Qualla: Varginha

Varginha: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oluap2512, CC BY-SA 3.0. Coffee built Varginha. The spaceship came later. Walk downtown today and both are on display - the trading offices and brokerage houses that move beans from thousands of hillside farms to ports around the world, and the 20-meter flying saucer water tower in the central park that commemorates, or exploits, depending on who is telling the story, a 1996 UFO sighting that made this mid-sized Brazilian city internationally famous. The sensible, unglamorous truth is that Varginha is one of the most important coffee cities in the world. The more fun truth is that its mascot is a green alien named Ginho. Both versions of the place are equally real, and both are bankable.

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Image: Oluap2512 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Varginha: How a Rest Stop Became a Coffee City

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The muleteers built the chapel first. In 1785, the tropeiros - mule drivers moving cargo between São Paulo and the gold regions of Minas Gerais - were pausing regularly at a place called Vargem, a small meadow on their route. They needed a chapel for weddings and funerals, so the...

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Image: Public domain

Varginha: The Immigrant Waves

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ELEJOTA222, CC BY-SA 4.0. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Western Hemisphere to do so. Varginha, like the rest of the coffee belt, needed workers to replace the enslaved people who had built its plantations. The Brazilian government subsidized Italian immigration, paying passage ...

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Image: ELEJOTA222 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Varginha: The Spaceship in the Park

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oluap2512, CC BY-SA 3.0. On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha reported seeing a humanoid creature in a vacant lot. What followed - military denials, ufologist investigations, a dead police officer, dead animals at the local zoo, and competing books and documentaries - turned the city into t...

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Image: Oluap2512 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Varginha: The Quiet Economy

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alberane, CC BY-SA 4.0. Beyond the spaceship jokes, Varginha runs on a serious economy. The city hosts factories for Philips-Walita, Cooper-Standard, Plascar, SteamMaster, and Samsung. It has the highest GDP in southern Minas Gerais. In 2012 the Centro Industrial Tecnológico opened in the airport zone, ...

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Image: Alberane | CC BY-SA 4.0