“General Mines” still names Brazil’s gold-rush highland state
Minas Gerais—“General Mines”—is Brazil’s fourth-largest state by area and second-most populous, with 20,539,989 residents counted in the 2022 census. Its capital, Belo Horizonte, is a major finance hub whose metro area of just over 5.8 million trails only São Paulo and Rio, and its hills launched Brazil’s great 18th-century gold rush.
Six states and the Federal District border Minas Gerais, from São Paulo in the south to Bahia in the north and Espírito Santo in the east. It has 853 municipalities, more than any other state, and ranks third in GDP, much of it still from mining. Some of Brazil’s highest peaks rise here, and the Doce, Grande, São Francisco, Jequitinhonha and Paranaíba rivers all begin within its borders. The climate shifts from cool and damp in the south to semi-arid in the north, across Cerrado and threatened Atlantic Forest, and the state has the country’s largest road network.
In the 19th century Danish palaeontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund found ancient bones around Lagoa Santa. Luzia, dug from the Lapa Vermelha cave in 1974, is the oldest human fossil in the Americas, pointing to occupation 11,400 to 12,000 years ago; her skull once suggested Australoid ancestry, but DNA proved her people fully Amerindian. More than a hundred Indigenous groups lived here when the Portuguese came, the Cataguás most numerous, yet bandeirante slaving left only five, including the Krenak and Xakriabá.
The first Europeans to cross the north, in 1553–1555, were two Spaniards, Juan de Azpilcueta Navarro and Francisco Bruza Espinosa. Antônio Rodrigues Arzão found the first gold in 1692–1693, Salvador Fernandes Furtado struck it on the Carmo in 1696, founding what became Mariana, and Antônio Dias de Oliveira’s camp below Itacolomi Peak grew into Vila Rica, now Ouro Preto. Enslaved Africans began the Estrada Real in 1697, linking the mines to Rio and Paraty.
Paulista miners lost the War of the Emboabas, ending in 1709, and drifted west to Goiás and Mato Grosso. A 1720 revolt against gold taxes led to a separate captaincy, and by the late 1700s Vila Rica was Brazil’s largest city. When the gold ran out, coffee restored the region’s fortunes.
Source: Minas Gerais
