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- Rio Grande do Sul:
Official website: http://www.rs.gov.br
Capital: Porto Alegre
Area: 282,062 km2
Important cities:Pelotas, Caxias do Sul, Canoas, Santa Maria
Economy:industry, agriculture
Important newspapers: Zero Hora
Rio Grande do Sul is the southern most state of Brazil; climate is sub-tropical. During colonial times, Portugal and Spain fought over this area. Spanish jesuits founded
missions close to rio Uruguay back in 1627; the first Portuguese settlement was Colony of Sacrament, founded in 1680; in 1687, Portuguese jesuits founded Sete Povos das
Missões.
In 1742, Portuguese founded Porto dos Casais, which turned in today's Porto Alegre; early in 1800s, the Portuguese domination was consolidated; in 1824, the first German
and Italian imigrants arrived.
The low lands which extend from Rio Grande do Sul to Uruguay and Argentina favor cattle breedin, and this avocation was and is still being followed by the state.
- Physical Geography:
The geographycal profile of the State is composed of two morphologic areas: the Serra da Borborema, a mountain chain which starts in Minas Gerais and cuts through Bahia,
Alagoas, Pernambuco and Paraíba, before reaching Rio Grande do Norte; and the low lands, which cover all the remaining area of the State.
In the other States, the Borborema is a physical separation between the humid littoral and the arid sertão; the presence of Borborema creates a transition zone, called
agreste, where climate and vegetation have mixed features of the extremes. In Rio Grande do Norte, the Borborema doesn´t go all the way across (it goes past the border
with Paraíba, but doesn´t reach the Atlantic); this fact causes that, differently from most States in northeast, the profile littoral-agreste-sertão is not present in Rio
Grande do Norte so, the only climates in the State are the tropical humid, in the eastern coast.
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