Qualla: Monte Alegre de Goiás

Monte Alegre de Goiás: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the slopes above the Parana River valley live people whose ancestors ran. They are called Kalunga, and their quilombo communities have survived in these vaos - the steep-sided valleys of northeastern Goias - for more than two hundred years. Monte Alegre de Goias is one of three municipalities where they still live. The town itself is small, poor, remote; in one national measure it ranked third from last among Brazil's five thousand municipalities on development indicators. But it holds an extraordinary story, and an extraordinary landscape: the Serra da Contenda to the north, fifty caves in a 90-percent-preserved forest called Sumidouro, and nine rivers that all flow north to the Tocantins.

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Monte Alegre de Goiás: How the Kalunga Got Here

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. The bandeirantes came up from Sao Paulo in the 1760s looking for gold. They found it in the broken country around what was then called Morro do Chapeu - Hat Hill. The first settlers arrived around 1769 and built a chapel to Santo Antonio, giving the place its first name, Santo An...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Monte Alegre de Goiás: Caves and Rivers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asportella, CC BY-SA 3.0. The landscape that sheltered the Kalunga is itself remarkable. The Sumidouro forest, spreading through the northern part of the municipality, contains around fifty caves and has stayed roughly 90 percent preserved in an era when Goias has lost most of its cerrado to soy and pastu...

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Image: Asportella | CC BY-SA 3.0

Monte Alegre de Goiás: From Hat Hill to Happy Mountain

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town's own history is tangled. Founded by the Santo Antonio chapel, it wore the name Santo Antonio do Morro do Chapeu for nearly two centuries. In 1957 a bureaucratic relabeling swept through Brazil's interior, and the municipality was renamed Monte Alegre de Goias - happy mo...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Monte Alegre de Goiás: Cattle on the Cerrado

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. What the municipality has is land - 175,000 hectares of it, most of it pasture. There are 121,200 head of cattle, including 5,400 milk cows. The farms grow rice, sugarcane, beans, manioc, and 1,800 hectares of corn planted each year, most of it for cattle feed during the dry mont...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Monte Alegre de Goiás: A Place Worth Seeing

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MissvainOriginal author: User:Edsonchuck, CC BY-SA 3.0. Monte Alegre de Goias is not on any major tourist itinerary. Its chapada dos Veadeiros neighbors - Alto Paraiso, Cavalcante itself - get the visitors who come for waterfalls and crystal mountains. But the Kalunga quilombos are starting to open carefully to outside visitors; the S...

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Image: MissvainOriginal author: User:Edsonchuck | CC BY-SA 3.0