Qualla: Pilar de Goiás https://qualla.com/pilar-de-goias en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:08 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/s/pilar-de-goias-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Pilar de Goiás https://qualla.com/pilar-de-goias Pilar de Goiás: Introduction https://qualla.com/pilar-de-goias/ Photo credit Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás, Public domain. A garimpeiro - one of the freelance gold prospectors who swarmed the Brazilian interior in the eighteenth century - made a promise to a saint. He needed water to work a rich deposit that had no water nearby, and water would save him enormous labor. If Saint Lady of Pilar would cause water to flow in that barren place, he pledged he would donate a golden bell to the church that would be built there. Water appeared. A church was built. The garimpeiro kept his promise. And the bell that hangs in the Mother Church of Pilar de Goiás today weighs 900 kilograms, and its alloy, according to local tradition, contains an arroba of gold - roughly fifteen kilograms. Three hundred years later the bell still rings.

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Image: Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/s/pilar-de-goias-wp/6vks-pilar-de-goi-s-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Pilar de Goiás: Founded By The Escaped https://qualla.com/pilar-de-goias/ Photo credit Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás, Public domain. The conventional story of Brazilian frontier settlement involves bandeirantes - slave hunters and gold seekers pushing north and west from São Paulo. Pilar de Goiás inverts that story. The town began in 1736 as a quilombo, a community of escaped enslaved people who had found refu...

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Image: Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/s/pilar-de-goias-wp/6vks-pilar-de-goi-s-founded-by-the-escaped.mp3 0:06 2 full Pilar de Goiás: Gold Makes A Town https://qualla.com/pilar-de-goias/ Photo credit Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás, Public domain. For a short window in the eighteenth century, Pilar mattered. Gold brought people from every direction in Brazil, and the narrow valley at the bottom of which the town sits filled up with garimpeiros, traders, and the kind of infrastructure - churches, pharmacies, merchant houses...

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Image: Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/s/pilar-de-goias-wp/6vks-pilar-de-goi-s-gold-makes-a-town.mp3 0:06 3 full Pilar de Goiás: The Saint Of Pilar https://qualla.com/pilar-de-goias/ Photo credit Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás, Public domain. Nossa Senhora do Pilar - Our Lady of Pilar - is a Marian devotion that traces to a stone pillar in Zaragoza, Spain, where tradition holds the Virgin Mary appeared to the apostle James. Spanish and Portuguese Catholics brought the devotion to the Americas, where it attached to min...

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Image: Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/s/pilar-de-goias-wp/6vks-pilar-de-goi-s-the-saint-of-pilar.mp3 0:06 4 full Pilar de Goiás: Emptying Out https://qualla.com/pilar-de-goias/ Photo credit Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás, Public domain. The gold played out. What was left was a rugged valley in central Goiás with limited agricultural potential and no practical reason for anyone to stay. The population in 2007 was 2,852 - split between an urban zone of 1,121 people and a rural zone of 1,731. The total has decrease...

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Image: Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/s/pilar-de-goias-wp/6vks-pilar-de-goi-s-emptying-out.mp3 0:06 5 full Pilar de Goiás: A Bell That Still Rings https://qualla.com/pilar-de-goias/ Photo credit Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás, Public domain. The golden bell is still there. It is not pure gold, of course - pure gold is too soft to hold the shape of a bell that has to ring reliably - but its bronze alloy reportedly contains the arroba of gold the garimpeiro promised. Tour guides in Pilar will tell you the story. The to...

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Image: Prefeitura de Pilar de Goiás | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/k/s/pilar-de-goias-wp/6vks-pilar-de-goi-s-a-bell-that-still-rings.mp3 0:06 6 full