Qualla: Montes Claros de Goiás

Montes Claros de Goiás: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Enemias Lino de Oliveira did something unusual in 1956. He owned the Fazenda Salobinha, a cattle ranch in the remote far west of Goias, about 70 kilometers east of the Araguaia River. Instead of selling the property intact or dividing it among his children, he gave it away - subdivided into lots, offered at low prices to new settlers. That act created the town that became Montes Claros de Goias. Most Brazilian frontier towns grew out of gold rushes or government colonization programs or the footprint of a railroad. This one grew out of generosity, or shrewdness, or some mixture of both.

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Montes Claros de Goiás: Salobinha Becomes a Town

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first name was Salobinha, the name of the fazenda. By 1958 it had enough people to become a district of the municipality of Goias - then, briefly that same year, of the newly created municipality of Diorama. In 1963 it was promoted to full municipal status. The new name came ...

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Montes Claros de Goiás: Far West

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Montes Claros sits in the extreme west of Goias, where the state borders Mato Grosso across the Araguaia. The closest towns are Aragarcas, 117 kilometers west, and Jussara, 56 kilometers to the east - distances that mean what they would mean anywhere the roads are bad. Four river...

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Montes Claros de Goiás: The Cattle and the Soy

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The economy runs on cattle. In 2006 there were 255,000 head of beef cattle in the municipality, plus 16,500 dairy cattle - a herd of more than a quarter million on 220,739 hectares of land, much of it natural pasture. Soybeans have come in strong; by 2006, 7,200 hectares were pla...

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Montes Claros de Goiás: Empty and Emptier

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The population has been shrinking. Since 1980 the municipality has lost almost 1,500 inhabitants. Between 1996 and 2007 the decline slowed but did not stop - down another 0.142 percent each year, the kind of slow leak that means the same families staying while their children move...

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Montes Claros de Goiás: What the West Holds

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The MHDI score of 0.750 placed Montes Claros 78th of 242 Goias municipalities - middle of the pack, better than the poorer northeast of the state, worse than the booming south. The infant mortality rate in 2000 was 18.31 per thousand live births, a decent number by Brazilian inte...

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