Porto Alegre was the first city taken in a war to leave Brazil.
On September 20, 1835, a rancher named Bento Gonçalves rode into the capital with armed horsemen and seized it.
The empire mocked the rebels as "farrapos," meaning rags, after the frayed leather the cowboys wore, and the rebels kept the name.
In 1836 they declared their own country, the Riograndense Republic, and Britain, France, and Uruguay recognized it.
A young Italian sailor named Giuseppe Garibaldi crossed the ocean to fight for them, met his wife Anita during the war, and later went home to help unify Italy.
The fighting ran until 1845, the longest armed conflict in Brazilian history.
Rio Grande do Sul went back into Brazil.
The flag stayed.
Those colors still fly over the state, and September 20 is still a holiday here.
Two hours up the mountain road sits Gramado, settled in 1875 and then filled with German and Italian families who rebuilt the homes they had left behind.
The town sits high enough that the air turns cold, the pines grow thick, and hydrangeas line the roads.
Next door in Canela, the Caracol waterfall drops 131 meters off a wall of dark volcanic rock, with 730 wooden steps running down to the base.
Every December, Gramado lights up for Natal Luz, the biggest Christmas festival in Brazil, drawing around 1.5 million people into a town of about 40,000.
The shops sell chocolate, the kitchens serve fondue, and the squares pass a shared gourd of hot mate tea called chimarrão.
The land that once fought to leave Brazil now grows around 70 percent of its rice and around 90 percent of its wine.
It never stopped flying its own flag.
📍 Rio Grande do Sul
Everyone felt sad for the penguin walking alone and the monkey rejected by his mother. But this video is far more heartbreaking, yet it didn’t receive the same attention.
> esqueça o sonho americano
> eu quero o sonho italiano
> almoço de 3 horas
> tomar banho de sol pelado
> pão e massa que dão pra comer de verdade
> comida com literalmente só 4 ingredientes
> cochilo da tarde sagrado
> vinho que não te dá dor de cabeça porque não tem 76 aditivos químicos
> ficar sentado sem fazer absolutamente nada o dia inteiro
> os caras zeraram a vida
> e a gente aqui se matando na corrida dos ratos