Qualla: Uberaba

Uberaba: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Róger Randerson, CC BY 2.0. Every spring, Uberaba fills with cattle. They arrive by the thousands, loaded into trailers from ranches across Minas Gerais and Goias and beyond - humped, droop-eared, pale-skinned animals whose lineage traces back through Brazilian breeding programs to the temple cattle of India. Expozebu has been running annually since 1935, and it is one of the largest cattle fairs on Earth. Buyers walk the stalls comparing bloodlines with the intensity of art collectors at an auction preview. A single champion bull can change hands for millions of reais. Somewhere underneath the show arena - perhaps quite literally - lie the fossils of a different kind of giant. For 80 million years before zebu arrived in Brazil, sauropods and theropods and titanosaurs walked these hills. Uberaba remembers both its ancient animals and its modern ones. The city's name comes from Tupi, meaning 'bright water'. What that water runs over, it turns out, is bone.

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Image: Róger Randerson | CC BY 2.0

Uberaba: The Road That Became a City

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pedroepaulo, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1810, Captain Major Eustaquio founded a rest stop on the old Anhanguera route - the trail the bandeirantes used to reach the goldfields of Goias. Travelers pausing here to water their horses and wait out afternoon storms began, gradually, to stay. Farmers noticed the red soil ...

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Image: Pedroepaulo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uberaba: The Zebu Capital

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jorge Hereth, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cattle that made Uberaba internationally known did not originate here. Brazilian ranchers imported zebu stock from India starting in the late 19th century, looking for breeds that could tolerate heat, humidity, and parasites better than the European herefords and angus that d...

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Image: Jorge Hereth | CC BY-SA 3.0

Uberaba: Bones in the Red Earth

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jessica Malta, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1945, workers in the rural district of Peirópolis hit something hard with their pickaxes. They had found fossils - and not small ones. Two years later, paleontologist Llewellyn Ivor Price arrived from Rio and began a career of digging that lasted until 1974. The Serra da Galga...

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Image: Jessica Malta | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uberaba: Chico Xavier's Town

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit José Reis Mendes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among Uberaba's sons and daughters, Chico Xavier stands apart. Born in 1910 in Pedro Leopoldo, he moved to Uberaba in 1959 and lived there until his death in 2002. Xavier was a medium in the Spiritist tradition, which in Brazil has millions of practitioners, and he claimed to hav...

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Image: José Reis Mendes | CC BY-SA 4.0