producer. Agate has been locally mined since 1830. The largest producer of amethyst in Brazil is the city of Ametista do Sul. This stone was very rare and expensive all over the world, until the discovery of large deposits in Brazil, which caused a considerable drop in its value.

Industry

Shoes Beira Rio, in Mato Leitão. One of the biggest shoe manufacturers in the country.

Neugebauer headquarters in Arroio do Meio.

Marcopolo S.A. is a worldwide bus and coach manufacturer based in Caxias do Sul.

Gerdau plant in Charqueadas.

About industry, Rio Grande do Sul had an industrial GDP of R $ 82.1 billion in 2017, equivalent to 6.9% of the national industry. It employs 762,045 workers in the industry. The main industrial sectors are: construction (18.2%), food (15.4%), public services of industrial services, such as electricity and water (9.8%), chemical products (6.8%) and machinery and team (6.6%). These 5 sectors concentrate 56.8% of the state's industry.

In the automotive sector, the state has a GM plant.

The leather footwear sector (Footwear Industry) stands out particularly in Novo Hamburgo, Sapiranga and Campo Bom, and in practically all the other municipalities of Vale dos Sinos. In 2019, Brazil produced 972 million pairs. Exports were around 10%, reaching almost 125 million pairs. Brazil is in fourth position among world producers, behind China (which produces more than ten billion pairs), India and Vietnam, and in 11th place among the largest exporters. The largest production hub in Brazil is located here. The Brazilian state that exports the product the most is Rio Grande do Sul: in 2019 it exported US$448.35 million. Most of the product goes to the United States, Argentina and France. Domestic consumption absorbs a large part of production. The state has created or created some of the most important factories in Brazil in the sector.

In the Food Industry, in 2019, Brazil was the second largest exporter of processed foods in the world, with a value of U$34.1 billion in exports. Revenues from the Brazilian food and beverage industry in 2019 were R$699.9 billion, 9.7% of the country's Gross Domestic Product. In 2015, the industrial food and beverage sector in Brazil comprised 34,800 companies (not counting bakeries), the vast majority of which were small. These companies employed more than 1,600,000 workers, making the food and beverage industry the largest employer in the manufacturing industry. There are around 570 large companies in Brazil, which concentrate a good part of the total income of the industry. Rio Grande do Sul created food companies of national importance such as the Neugebauer chocolate factory; Vinícola Aurora and Vinícola Salton, two of the largest wineries in the country. and Camil Alimentos, owner of the Açúcar União brand (the most famous sugar brand in the country), Arroz Carretero (one of the most famous rice brands in Brazil), among others.

The mechanical and metallurgical industry also reaches considerable expression, especially in Porto Alegre, Novo Hamburgo, São Leopoldo and Canoas, as well as Gravataí, Sapucaia do Sul, Esteio and Sapiranga, which have large companies in the sector and also belong to to the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre. These centers are joined by São Jerônimo, which houses the Charqueadas steel plant. The Aços Finos Piratini steel mill is located in Charqueadas, which belongs to Gerdau. It is mainly oriented to serve the automotive industry.

In the metallurgical business, the state has one of the most famous companies in the country, Tramontina, originally from Rio Grande do Sul and famous manufacturer of knives, pans, shovels and various utensils, which has more than 8,500 employees and 10 units of manufacture. Other famous companies in the state are Marcopolo, a manufacturer of bus bodies, which had a market value of R$2.782 billion in 2015, and Randon, a group of 9 companies specialized in transportation solutions, which brings together manufacturers of vehicles, auto parts and road equipment: employs around 11,000 people and registered gross sales in 2017 of R $ 4.2 billion.

Another industrial area is the so-called region of ancient colonization, in which the municipalities of Caxias do Sul, Garibaldi, Bento Gonçalves, Flores da Cunha, Farroupilha and Santa Cruz do Sul are integrated. The manufacturing activity is marked by the production of wine and the processing of agro-pastoral products, such as leather, butter, corn, wheat and tobacco;

In the rest of the state there are several scattered industrial centers, all linked to the processing of agro-pastoral raw materials. In this group, Erechim, Passo Fundo, Santa María, Santana do Livramento, Rosário do Sul, Pelotas, Río Grande and Bagé stand out.

Tourism

Guarita beach in Torres.

Gramado.

Enoturismo en Bento Gonçalves.

Snow by Caxias do Sul.

High level tourism is very strong in the German cities of Gramado (fourth most visited city in the country in terms of internal tourism) and in neighboring Canela; the cold climate, the gastronomy and numerous leisure facilities are some of its attractions for domestic tourism. Tourism is also important in the state's wine regions, mainly Caxias do Sul and Bento Gonçalves. The state is also home to historic São Miguel das Missões, the ruins of an 18th century century Jesuit mission. The state of Rio Grande do Sul and its cities have developed a series of scenic routes to attract tourists. The Romantic Route is a popular tourist route that shows the diversity of Germanic culture in the mountainous regions of the state known as Serra Gaúcha. You can visit the Italian colonies of the state along Caminhos da Colônia, visit the wine country along the Wine and Grape Route, and visit a subsection of the Romantic Road called the Hydrangea Region, a region full of hydrangeas blue every spring.

The Vale do Paranhana, in municipalities such as Igrejinha, Parobé, Taquara, Riozinho, Rolante and Três Coroas, offers open-air activities from walks to extreme activities in the middle of the Atlantic Forest, such as canoeing in the rivers.

The gaucho coast also has some popular beach resorts, such as Torres, Capão da Canoa and Terra de Areia.

Infrastructure

Roads

BR-290 near Porto Alegre, with 3 lanes in every sense. Tram known as Freeway

In June 2022, Rio Grande do Sul had 153,960 km of roads (under national, state or municipal jurisdiction), of which 13,056 km were paved, and of these, 638 km were duplicate roads. The main highways are: BR-101, BR-116, BR-153, BR-158, BR-163, BR-285, BR-287, BR-290, BR-293, BR-386, BR-392 and BR-471. After decades of little investment by successive governments of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, it currently has a deficient road network and one of the worst in the southern half of the country: in 2020, there were still 54 cities without paved access (São Paulo At the same time, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina and Mato Grosso do Sul had 100% of the cities with paved access, Paraná and Minas Gerais had almost 100%. The State also has few duplicate highways, most on the outskirts of the capital Porto Alegre, most of which belong to the Federal Government, despite the large number of state highways, the State Government did little in this field. the State carried out an economic and financial recovery plan and launched a specific program aimed at recovering and evolving the state's road network This year, 62 municipalities still did not have access to asphalt: the project was to arrive in 202 3 with 22 municipalities without access. The highway concessions held by Rio Grande do Sul, such as BR-287 and BR-386, carried out at the same time, aim to double the portions of these highways granted by 2035. Currently, 211 km of the highway are being doubled. BR-116 between Guaíba and Pelotas, and in 2021 there were already 131 km doubled.

Ports

Puerto de Rio Grande.

The Port of Rio Grande is of great importance for Mercosur, and also the main point of multimodality in the state, causing part of the road and rail system to be concentrated in the Port of Rio Grande. The main ports are: Port of Rio Grande, Port of Porto Alegre, Port of Pelotas and Port of Estrela. The port terminals of Rio Grande, Porto Alegre and Pelotas handled, in 2021, 47.6 million tons of cargo, 45.18 million just in the Port of Rio Grande.

International airports

Porto Alegre

Dawn at Salgado Filho International Airport.

Caxias do Sul Airport.

Autopista BR-116 in Ivoti.

With 37.6 thousand square meters of built area and four levels, the passenger terminal of the Salgado Filho International Airport can receive 28 large planes simultaneously. The terminal has 32 check-in counters, ten boarding bridges, nine elevators and ten escalators. It has a fully automated aircraft movement control center and the main spaces are air-conditioned. The platform, lined with pre-stressed concrete, can serve jumbo jets such as the Boeing 747-400. The garage structure has eight levels, 44,000 square meters and 1,440 parking spaces. Another terminal, with 15,000 square meters and a capacity for 1.5 million passengers a year, serves general, executive and third level aviation (conventional piston and turboprop aircraft). Porto Alegre airport was the first managed by Infraero to have integrated check-in. This service offers flexibility in the use of terminal facilities and facilities, allowing carriers to access their own data centers via shared-use computers from any position at the check-in counter. This makes it much easier to allocate counter space based on fluctuations in demand, thereby reducing idle space. The Aeroshopping area – commerce and leisure center – operates 24 hours a day with shops, services, a food court, as well as a triplex cinema, the first to be installed in a Brazilian airport. Salgado Filho International Airport also has an air cargo terminal, built in 1974, with an area of 9,500 thousand square meters and the capacity to handle 1,500 tons of export cargo and 900 tons of imports each month. The average daily movement (arrivals and departures) is 174 aircraft, on scheduled routes that directly or indirectly connect Porto Alegre with all the other large cities in the country, as well as with smaller cities in the interior of the states of the Southern Region and Sao Paulo. There are also international flights with direct connections to cities in the Southern Cone.

Balls

Pelotas International Airport is commonly used by the Brazilian Air Force as the last stopover in Brazil on its flights to the Brazilian Antarctic Base.

Bage

The Comandante Gustavo Kraemer Airport opened its doors on July 5, 1946. This airport became managed by Infraero on October 27, 1980. It is located on the rural outskirts of Bagé, 60 km from the border with Uruguay and 380 km (236 mi) from Porto Alegre. Comandante Gustavo Kraemer Airport does not operate with regular commercial flights. There are two daily flights that carry bank bags, as well as air taxi and executive jet services. Most of the airport's users are businessmen from central Brazil who have interests in the region in English and Arabian thoroughbred horse breeding, cattle ranching, fruit growing, winemaking, wood pulp, and power generation.

Uruguayan

Located on the border with Argentina (across the Uruguay River from the Argentine city of Paso de los Libres), Uruguaiana is considered the main inland port in Latin America, thanks to its strategic position with the Mercosur countries. The Rubem Berta International Airport, however, has only one flight, with Azul Brazilian Airlines, to Porto Alegre, a situation that Infraero intends to change, as confirmed during an official visit to the airport in December 2004.

With more than 700,000 square meters of built area, it is the largest airport in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Gran Porto Alegre Metro System in San Leopoldo

There are two highways, BR-290 and BR-472, that pass near the airport, as well as a railway about 2,500 meters from the terminal. Located 9 km from the city center, this airport is at an altitude of 78 meters and the average annual temperature is 20 °C, with a great variation from summer to winter. Located 630 km from the state capital (Porto Alegre), Uruguaiana was founded on May 29, 1746 and has a current population of 126,936. Agriculture and livestock are the main economic activities in the region, which has 1,509 rustic farms.

Domestic airports

Caxias do Sul

Hugo Cantergiani Airport (CXJ/SBCX) serves a vast region of important economic and tourist municipalities in the vicinity of Caxias do Sul, totaling 34 municipalities in this area of the "Serra Gaúcha". It is located at an altitude of 754 m (2,474 ft) and has a concrete runway (15/33) with a length of 2,000 m (6,562 ft) although only 1,650 m is usable if you land on runway 15. It is served daily by GOL and Azul airlines that connect Caxias do Sul with São Paulo. It is equipped with a VASIS visual approach aid and is also certified for IFR approaches.

Energy

Osório wind farm, the largest wind farm in Latin America.

In 2021, Rio Grande do Sul had around 7.2 GW of installed electrical power, a relatively low number compared to the country's total, which was around 170 GW at the time. Of the total, 80.6% came from renewable sources - 49% corresponded to hydroelectric plants, 19.5% to wind energy and 8.2% to photovoltaic solar energy. The state has a high potential for the installation of wind energy because the average wind speed is one of the highest in the country. Several new wind farm projects are currently underway, as well as investments in the state's power transmission lines, which were limited. Most of the offshore wind projects in Brazil, as of 2021, were in Rio Grande do Sul, with installation scheduled for 2030.

In March 2022, Rio Grande do Sul was the third Brazilian state with the most solar energy installed in the individual distributed microgeneration modality.

Coal production in Brazil was 13.6 million tons in 2007. Santa Catarina produced 8.7 Mt (million tons); Rio Grande do Sul, 4.5 Mt; and Paraná, 0.4 Mt. Brazil has peat, lignite and coal reserves. Coal totals 32 billion tons of reserves and is mainly in Rio Grande do Sul (89.25% of the total). Only the Candiota Deposit (in Rio Grande do Sul) has 38% of all national coal. Being a lower quality coal, it is used only in the generation of thermoelectric power and at the site of the deposit. The oil crisis in the 1970s led the Brazilian government to create the Energy Mobilization Plan, with intense research to discover new coal reserves. The Brazilian Geological Service, through work carried out in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, considerably increased previously known coal reserves, between 1970 and 1986 (mainly between 1978 and 1983). In various deposits in Rio Grande do Sul (Morungava, Chico Lomã, Santa Teresinha), good quality coal was then discovered, suitable for use in metallurgy and in large volume (7 billion tons), but at relatively great depths (up to 1,200 m), which has made its use difficult up to now. In 2011, coal represented only 5.6% of the energy consumed in Brazil, but it is an important strategic source, which can be activated when, for example, the water levels in the dams are very low, excessively reducing the supply of hydroelectric power.

Sports

Beira-Rio Stadium, one of FIFA 2014 World Cup headquarters.

Arena do Grêmio.

Rio Grande do Sul currently has eight soccer teams belonging to the divisions of the Brazilian Soccer Championship: Internacional, Grêmio, Juventude, Caxias, Brasil de Pelotas; Lajeadense and Ypiranga. Sport Club Rio Grande, from the municipality of Rio Grande, is the oldest in Brazil and currently plays in the Gaucho Second Division Championship.

Rio Grande do Sul is also a national and world reference in futsal, with teams like Inter/Ulbra in Porto Alegre, ACBF in Carlos Barbosa, Atlântico in Erechim, Ulbra in Canoas, Assoeva in Venâncio Aires and Enxuta in Caxias do Sul. The municipality of Carlos Barbosa is considered the capital of futsal in Brazil.

The following Olympic medalists were born in the state: Mayra Aguiar and Daniel Cargnin (judo); Fernando Scheffer (swimming); André Johannpeter (equestrian); André Heller, Gustavo Endres, Murilo Endres, Renan Dal Zotto, Paulão, Fernanda Garay, Carol Albuquerque, Éder, Janelson, Jorge Édson, Lucão, Marcus Vinícius and Thiago Alves (volleyball).. Also from the state is Thomaz Koch, considered one of the best tennis players in the history of Brazil and Henrique Mecking, considered the best Brazilian chess player of all time, who became the third best in the world; in addition to world championship medalists such as Babi and Deonise in handball, João Derly and Maria Portela in judo, Daiane dos Santos in artistic gymnastics and Samuel de Bona in the water marathon.