Qualla: Ceres, Goiás https://qualla.com/ceres-goias en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:08 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Ceres, Goiás https://qualla.com/ceres-goias Ceres, Goiás: Introduction https://qualla.com/ceres-goias/ On September 27, 1964, a Syrian former president named Adib Shishakli was gunned down on his farm in central Brazil. His killer, Nawaf Ghazaleh, was a Druze who had traveled from Syria to avenge the bombing of a Druze village Shishakli had ordered during his rule in the early 1950s. The farm was in Ceres, a small town in the Sao Patricio Valley of Goiás that Shishakli had chosen for exile because it was remote, fertile, and full of strangers. He was right on all three counts. Ceres was itself an experiment - a government agricultural colony built two decades earlier to populate the Brazilian interior, and by the time Shishakli arrived, it was still trying to figure out what kind of town it wanted to be.

Read more: Ceres, Goiás on Qualla

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/8/ceres-goias-wp/6vk8-ceres-goi-s-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ceres, Goiás: Free Land, Free Seeds https://qualla.com/ceres-goias/ Getulio Vargas's government launched Ceres in 1941 under the bureaucratic name Colonia Agricola Nacional de Goias - CANG. The pitch was aggressive. Any family willing to settle in the valley on the left bank of the Rio das Almas would receive a 26-to-32-hectare lot, seeds, tools,...

Read more: Ceres, Goiás on Qualla

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/8/ceres-goias-wp/6vk8-ceres-goi-s-free-land-free-seeds.mp3 0:06 2 full Ceres, Goiás: The Sao Patricio Valley https://qualla.com/ceres-goias/ The setting rewarded the recruiters' promises. The Rio das Almas cuts through fertile tropical soil and flows north to join the Maranhão, a tributary of the Tocantins, which eventually empties into the Amazon delta 1,800 kilometers away. The town sits on the Brazilian Highlands a...

Read more: Ceres, Goiás on Qualla

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/8/ceres-goias-wp/6vk8-ceres-goi-s-the-sao-patricio-valley.mp3 0:06 3 full Ceres, Goiás: Shishakli in Exile https://qualla.com/ceres-goias/ Adib Shishakli had ruled Syria from 1949 through 1954 as the country's strongman, eventually declaring himself president after a series of coups. His military dictatorship suppressed dissent, and in one operation in 1954 his forces bombed Jabal al-Druze - the mountainous Druze ho...

Read more: Ceres, Goiás on Qualla

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/8/ceres-goias-wp/6vk8-ceres-goi-s-shishakli-in-exile.mp3 0:06 4 full Ceres, Goiás: The Emptying Town https://qualla.com/ceres-goias/ Ceres peaked at roughly 70,000 inhabitants during the agricultural era. Then it contracted. Between 1980 and 2007, the population fell from 31,400 to 18,600 - a hemorrhage that tracked the national pattern of rural-to-urban migration as farming mechanized and young people left fo...

Read more: Ceres, Goiás on Qualla

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/8/ceres-goias-wp/6vk8-ceres-goi-s-the-emptying-town.mp3 0:06 5 full Ceres, Goiás: What the Valley Remembers https://qualla.com/ceres-goias/ The 2006 agricultural census counted 273 farms covering 17,627 hectares, of which 4,700 were actively cropped, and 24,000 head of cattle. The main crops are still what the first settlers planted: rice, corn, sugarcane, tomatoes. The Municipal Human Development Index of 0.782 plac...

Read more: Ceres, Goiás on Qualla

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/8/ceres-goias-wp/6vk8-ceres-goi-s-what-the-valley-remembers.mp3 0:06 6 full