Congonhas is a municipality in central Minas Gerais, Brazil. Its municipal seat grew during the gold rush of the early eighteenth century and became a regional pilgrimage center after construction of the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos began in 1757. The municipality covers and had 52,890 residents in the 2022 census.
Above the older part of the town, the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos brings together an eighteenth-century church, a terraced forecourt lined with twelve soapstone prophets, and chapels containing polychrome sculptural groups from the Passion of Christ. Much of the sculpture was made by Antônio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho, with members of his workshop. UNESCO inscribed the sanctuary on the World Heritage List in 1985, recognizing the architectural and sculptural complex as an exceptional achievement of Baroque art in Latin America. Pilgrimage remains part of the town's character. The annual Jubilee of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, held each September, brings worshippers from Minas Gerais and other states to the sanctuary.
Congonhas later became one of the iron-mining centers of the Iron Quadrangle. Large-scale extraction expanded after the Casa de Pedra mine was incorporated into Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional in the 1940s and grew sharply again in the early twenty-first century. CSN Mineração and Vale operate mines in the municipality, and extractive industries accounted for about 40 percent of formal employment in 2021. Mining has brought high levels of industrial output and employment, while open pits, waste piles and mining structures occupy extensive areas around the town and its waterways.
Toponymy
The name "Congonhas" comes from congonha, a shrub once common in the fields around the town. Tea made from its leaves was used in the region before Portuguese settlement.
Linguist Eduardo de Almeida Navarro traces the plant name to the southern língua geral, with Guarani influence. The related form congõi occurs in Antonio Ruiz de Montoya's 1639 Tesoro de la lengua guaraní, a Classical Guarani–Spanish dictionary.
History
Gold mining and early settlement
Settlement began around 1700 as gold mining spread through central Minas Gerais. Mining camps grew beside streams and along roads used by people and goods moving between the mining districts. The present municipality grew from three colonial settlements: Congonhas do Campo, Soledade, now Lobo Leite, and Redondo, now Alto Maranhão. All three stood along routes through the mining country of central Minas Gerais.
Congonhas do Campo grew on the banks of the Ribeirão das Congonhas, later called the Maranhão River. Gold was worked in the watercourses and on nearby slopes, largely with enslaved labor. The river also formed part of the boundary between the comarcas of Ouro Preto and Rio das Mortes. The parish church side belonged to Ouro Preto, while Matosinhos on the opposite bank belonged to Rio das Mortes. The division persisted into the nineteenth century, when travelers still described the two sides as separate settlements.
A parish dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Conceição was established during the first half of the eighteenth century, although the surviving dates for its creation differ. Congonhas do Campo became a district on 6 November 1746 and remained part of Ouro Preto.
Enslaved people and the Rosário brotherhood
Gold mining relied on enslaved labor. The Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos was already in use by 1729, when a baptism was celebrated there. Its construction date is uncertain, but the church was built by enslaved people from Congonhas and the surrounding mining area.
The Irmandade de Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Congonhas do Campo included enslaved and free Black members and organized worship around devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary. It belonged to a wider group of Black Catholic confraternities established in the parishes around Vila Rica. Congonhas had a Rosário chaplain by 1748. In 1784, the brotherhood hired João Nepomuceno Correia de Castro to paint the chapel ceiling and carry out other work on the building.
Members of the brotherhood were buried beneath the church floor until their remains were transferred to the Nossa Senhora da Conceição cemetery during a later renovation. Among the church's images are Saint Benedict and Saint Iphigenia, saints with a long history of devotion among Black Catholics. The Rosário church later became a gathering place for Congado celebrations in Congonhas.
Sanctuary and pilgrimage
Across the Maranhão River, Matosinhos grew around the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos. In 1757, the Portuguese miner Feliciano Mendes began collecting donations for a sanctuary dedicated to Bom Jesus de Matosinhos after recovering from a serious illness. He obtained permission for the project and continued collecting money until his death in 1765. Religious services were already being held there while the church was under construction.
Donations from pilgrims and residents paid for work on the sanctuary. The church, forecourt and chapels were built and decorated in stages through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Jubilee of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos received papal authorization in 1779, and the first official celebration followed in 1780. As gold production declined, pilgrims continued to arrive from other parts of Minas Gerais.
Around the turn of the nineteenth century, Antônio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho, and members of his workshop made the sculptural groups depicting the Passion of Christ and the twelve soapstone prophets that stand before the church. The sanctuary was largely complete by the early nineteenth century. Pilgrims continued to come to Congonhas after the gold boom had passed.
Nineteenth century
As the older gold workings declined, ironmaking began nearby. In 1811, German engineer Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege established the Fábrica Patriótica at Prata, near Congonhas do Campo. Iron production began in 1812, and the works remained active until 1831. It was the first ironworks in Brazil to produce iron on an industrial scale. The site is now within the municipality of Ouro Preto, although nineteenth-century writing often referred to it as being at Congonhas do Campo.
Lazarist priests arrived in 1827 to administer the sanctuary. They opened a seminary and a school, bringing students and clergy into the town. Farms around Congonhas grew food and sugar cane and raised livestock, while small-scale gold mining continued.
By the late nineteenth century, Congonhas was still a small town whose streets clustered around its churches and pilgrimage routes, with farms extending beyond the built-up area.
Railway and municipal formation
Iron extraction at Casa de Pedra began before Congonhas became a municipality. Danish investor Arn Kirstein Thun acquired the property in 1911, and production began in 1913 using largely manual methods.
The Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil reached Congonhas in 1914. The station opened on 14 November. By 1917, the Paraopeba line connected the town with Belo Horizonte and with railway routes toward Rio de Janeiro.
Congonhas do Campo remained a district of Ouro Preto until 1923, when it was transferred to Queluz, later renamed Conselheiro Lafaiete. It became a municipality on 17 December 1938, initially comprising Congonhas do Campo and Lobo Leite.
Federal protection of the older town followed soon afterward. The Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos received federal heritage protection in 1939, and the architectural and urban ensemble around the old town was protected in 1941.
Alto Maranhão was transferred from Conselheiro Lafaiete to Congonhas do Campo in 1943. The municipality took the shorter name Congonhas in 1948.
Industrial mining and urban growth
Iron mining expanded quickly after World War II. The Casa de Pedra mine was incorporated into the state-owned Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional in 1946 to supply iron ore to its steelworks at Volta Redonda. Jobs at the mine drew new residents to Congonhas and extended the built-up area beyond the older settlement around the churches and railway.
CSN built about 500 houses near Casa de Pedra. Vila Rica housed engineers, while Vila Operária housed other employees. Schools, a hospital, a cinema and a club served the company settlement. The new neighborhoods extended Congonhas toward the mine, away from the older churches and pilgrimage streets.
The population rose with the expansion of mining. Congonhas had 5,572 residents in 1940, 14,699 in 1960 and 30,776 in 1980. A growing share of residents lived in the urban area as the town expanded.
CSN was privatized in 1993. Production at Casa de Pedra increased after privatization as new technology was introduced, and iron extraction expanded again during the early twenty-first century. Pits, processing plants, rail facilities and waste structures spread across large areas around the municipal seat, including sites close to established neighborhoods and the protected colonial town.
Geography
Congonhas covers in central Minas Gerais. It borders Belo Vale and Ouro Preto to the north, Ouro Preto and Ouro Branco to the east, Conselheiro Lafaiete and São Brás do Suaçuí to the south, and Jeceaba to the west. The municipality has three districts: Congonhas, which contains the municipal seat, Alto Maranhão, and Lobo Leite.
Districts
Alto Maranhão and Lobo Leite grew from Redondo and Soledade, two colonial mining settlements that later became part of Congonhas.
Alto Maranhão was formerly called Redondo. It received its present name in 1918, when it still belonged to Queluz, later Conselheiro Lafaiete. The district became part of Congonhas do Campo in 1943. Its Chapel of Nossa Senhora da Ajuda dates to 1746 and received state heritage protection in 1978.
Lobo Leite grew from the mining settlement of Soledade. It was later called Felipe dos Santos before taking the name Lobo Leite in 1926. It became part of Congonhas do Campo when the municipality was established in 1938. The Church of Nossa Senhora da Soledade was built around the eighteenth century and received state heritage protection in 1978.
A railway station opened at Lobo Leite in 1886 on the line later operated by the Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil. Passenger service ended, but freight trains continue to use the line. The Caminho Velho branch of the Estrada Real also passes through the district.
Physical geography
The municipal seat spreads across hilly ground on the two sides of the Maranhão River. Congonhas lies at the southwestern edge of the Iron Quadrangle, where ridges and rounded hills rise above narrow river valleys. The underlying rocks include iron formations, schists, phyllites and granitoids. These iron-bearing rocks contain the ore deposits worked around the municipality, including the Casa de Pedra mine about from the town.
The local geology can also be seen in the older town. Granite and steatite from the region were used in churches, sculpture and street paving. Granite forms structural parts of the façade of the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, while soapstone was used for architectural details and the sculptures on the forecourt. Older streets were paved with rounded stones from stream beds and pieces of soapstone laid over the ground.
The Maranhão River drains most of the municipality and crosses the urban area before joining the Paraopeba River. The Paraopeba runs along the western side of Congonhas and belongs to the São Francisco River basin. The Santo Antônio, Goiabeiras and Soledade streams flow into the Maranhão within the municipality.
Congonhas lies in a transition zone between the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado. Semideciduous forest remains alongside Cerrado vegetation and open grasslands, although mining, pasture, roads and urban expansion have replaced much of the original vegetation.
Climate