Place:Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

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Rio Grande do Sul (pron.  ; lit. "Great River of the South") is the southernmost state of Brazil, and one of the states with the highest standard of living.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Despite being mainly rural for much of its early history, Rio Grande do Sul served as the launching pad for several wars Brazil waged against its southern and western neighbors. It also was a focal point for internal rebellion in the 19th century. Getulio Vargas, who led Brazil as dictator from 1930 and later was elected president in 1950, was a native of Rio Grande do Sul (known as gaúchos).

Rio Grande do Sul's prairies have been the scene of bloody wars: the dispute between Portugal and Spain for the Sacramento Colony, the Guarani Missions War, the War of Tatters, the Federalist Revolution, the Maurers Revolt and the Vargas's levant.

In 1738 the territory (which included the present state of Santa Catarina) became the Capitania d'el Rei and was made a dependency of Rio de Janeiro. Territorial disputes between Spain and Portugal led to the occupation by the Spanish of the town of Rio Grande (then the capital of the capitania) and neighbouring districts from 1763 to 1776, when they reverted to the Portuguese. The capture of Rio Grande in 1763 caused the removal of the seat of government to Viamão at the head of Lagoa dos Patos; in 1773 Porto dos Cazaes, renamed Porto Alegre, became the capital. In 1801 news of war between Spain and Portugal led the inhabitants of Rio Grande to attack and capture the seven missions and some frontier posts held by the Spaniards since 1763; since 1801 the boundary lines established by treaty in 1777 have remained unchanged.

The districts of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande had been separated in 1760 for military convenience, and in 1807 the latter was elevated to the category of a capitania-geral, with the designation of "Sao Pedro do Rio Grande," independent of Rio de Janeiro, and with Santa Catarina as a dependency. In 1812 Rio Grande and Santa Catarina were organized into two distinct comarcas, the latter becoming an independent province in 1822 when the Empire of Brazil was organized.

In 1835 a separatist movement broke out in the province and lasted ten years. It was reduced more through the use of money and favours than by force of arms; but the province had suffered terribly in the struggle and did not recover its losses for many years. An incident in this contest was the enlistment of Giuseppe Garibaldi for a short time with the forces of the separatists. In 1865 a Paraguayan army invaded the state and on the 5th of August occupied the town of Uruguaiana. On the 18th of September following, the Paraguayan general (Estigarribia) surrendered without a fight - an unusual occurrence in the remarkable war that followed.

Political agitations were frequent in Rio Grande do Sul, but no important revolution occurred after the "ten years' war" (1835-45) until the presidency at Rio de Janeiro of General Floriano Peixoto, whose ill-considered interference with the state governments led to the revolt of 1892-94, under Gumersindo Saraiva. In this struggle the revolutionists occupied Santa Catarina and Paraná, capturing Curitiba, but were eventually overthrown through their inability to obtain munitions of war. An incident in this struggle was the death of Admiral Saldanha da Gama, one of the most brilliant officers of the Brazilian navy and one of the chiefs of the naval revolt of 1893-94, who was killed in a skirmish on the Uruguayan frontier at the close of the war.

Rio Grande do Sul's population consists primarily of the descendants of European immigrants, especially Portuguese, Italians, and Germans and, to a much smaller extent, groups of Afro-Brazilians, Poles, Spanish, Russians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Jews. In the 1960s, a number of Japanese immigrants settled in various parts of the state, most notably in the town of Ivoti.

The first German immigrant families arrived in Rio Grande do Sul in 1824 at the town of São Leopoldo, and within the next one hundred years an estimated quarter of a million Germans settled in Brazil, mostly in Rio Grande do Sul and the neighboring state of Santa Catarina.

Most of the German speakers in southern Brazil spoke or eventually adopted the Hunsrückisch dialect so that it became the most commonly used German dialect in this part of the world and is still spoken by millions today (also referred to as Riograndenser Hunsrückisch to differentiate it from the Hunsrückisch spoken in Germany).

In its 180 years of history Riograndenser Hunsrückisch has been greatly influenced by other German dialects (such as Pomeranian, Pfälzisch) and by immigrant languages such as the national language, Portuguese but also to some degree by Italian.

Talian is a uniquely Brazilian variety of Italian not spoken anywhere else in the world. The emergence of Talian in Rio Grande do Sul happened because of the great variety of Italian dialects that came together into a fairly compact and specific geographical location of the state. Talian is frequently called Vêneto because it is close to the Venetian language spoken in Italy's Veneto region.

Italian immigrants began arriving in the area in the late 1800's, settling mostly in the hilly Northeastern parts of Rio Grande do Sul. Soon the region became the most important grape and wine-producing region in Brazil. Although the climate does not favor the production of the finest wines, the last few years have seen great progress in winemaking, especially with white sparkling wines.

All minority languages in southern Brazil have experienced a significant degree of decline in the last few decades, not only immigrant languages such as Italian or Talian and German, but also the indigenous languages of the Kaingang (also spelled Kaingáng, Cainguangue, etc.) and the Guaraní.

In the far western area of the state are the remnants of Brazil's 17th century Jesuit missions or reductions (aldeias) to the Guaraní Indians. Important to the region, it should be noted that Jesuit Father Roque Gonzales, also known as Roque Gonzales de Santa Cruz, who arrived from Paraguay on the 3rd of May of 1626 to establish the Saint Nicolas mission (today known as São Nicolau), was the first white person to enter in what is today know as the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Of all the ruins left behind by the vanished Guarani Missions, the most significant one is São Miguel or São Miguel Arcanjo, located nearby the present city of Santo Ângelo. There is an ongoing Light and Sound (or Som e Luz in Portuguese) show presented at the ruins of the São Miguel church. Originally part of Uruguayan territory it was lost in the Uruguayan struggle for independence. Uruguay could have lost all of the Rio Grande do Sul area if not for the help of Argentina, which wanted to defeat Brazil.

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