Cataguases is a municipality located in the southeastern part of the state of
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil, being the fourth largest state by area and the second largest in number of inhabitants with a population of 20,539,989 according to the 2022 Brazilian census, 2022 census. Located in ...
in Brazil. The estimated population in 2020 was 75,540. It is mainly an industrial centre (textile,
metallurgy
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys.
Metallurgy encompasses both the ...
, clothes) with a strong influence of
coffee
Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially a ...
plantation
Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...
in its early history (19th century).
History
In the 1920s, the city was associated with the Brazilian cinema pioneer
Humberto Mauro
Humberto Duarte Mauro (30 April 1897 – 5 November 1983) was a Brazilian film director. His best known work is '' Ganga Bruta''. He is often considered the greatest director of early Brazilian cinema.
Career
Mauro's second feature film ''Thes ...
and a generation of writers for the short-lived
Revista Verde. Humberto Mauro shot there some films that earned him a good reputation nationwide. He later made ''Braza Dormida'' (''Sleeping Fire'') and ''O Descobrimento do Brasil'' (''The Finding of Brazil'') and was a reputed
Tupi language scholar.
Industrialisation changed the town significantly and caused some of its citizens to become very rich in the 1920s and 1930s. As a result, the city centre was remodeled accordingly to the ultimate architecture styles. The architect
Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15 December 1907 – 5 December 2012), known as Oscar Niemeyer (), was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was b ...
and painters
Cândido Portinari
Candido Portinari (December 29, 1903 – February 6, 1962) was a Brazilian painter. He is considered one of the most important Brazilian painters as well as a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style in painting.
Portinari ...
,
Djanira and
Emeric Marcier are some of the Brazilian artists who left contributions there at that time.
After three decades of wealth, the town lost its prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. The economic crisis and the changes due to the modernisation of the industries provoked high unemployment rates and depreciation of salaries, reducing the town's wealth.
In 2003, the town was the site of an ecological accident caused by the spilling of chemical waste that affected the brook Cágado and the rivers
Pomba and
Paraíba do Sul
The Paraíba do Sul (), or simply Paraíba, is a river in southeast Brazil. It flows west to northeast from its farthest source at the source of the river Paraitinga to the sea near Campos dos Goytacazes. The river receives its name when it m ...
, threatening the water supply of more than 20,000,000 Brazilians (including the state of Rio de Janeiro).
Geography
Climate
Cataguases experiences a
tropical savanna climate
Tropical savanna climate or tropical wet and dry climate is a tropical climate sub-type that corresponds to the Köppen climate classification categories ''Aw'' (for a dry "winter") and ''As'' (for a dry "summer"). The driest month has less than ...
(Aw under
Köppen climate classification
The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...
). Temperatures are high (above 18 °C (64.4 °F)) all over the year, and low temperatures lasting for a whole day are rare, and generally only occur in the
dry season
The dry season is a yearly period of low rainfall, especially in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which moves from the northern to the southern tropics and back over the course of the year. The t ...
. The
wet season
The wet season (sometimes called the rainy season or monsoon season) is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs. Generally, the season lasts at least one month. The term ''green season'' is also sometimes used a ...
starts in September and goes until May, while the dry season goes from May to September. Floods are not uncommon in the town, and generally there is one per year, in December, January or February. On the other side, during the dry season Rio Pomba has considerably less water than in other periods, and some people have
respiratory disease
Respiratory diseases, or lung diseases, are pathological conditions affecting the organs and tissues that make gas exchange difficult in air-breathing animals. They include conditions of the respiratory tract including the trachea, bronchi, ...
s related to low
air humidity.
Temperatures
See also
*
List of municipalities in Minas Gerais
This is a list of the municipalities in the States of Brazil, state of Minas Gerais, Minas Gerais (MG), located in the Southeast Region, Brazil, Southeast Region of Brazil. Minas Gerais is divided into 853 Municipalities of Brazil, municipalities, ...
References
Municipalities in Minas Gerais
{{MinasGerais-geo-stub