Cataguases, Minas Gerais, Southeast Region, Brazil

🇧🇷 Cataguases is a municipality located in the south-eastern part of the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. It is mainly an industrial centre (textile, metallurgy, clothes) with a strong influence of coffee plantation in its early history (19th century).

History In the 1920s, the city was associated with the Brazilian cinema pioneer Humberto Mauro 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 and painters Cândido 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, threatening the water supply of more than 20,000,000 Brazilians (including the state of Rio de Janeiro).