Rio Grande do Sul

Rio Grande do Sul. The most southerly state of Brazil (2020 pop 11,422,973), bordering on Santa Catarina to the north and Uruguay to the south, with an area of 281,707 sq km. Its climate is subtropical. Its capital is Porto Alegre. The fourth-largest Ukrainian community of Brazil (estimated population in the 1990s, near 10,000) lives in the state. The first wave of settlement, consisting of approximately 200 families, arrived from Galicia in 1895–9. A second influx occurred after 1907, when immigrants who had worked on the São-Paulo–Rio Grande Railway settled in places such as Guarni, Campinas, Iguí, Jaguari, and Erechim. After the Second World War more Ukrainians settled in the state, particularly its capital. The isolation of the state from the heartland of Ukrainian life in Brazil has resulted in a slow and somewhat truncated development of church and community structures.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]