Qualla: Jequitinhonha River

Jequitinhonha River: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Under the same moon..., CC BY 2.0. For ninety years, beginning around 1740, most of the diamonds mined in the world came out of one river valley. Slaves stood in the shallows of the upper Jequitinhonha, washing gravel in wooden pans, and the stones they found passed through Diamantina and up the colonial supply lines to Lisbon and London. The peak faded by 1830. What the river carries now is different. At 1,090 kilometers from its source in the Espinhaço Mountains to its mouth at Belmonte on the Atlantic, the Jequitinhonha flows through a valley that holds about a million people, some of Brazil's best-known folk ceramics, and economic statistics that have become shorthand in national politics for rural hardship.

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Image: Under the same moon... | CC BY 2.0

Jequitinhonha River: A Source in the Mountains

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miguel-Ruas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The river rises at 1,200 meters elevation near Diamantina, in the Espinhaço range of Minas Gerais, and flows north, then east-northeast across a high uplands. It drops to the coastal plain at Salto da Divisa, where the Cachoeira do Salto Grande falls 43 meters in a single step. T...

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Image: Miguel-Ruas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jequitinhonha River: Diamonds, Then Decline

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olaf Edward Ray, Public domain. The diamond rush that began around 1740 made Diamantina, the town above the upper Jequitinhonha, one of the wealthiest in colonial Brazil. Alluvial gravels in and near the river held stones in remarkable concentration, and the Portuguese Crown reorganized its monopoly specificall...

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Image: Olaf Edward Ray | Public domain

Jequitinhonha River: The Valley and Its Art

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Chico, CC BY-SA 2.5. The Jequitinhonha Valley is known across Brazil for its ceramic figures and dolls, shaped in local clay and fired in domestic kilns. These are not tourist souvenirs in origin; they are a living tradition carried by artists, many of them women, whose work has been collected by maj...

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Image: User:Chico | CC BY-SA 2.5

Jequitinhonha River: A Name for Hardship

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Francielle Santos, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the mid-twentieth century, the Jequitinhonha Valley had become a national shorthand for rural poverty. The state development authority CODEVALE was founded in 1964 to address it. The results were mixed at best. Eucalyptus monoculture was pushed onto land the old farming commun...

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Image: Francielle Santos | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jequitinhonha River: New Water, New Ore

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OAlmenarense, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Irapé Dam on the middle Jequitinhonha, between Berilo and Grão Mogol, was completed in 2006. Its power station, named the Usina Presidente Juscelino Kubitschek after the Minas Gerais statesman, has an installed capacity of 360 megawatts and regulates the river against the flo...

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Image: OAlmenarense | CC BY-SA 4.0