Qualla: Jequitinhonha

Jequitinhonha: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robinsonmila, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1811 an army ensign named Julião Fernandes Taborda Leão pitched a garrison on a bend of the Jequitinhonha River. He was there on a rumour — that the river held diamonds — and he arrived on the feast of Saint Michael, so the post was christened Sétima Divisão Militar de São Miguel, the Seventh Military Division of Saint Michael. Two centuries on, the diamonds are a footnote, the saint has dropped off the letterhead, and the town goes by the name of the river and nothing else.

Read more: Jequitinhonha on Qualla

Image: Robinsonmila | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jequitinhonha: A Garrison on a Rumour

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robinsonmila, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name shortened as the place changed shape: military division, then Freguesia de São Miguel de Sétima Divisão, then Vila de Jequitinhonha, then simply Jequitinhonha, a municipality in its own right from 1911. None of that was the beginning. The Maxakali were here before the ga...

Read more: Jequitinhonha on Qualla

Image: Robinsonmila | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jequitinhonha: The River, End to End

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Jequitinhonha rises near Serro in the highlands of central Minas Gerais and runs 1,090 kilometres to the Atlantic at Belmonte, in Bahia. Brazilians divide its valley into three: the Alto, closest to Belo Horizonte and best off by most measures; the Médio; and the Baixo, the d...

Read more: Jequitinhonha on Qualla

Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jequitinhonha: Women Who Work in Clay

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robinsonmila, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Vale do Jequitinhonha is known nationally for two things, and the interesting one is the ceramics. It began as economics. Men left to find work, in São Paulo and the cane fields and wherever else the wages were, and the women who stayed made pots, pans and vessels out of rive...

Read more: Jequitinhonha on Qualla

Image: Robinsonmila | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jequitinhonha: Why the Valley Got Poor

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas silva santos, CC BY-SA 4.0. The hardship in the valley has a date on it. In the nineteenth century, South African diamonds reached the European market more cheaply than Brazilian ones, the price collapsed, and an economy built on stones stopped working. Nothing of comparable value replaced it. Roughly 50,14...

Read more: Jequitinhonha on Qualla

Image: Lucas silva santos | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jequitinhonha: Semi-Arid Arithmetic

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit João de Castro, CC BY-SA 4.0. The climate here is classified semi-arid, and everything about local agriculture is an answer to that. Cattle range the dry ground. Subsistence plots take what the rains give. Where irrigation reaches the riverbank, bananas grow commercially, alongside coconut, mango, cachaça and...

Read more: Jequitinhonha on Qualla

Image: João de Castro | CC BY-SA 4.0