Introdução e expansão do café na região sul de Minas Gerais

Abstract

This piece of work objectified a historical analysis on the introduction and the widespread of coffee in the southern region of Minas Gerais. Considered as objects of historygraphic study were literary works, documents, journalistic, memorialistic, biographic, documental and didactic oriented texts. Yet another method used was the quantitative one, besides orally reported pieces of historical nature as well as life history which completed the official documentation. Our empiric investigation object was the southern side of Minas Gerais, the study’s theme being the historic development of coffee in such region. The widespread of coffee in the region caused the arisal of a new landscape profile- the coffee landscape. Self-supporting farms arised on sites formerly covered with untouched vegetation. It also caused many towns to expand, and railroads were multiplied substituting for the trails on which jack-asses were predominant.The first coffee cultures in the region were settled in Aiuruoca, Jacuí and Baependi, by the Sapucaí and Grande rivers valley in the late 1700’s, by the troopers which made the the limk between the south of Minas Gerais and the state of Rio de Janeiro. We inferred that the greatest barrier against the expansion of coffee in the south of Minas was the difficulties concerning transportation. The means of communication were then precarious and the distances to be covered were too long. Up until the end of the 19 th century both production and exportation were only modest due to rival producing areas which were closer to the embarkation harbours.With the beginning of the 20 th century came a new production dynamism, due to the railroads. It has been 200 years of coffee culture in the south of Minas Gerais, the greatest justification for the denomination “traditional coffee producing region.”