Qualla: Nova Andradina

Nova Andradina: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Paulo Antonio Joaquim de Moura Andrade was a farmer and a planner, not a politician. In 1957, from a tract of land on the valley of the Paraná River, he laid out the street grid of a new city and named it after himself, or nearly so. He had been accumulating the surrounding land since the late 1930s, starting with Caapora Farm, which he renamed Spring Farm, and adding Santa Barbara, Ball, Xavante, and Panambi over the following decades. Nova Andradina became a district, then a county, then a municipality, all within a single year. Today it is the self-styled Capital of the Ivinhema Valley and home to 45,585 people spread across almost 4,800 square kilometers of Mato Grosso do Sul.

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Nova Andradina: One Man's Valley

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Moura Andrade started his work in 1938 or 1939, when the state of Mato Grosso acquired Caapora Farm on the right bank of the Paraná. He renamed it Spring Farm, built a river port, and used the location as a base for what would become a multi-decade land acquisition. In 1951 he bo...

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Nova Andradina: Farms and Migrants

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The economic base that Moura Andrade chose for his valley was farming. It still is. Cattle and grain dominate the municipality, and the large farms he planned now produce for Brazil's agribusiness export market. The surrounding area was colonized quickly because he offered terms ...

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Nova Andradina: The Port on the Paraná

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The river that Moura Andrade built his port against is one of the great water features of South America. The Paraná runs 4,880 kilometers from its confluence with the Paranaiba in southern Brazil to its merger with the Uruguay River forming the Rio de la Plata. It is the second-l...

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Nova Andradina: Sanitation Comes Last

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Planned cities are not always well-planned cities. Between 1967 and 1969, Mayor Alcides Menezes de Faria worked to bring sanitation and electricity to Nova Andradina, about a decade after its founding. The new county had the geometric street grid and the school buildings, but the...

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