Qualla: Pirassununga

Pirassununga: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ANTONIO FELIPPE, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Tupi people who lived here first named the place for a sound. Pirassununga means roughly the place where the fish makes noise — and it is not a metaphor. Where the Mogi Guaçu river drops over the rapids at Cachoeira de Emas, migrating fish mass and throw themselves upstream to spawn, and the water goes loud with it. That annual run is still the town's defining natural event. It is also, improbably, the same town where every officer of the Brazilian Air Force learns to fly, and where the bottle behind most of Brazil's caipirinhas is filled.

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Image: ANTONIO FELIPPE | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pirassununga: The Noise the Fish Make

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Luca MA00, CC BY 4.0. Cachoeira de Emas sits on both banks of the Mogi Guaçu, and it is one of the most important freshwater fish breeding grounds in Brazil. During the piracema — the seasonal spawning migration — dourado, mandi, curimbatá and piapara push upriver against the current, and fishing is c...

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Image: Luca MA00 | CC BY 4.0

Pirassununga: Cadets Over Campo Fontenelle

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vicente Eugenio, CC BY 2.0. In 1971 the Academia da Força Aérea moved from Campo dos Afonsos in Rio de Janeiro to a purpose-built campus on the edge of Pirassununga, bringing with it a bronze bust of a former commander, Colonel Fontenelle, whose name went onto the new airfield. Every current and future offi...

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Image: Vicente Eugenio | CC BY 2.0

Pirassununga: Fort Anhaguera

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sturm, CC BY-SA 4.0. The air force is not the only uniform in town. Pirassununga also holds Fort Anhaguera, which once housed the 13th Mechanized Cavalry Regiment of the Brazilian Army. The concentration is unusual: a mid-sized interior municipality carrying both an army post and the national academy...

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Image: Sturm | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pirassununga: 51, uma boa ideia

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Capmo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Three sugarcane distilleries operate in Pirassununga: Cachaça Sapucaia, Pirassununga Cachaça, and the one that made the name national, Pirassununga 51. It was founded in 1959, a year after Brazil won its first World Cup, and by the 1970s it had become a household brand on the str...

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Image: Capmo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pirassununga: The Science of Animals and Water

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zeferins16, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town's third identity is research. The University of São Paulo runs its Faculdade de Zootecnia e Engenharia de Alimentos here — the College of Animal Science and Food Engineering — which puts a serious agricultural and food-science faculty in the middle of cattle and cane cou...

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Image: Zeferins16 | CC BY-SA 4.0