OURO BRANCO MG EP 32

The Caraça mountain range is a section of the Espinhaço mountain range located in the municipalities of Catas Altas and Santa Bárbara, with the Caraça Sanctuary being a heritage site of Catas Altas, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It also gives its name to the former Caraça College, where important figures in Brazilian history studied. Today, the area, still known as Caraça Natural Park or Caraça Sanctuary Complex, is a Private Natural Heritage Reserve (RPPN) that encompasses the entire region.[1][2][3][4][5] The official name of the complex is the Sanctuary of Our Lady Mother of Men, but Caraça has this nickname due to the shape of part of the mountain range, which resembles the face of a reclining giant. The mountain range forms an immense elongated amphitheater, with the three peaks of the Trindade hill, the Conceição hill; to the south, the Olaria and Canjerana mountain ranges, the Inficionado mountain range, the Sol hill, and the Carapuça mountain range. A four-kilometer-wide amphitheater, with gently undulating, forested terrain. The basin's waters descend in beautiful mountain waterfalls, such as Cascatinha, Cascatona, and Bocaina. These waterfalls are fed by the Caraça stream, whose waters are intensely ferruginous. In Caraça there are two lakes, Tanque Grande, surrounded by woods, and Tanque São Luís. Milton Nascimento's album, Missa dos Quilombos, was recorded live in March 1982 on the premises of the Nossa Senhora Mãe dos Homens Church. History of the Caraça Mountain Range Ranch at the foot of the Caraça Mountain Range, illustration from the beginning of the 19th century The first records about the Caraça Mountain Range date from 1700. In that year, the mountain range was granted as a land grant to Father Filipe de Siqueira Távora, and to the miners Domingos Borges and Antônio Bueno and Francisco Bueno who, with their other brothers, came to mine gold on its slopes.[6] The Caraça Hermitage In the second half of the 18th century, a mysterious character, known as Brother Lourenço de Nossa Senhora, settled in the mountain range, aiming to found a hermitage, in order to strengthen religious life in the interior of the captaincy. It is assumed that the mysterious religious figure, a lay brother of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Penance, was a Portuguese political refugee linked to the famous "Távora Revolt," an assassination attempt against King José I of Portugal, which was brutally suppressed by Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the celebrated Marquis of Pombal.[6] In his will, Brother Lourenço declares himself a native of the area where the Távora family held an entailed estate, São João da Pesqueira, and its symbolism is evident: Caraça, according to old Portuguese dictionaries, means a balcony where people were burned, and the name Lourenço is that of a saint who died at the stake.[6] What is certain is that in a short time, Brother Lourenço managed, not without the help of the colonial government, to build a monastery and a church in the Baroque style, completed in 1779, as well as to gather around him a religious community that came to include 12 hermits. Since then, Caraça has become a place of pilgrimage. Brother Lourenço died in 1819, leaving his foundation as an inheritance to King Dom João VI.[6] Around 1978, the Congregation of the Mission signed an agreement with the Brazilian Foundation for Nature Conservation and, in 1982, with the Brazilian Institute for Forest Development (current Ibama), when the territory belonging to the former college was designated as a natural park. This agreement, however, lasted only about five years, returning to the responsibility of its owners. This territory was transformed into a Private Natural Heritage Reserve through Decree 98,914, of January 31, 1990, and attracts researchers from all over the country given the surprising variety of animal and plant life in the region. The current park comprises an area of ​​11,233 hectares where the ecosystems of the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado coexist, characterizing it as a transition area. 57% (5,845 hectares) of the RPPN is located in the municipality of Catas Altas and 43% (4,343 hectares) in Santa Bárbara. Its altitude varies between 720 and 2,070 meters above sea level, with emphasis on the so-called Pico do Sol, considered the highest point in the region and the Serra do Espinhaço. According to some geologists, the Serra do Caraça presents the oldest non-fossilized planation surface in the country. Among the species studied in the park, more than two hundred species of orchids were identified, in addition to specimens of candeias, macaúba, angico, yellow ipê, among others. This plant diversity supports a similarly varied fauna, home to at least 274 species of birds (hummingbirds, seriemas, yellow-breasted toucans, and others) and 65 species of mammals such as marmosets, howler monkeys, coatis, pumas, foxes, tapirs, pacas, the lesser anteater, and the maned wolf, among ot...