t Mosaico Juréia-Itatins’s lush green rainforest, blanketing the coast of São Paulo State
t Mosaico Juréia-Itatins’s lush green rainforest, blanketing the coast of São Paulo State
São Paulo was once inhabited by numerous Tupí peoples, primarily the Tupinambá/Tamoio and Tupiniquim communities. Despite fierce resistance put up by the indigenous Tamoio Confederation, the Tupí failed to stop Portuguese colonization along the coast – they were gradually wiped out by disease or enslaved by the colonizers. Portuguese explorer Martim Afonso de Sousa established São Vicente on the coast in 1532, the first permanent Portuguese settlement in Brazil – the captaincy of São Vicente was the precursor of the modern state of São Paulo. Portuguese development of the interior remained limited until sugar production ramped up in 18th century; the inland city of Campinas was founded only in 1774.
By the late 19th century coffee dominated the state, especially in the Paraíba valley, helping to make the region one of the richest in South America. Sugar and coffee were exported through Santos, founded in 1546 and today Latin America’s biggest port. Immigration from Japan and Europe, especially Italy, had transformed the state by the 1890s, with the new arrivals filling new factories and working the coffee plantations as paid laborers.
Today, not only is São Paulo the most populous and wealthy state in Brazil, accounting for an astonishing third of the nation’s GDP, but it is also rich in natural wonders, with the full majesty of the Mata Atlântica – the Atlantic coastal forest – unfolding around Mosaico Juréia-Itatins and Cananéia in the Litoral Sul.