Qualla: Vargem Grande do Sul

Vargem Grande do Sul: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1942, Brazil entered the Second World War on the Allied side, and President Getúlio Vargas signed a decree forbidding the public use of enemy languages. Across the country, German, Italian, and Japanese went underground at dinner tables and in town meetings. In Vargem Grande do Sul, in the northeast of São Paulo state, the Italian mutual-aid society Società de Mutuo Socorso - founded by immigrant families to provide members with free health care and coffins - was forced to rename itself Sociedade Beneficente Brasileira. In São Paulo the football club Società Esportiva Palestra Italia became Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras, the name it carries to this day. The Italian stopped being spoken aloud, but it did not disappear. In the kitchens and on the front porches of Vargem Grande do Sul, people still say fetta when they mean a slice of bread, and posar instead of dormir when it is time for bed.

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Vargem Grande do Sul: The Bandeirantes' Crossroads

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Before the Italians arrived, the place was a rest stop. In 1832, a hamlet called Várzea Grande - Great Lowland - appeared on colonial maps along the old bandeirante routes, the paths worn by 17th-century Portuguese-Brazilian expeditions hunting gold, enslaving indigenous people, ...

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Vargem Grande do Sul: When Slavery Ended, Who Came

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 - later than any other country in the Americas. Across the São Paulo coffee belt, plantation owners who had depended on enslaved African labor suddenly faced a different world. Some tried to pay the newly freed workers almost nothing; many of them...

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Vargem Grande do Sul: Potato Country

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Coffee once dominated the countryside around Vargem Grande do Sul, but the crop has largely moved on. What you see now, driving out of town along SP-344 or SP-215, is potato fields - Brazil's largest potato-producing state is São Paulo, and this stretch of the Mogiana contributes...

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Vargem Grande do Sul: The Sant'Ana Parish

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Italian immigration brought Catholicism of a particular intensity - the village-saint, procession-and-feast variety, more Mediterranean than Lusitanian - and the religious life of Vargem Grande do Sul still reflects it. The Paróquia Sant'Ana, founded in 1891 by Dom Lino Deodato R...

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