Brasília & the Central West

The plateau and wetlands were long home to many Indigenous peoples: the Bororo and Xavante in Mato Grosso, the Southern Kayapó in Goiás, and in the south the horse-riding Guaicuru, the Terena and the Guarani. The Portuguese arrived through the bandeiras, slaving and prospecting expeditions from São Paulo. Gold found near Cuiabá around 1718 and in Goiás in the 1720s created mining towns such as Vila Boa, now Goiás Velho, and Pirenópolis, worked largely by enslaved Africans.

When the gold ran out, the region became a thinly settled cattle frontier. Paraguay invaded southern Mato Grosso in 1864 at the start of the Paraguayan War, and fighting there left bitter memories on both sides. In the early 20th century the Mato Grosso-born army officer Cândido Rondon strung telegraph lines across the west and became the first director of the Indian Protection Service, created in 1910 under pressure from him. Under Getúlio Vargas's "March to the West", Goiás built a new planned capital, Goiânia, in the 1930s.

The great change came with Brasília. President Juscelino Kubitschek carried out a long-standing constitutional plan to move the capital inland, and the city, laid out by Lúcio Costa with buildings by Oscar Niemeyer, was inaugurated in 1960. The Xingu Indigenous Park was created in Mato Grosso the following year. Mato Grosso do Sul was split off from Mato Grosso in 1977. From the 1970s, research that made the acidic cerrado soils fertile opened the region to soya, maize and cotton on a vast scale. In 1987 a radioactive caesium source scavenged from an abandoned clinic in Goiânia caused one of the world's worst radiation accidents, and on 8 January 2023 rioters stormed the Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace in Brasília.

This is Brazil's cowboy country, and its dominant sound is sertanejo, the country music born of rural duos with the ten-string viola caipira and now the most popular genre in Brazil, with Goiânia known for its many sertanejo singers and duos. Rodeos, cattle fairs and agricultural shows fill the calendar of the farming towns. Brasília, by contrast, is a city of migrants from every state, and in the 1980s it produced a wave of rock bands, among them Legião Urbana and Capital Inicial.

Old Catholic festivals survive in the colonial towns. Pirenópolis stages the Cavalhadas during its Festa do Divino, when masked riders re-enact battles between Christians and Moors, and in Goiás Velho the Procissão do Fogaréu fills the streets with hooded torch-bearers during Holy Week. Around Cuiabá, the siriri and cururu dances and the viola de cocho, a small guitar carved from a single log, are prized local traditions.

Mato Grosso do Sul looks towards Paraguay: tereré, cold yerba mate drunk from a shared horn cup, is a daily ritual, polka paraguaia is danced, and Guarani words mix into local speech. Campo Grande also has a large community descended from Okinawan immigrants. The Chapada dos Veadeiros around Alto Paraíso has drawn mystics and alternative communities, and the Vale do Amanhecer, a syncretic spiritual community near Planaltina, is one of Brasília's stranger sights.

About 17 million people live in the region. The Federal District has around 2.8 million, most of them in satellite cities rather than the original Plano Piloto; Goiânia has about 1.4 million, Campo Grande around 900,000 and Cuiabá about 650,000. Anápolis, Rondonópolis, Dourados and Sinop are growing farming and trading centres.

Brasília runs on government: ministries, courts, embassies and the services around them make incomes in the Federal District the highest in Brazil. Elsewhere agribusiness dominates. Mato Grosso is Brazil's leading producer of soya, cotton and cattle, and trucks carry grain along the BR-163 highway north towards Amazon river ports. Goiás adds pharmaceuticals and food processing, and the Pantanal lives on cattle ranching and nature tourism.

Farm expansion has cleared much of the cerrado, the continent's most biodiverse savanna, and scientists warn of the effect on rivers that rise there. The Pantanal suffered record fires in 2020 and severe ones again in 2024, linked to drought and to deliberately set fires, burning large areas of wetland and killing many animals. In Mato Grosso do Sul, disputes between Guarani-Kaiowá communities seeking recognition of ancestral lands and farmers holding title to them have led to repeated violence.

Goiás cooks with pequi, a strongly scented yellow cerrado fruit whose flesh surrounds a spiny stone, which must not be bitten. It goes into arroz com pequi and chicken stews. Empadão goiano is a large pie filled with chicken, pork sausage, cheese and hearts of palm, pamonha is a sweet or savoury paste of fresh maize steamed in its husk, and galinhada is a rice-and-chicken dish coloured with saffron-like turmeric.

Mato Grosso's rivers supply pacu, pintado and other freshwater fish, fried, grilled or made into pirão de peixe, a fish broth thickened with cassava flour. Maria Isabel, rice with dried beef, is common, and furrundu is a sweet of green papaya cooked with rapadura, unrefined cane sugar. Cattle country means churrasco, and Pantanal cowhands cook arroz carreteiro, rice with shredded dried beef.

In Mato Grosso do Sul the Paraguayan influence shows in chipa, cheese bread rings, and sopa paraguaia, which despite its name is a savoury cornbread with cheese and onion. Campo Grande's Okinawan heritage produced sobá, a noodle soup with pork, egg and spring onions served at the Feira Central. Baru, a nut from a cerrado tree, is sold roasted as a snack, and tereré is drunk everywhere.

Brasília's Monumental Axis lines up Niemeyer's key works: the twin towers and bowls of the National Congress, the Planalto Palace on the Praça dos Três Poderes, the Itamaraty Palace with its water gardens, and the crown-shaped Metropolitan Cathedral. The TV Tower has a viewing deck, the Palácio da Alvorada stands beside Lake Paranoá, and the Santuário Dom Bosco glows blue inside.

In Goiás, the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, reached from Alto Paraíso and the village of São Jorge, has canyons, waterfalls and the eroded rocks of the Vale da Lua, just outside the park. Goiás Velho keeps its gold-era churches and the Casa de Cora Coralina, and Pirenópolis has cobbled streets and waterfalls around it. Caldas Novas is a hot-spring resort, and the Emas National Park protects open grasslands.

In Mato Grosso, the Chapada dos Guimarães National Park has the Véu de Noiva waterfall, sandstone formations and the cliff-top viewpoints near Cuiabá. The northern Pantanal is seen along the Transpantaneira from Poconé to Porto Jofre, where boats search the rivers for jaguars.

In Mato Grosso do Sul, Bonito's clear rivers, such as the Rio da Prata, are floated with a snorkel, while the Gruta do Lago Azul holds a blue underground lake and the Buraco das Araras is a vast sinkhole named after its macaws. The southern Pantanal is explored from lodges around Miranda and the Estrada Parque, with Corumbá on the Paraguay river as the gateway town.