Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais – where I´ve spent nearly all the last three and a half months – is an inland state to the east of the middle of Brazil. It’s the size of France, a middling-to-large state in Brazilian terms. The south of the state sits between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and forms part of the densely populated, rich, central belt of Brazil. The name, ´general mines´, was given by the Portuguese when they found gold: mining’s still a big thing here, though mostly now its duller stuff like bauxite.

I have decided that Minas Gerais is Brazil’s answer to Yorkshire – not just because of the mining. Its cold* and hilly here, the people talk funny, and they eat curious home made fatty food. They have a reputation for being tight with money. And just as Yorkshire people don’t like London, Mineiros are continuously delighted at the way they don’t live in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. They like Minas Gerais.

England wouldn’t make any sense without Yorkshire (though you could, for instance, lop off East Anglia without anything changing much); in the same way Minas Gerais is central to Brazil. Mineiros are responsible for much of the history of Brazil, lots of the literature and art, and have also supplied a bunch of presidents and nearly presidents ( `nearly´ because one of them had a heart attack and died the night before taking office).

*comparatively – this is still Brazil

Some important things to know about Minas Gerais:

1) Gold and Art

The big thing that got Minas Gerais going was the gold and diamonds. Gold was discovered at the end of the seventeeenth century, the diamonds a bit later. With the money from the gold the locals went mad building baroque and rococco churches, filled with gilding and jewels. The churches and other 18th century buildings are the main attraction of southern Minas Gerais, and they are pretty impressive.

What´s great is that the artists and sculptors of the churches pretty quickly came up with their own Brazilian take on the whole religion business – Mestre Athaide, the most famous of the painters – used his very Brazilian looking mixed race wife as his model for the main portrait of the madonna in the main church, and also famously painted St John clutching bunches of sugar cane.

The pictures at the top – which i took- show various bits of art and architecture from the 18th century in the south of Minas.

2) The Incofidencia Mineira

The end of the eighteeth century saw one of the few vaguely organised attempts at revolution against colonialism in Brazil – the so called Incofidencia Mineira (`Minas Gerais unconfidence´, i suppose…) The plot was organised by a chatty dentist who told nearly everyone about his plans to overthrow the state.

Unsurprisingly the plotters were rumbled and the dentist was rapidly hung, drawn and quartered. This utterly disappointing attempt at rebellion hasn´t stopped the Inconfidencia becoming REALLY famous – all Brazilian children learn about it at school, and it´s vital to the image of Minas Gerais as the homeland of Brazilian nationalism and liberty. Because I´m fed up with Brazilians going on and on about it, I am eager to put on record that the Inconfidencia was rubbish and that even the gunpowder plot (hatched – let´s remember – just outside Rugby) was better.

3. Mineiro Characteristics
As well as being tight, Mineiros are reknowned for being chatty and cunning, inclined to cheat on their partners in either sex or politics. Having spent some time amidst the gay nightlife of Belo Horizonte (capital of Minas) I can confirm this is largely true. The key phrase here is “mineiro come quieto” which literally means Mineiros eat quietly, but “comer” in Brazilian portuguese usually means someting else….

4. North-South Divide
Minas Gerais is a bit like Brazil itsel – there are huge tracts of it that noone goes to and noone talks about. The interesting stuff and the money all happens in the south in state, while the northerners are ridiculed for generally being poor and a bit useless. Most of the north and west of the state consists of sertão – Brazils answer to the wild west. The sertão is dusty, dry and full of wrinkly men riding about on sad looking horses. They have their own equivalent to country and western music in which they sing about how they came to the city, realised that the sertão was nicer, and came back only to find out that their girlfriend had run off with another man.