Brazil
São Paulo State
The citizens of the São Paulo state, Paulistas, never tire of saying that their state is Brazil’s economic powerhouse, and they produce a mountain of statistics to sustain the boast. The state’s forty million inhabitants represent about a quarter of Brazil’s total population, yet the state contributes forty percent of the federal tax revenues, and consumes sixty percent of the country’s industrial energy to produce two-thirds of its industrial output. A highly capitalized agricultural sector produces eighty percent of Brazil’s oranges, half of its sugar, forty percent of its chickens and eggs, and a fifth of its coffee. Yet while Paulistas crow that without their muscle Brazil’s economy would collapse, other Brazilians feel that São Paulo has developed at their expense. The state, it is argued, attracts capital away from the other regions, which are basically seen as sources of cheap labour and as guaranteed markets for São Paulo’s products.
This economic pre-eminence is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1507, São Vicente was founded on the coast near present-day Santos, the second-oldest Portuguese settlement in Brazil, but for over three hundred years the area comprising today’s state of São Paulo remained a backwater. The inhabitants were a hardy people, of mixed Portuguese and Indian origin, from whom – in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – emerged the bandeirantes: frontiersmen who roamed far into the South American interior to secure the borders of the Portuguese Empire against Spanish encroachment, capturing Indian slaves and seeking out precious metals and gems as they went.

Not until the mid-nineteenth century did São Paulo become rich. Cotton production received a boost with the arrival of Confederate refugees in the late 1860s, who settled between Americana and Santa Bárbara d’Oeste, about 140km from the then small town of São Paulo itself. But after disappointing results with cotton, most of these plantation owners switched their attentions to coffee and, by the end of the century, the state had become firmly established as the world’s foremost producer of the crop. During the same period, Brazil abolished slavery and the plantation owners recruited European and Japanese immigrants to expand production. Riding the wave of the coffee boom, British and other foreign companies took the opportunity to invest in port facilities, rail lines, power and water supplies, while textile and other new industries emerged, too. Within a few decades, the town of São Paulo became one of South America’s greatest commercial and cultural centres, sliding from a small town into a vast metropolitan sprawl.

If the thought of staying in the city of São Paulo doesn’t particularly appeal to you, the state does have other attractions. Though crowded in the summer, the beaches north of Santos, especially on Ilhabela, and around Ubatuba, rival Rio’s best, while those to the south – near Iguape and Cananéia – remain relatively unspoiled. Inland, the state is dominated by agribusiness, with seemingly endless fields of cattle pasture, sugar cane, oranges and soya interspersed with anonymous towns where the agricultural produce is processed. To escape scorching summer temperatures – or for the novelty in tropical Brazil of a winter chill – make for Campos do Jordão, São Paulo’s main mountain resort.

The State
Away from the city, it’s the state’s coastline that has most to offer. Santos, Brazil’s leading port, retains many links with the past, and lots of the beaches stretching north and south from the city are stunning, particularly around Ubatuba. The towns and cities of the state’s interior are not so great an attraction – the rolling countryside is largely devoted to vast orange groves and fields of soya and sugar. Good-quality roads run through this region, including major routes to the Mato Grosso and Brasília.

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