Agudo, Rio Grande do Sul

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A painting depicting the first stage of the German immigration to Brasil

Agudo is a municipality in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil. Its coordinates are 53º14'24" West and the elevation is 83 meters above sealevel. The total area is 553,1 km² and the population was estimated at 17,833 in 2004.

Archeological evidence indicates that this area was settled by humankind as far back as 8.000 years ago.

The first Europeans to come into the area were Jesuit priests who in the XV century began establishing the socalled Reductions or Missions as they also were named in the wider region (i.e. Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay).

At a later date with the expulsion of the Jesuit order by the both the Spanish and Portuguese crowns from South America left the area inactive as far as European activities were concerned.

The local indigenous population suffered attacks by Paulistas from the north who, amongst other things, made it their business to capture Indians to be put up for sale in the slave markets of São Paulo, etc...

A Guarani family captured by Indian slave hunters. A drawing by the renound French travelling artist Jean Baptiste Debret

In 1857 a new wave of immigration started to affect the region, this time attracting Germanic settlers and subsequently peoples of other European origins. The German language is still spoken by some of residents of the Municipality of Agudo and in areas around it.

In 2001 a fossil of a dinosaur was found in Agudos and after the analysis of its skeleton, it was reported to be a new specie of ornithischian dinosaur, named sacisaur (Sacisaurus agudoensis) after the evidence that the skeleton missed the bones of one of its leg.