Santo Ângelo

Santo Ângelo is a municipality located in northwestern Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. It has about 77,568 inhabitants (according to 2020 IBGE estimate) and the total area of the municipality is about 679 km². It borders Giruá to the north, and Entre-Ijuís to the south—it is linked to Santo Ângelo by the state road RS 344. The city is located 443 km (275 mi) from the state capital, Porto Alegre.

The local agriculture-economy produces and deals soy, corn, wheat, swine, sheep and cattle. Tourism in the city is primarily associated with the city's Jesuit history and the Jesuit Reductions in the nearby city São Miguel das Missões. The Angelopolitan Cathedral in downtown Santo Ângelo is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santo Ângelo.

The city is served by Sepé Tiaraju Airport and is home to four institutions of higher education, Universidade Regional Integrada do Alto Uruguai e das Missões (URI), Faculdade CNEC Santo Ângelo, Faculdade Santo Ângelo (FASA) and Instituto Federal Farroupilha (IFFar).

Santo Ângelo is part of what's called Misiones Orientales and their origins go back to the Spanish period, having part of the thorps being created in the 17th and 18th century by Jesuits priests in what are today Brazil's, Argentina's and Paraguay's territory.^[3]

The reduction of Santo Ângelo Custódio (or Sant'Angel Custódio in Spanish) was founded in 1706 by the belgian jesuit Diogo de Haze.^[3] It was the seventh reduction of the group known as the Misiones Orientales.^[4] It's believed that firstly the reduction was installed near the bifurcation of the rivers Ijuí e Ijuizinho, and in 1707 it would have been transferred to the current historic center of the city.^[3]

The reduction of Santo Ângelo Custódio was consecrated to the Guardian Angel of the Missions, the protector of all the peoples from the missions, therefore it was also called Sant'Angel de la Guardia, like it's written in some spanish documents of the time. It also had a big economic and cultural development, having almost eight thousand people at it's apogee.

Destroyed after 1756, in what's called the Guaraní war, the region stayed abandoned for almost a hundred years. By around 1830 the region started to get repopulated because of the sesmarias paulistas. Emancipated from Cruz Alta in March 22nd of 1873, Santo Ângelo had a big territory, of almost 10 thousand km².^[3]

In the end of the 19th century, big waves of immigrants arrived in Santo Ângelo. Germans, Italians, Poles, Russians, Dutchs, Latvians and many other groups coming from europe. It also was the starting point of the Coluna Prestes, a movement that crossed the country fighting for better social conditions.

During the 20th century, especially between the years of 1930 and 1979, the city showed a big industrial and economic development, coming to almost 90 thousand inhabitants. During the 1980s many emancipations happened, shredding Santo Angelo's territory, and reducing it to less than 10% of the original space. Besides the emancipations, a geral break in the industry caused a lot of emigration.^[3]

In the end of the 1990s the city starts a process of ‘resurrection’. the population that was once 90.000 inhabitants went back into raising, due to the reopening of the industries, and the attraction of news investments.^[3]

It is classified as humid subtropical climate according to the Köppen climate classification (Köppen: Cfa). The highest temperature recorded was 40°C on 20 December 2011. Snow is rare, but frost is common in winter.

• Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German (Germanic origin)
• Mbyá Guaraní language (autochthonous)^[5]

• Carlos María de Alvear (1789-1852), soldier and statesman
• José Goldemberg (born 1928), physicist

• List of municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul

• Official website (in Portuguese)