Qualla: Rondonópolis https://qualla.com/rondonopolis en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:25:05 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/1/4/rondonopolis-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Rondonópolis https://qualla.com/rondonopolis Rondonópolis: Introduction https://qualla.com/rondonopolis/ Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fly low over the farmland southeast of Cuiabá and you will start to notice them: small clusters of buildings marooned in soybeans, each ringed by a stand of trees, most of them empty. They were villages once — built by ranch owners for the workers a labour-intensive cattle operation required, complete with their own schools and clinics. Mechanization made them unnecessary and the soy came in around them. They still stand, wooded islands in a green sea that runs to the horizon. This is the country around Rondonópolis, the third-largest municipality in Mato Grosso, 244,911 people according to the 2022 census, and the place where Brazil's agricultural interior finally reaches a railhead.

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/1/4/rondonopolis-wp/6v14-rondon-polis-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Rondonópolis: The Man Who Strung the Wire https://qualla.com/rondonopolis/ Photo credit Trabalho próprio (Own Work): Pedro Spoladore, CC BY-SA 2.5. Between 1907 and 1909 an expedition led by Cândido Rondon crossed this region laying telegraph line, part of the vast project of wiring Brazil's interior to its coast. Rondon was a soldier and explorer of indigenous descent whose commission operated under one of the more remarkab...

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Image: Trabalho próprio (Own Work): Pedro Spoladore | CC BY-SA 2.5

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/1/4/rondonopolis-wp/6v14-rondon-polis-the-man-who-strung-the-wire.mp3 0:06 2 full Rondonópolis: Red River https://qualla.com/rondonopolis/ Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before Rondon there was the Vermelho — the red river — and the people who lived along it. The Bororo occupied this stretch of the upper Paraguay watershed long before any of it appeared on a Brazilian map, and their presence shaped the late-19th-century occupation as much as the ...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/1/4/rondonopolis-wp/6v14-rondon-polis-red-river.mp3 0:06 3 full Rondonópolis: A New Gold Rush, Measured in Bushels https://qualla.com/rondonopolis/ Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. Prospectors did eventually find something worth the trip, but it was in the soil rather than under it. Soybeans transformed this part of Mato Grosso so completely that locals describe the boom in the language of the old gold rushes, and the migration patterns bear the comparison ...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/1/4/rondonopolis-wp/6v14-rondon-polis-a-new-gold-rush-measured-in-bushels.mp3 0:06 4 full Rondonópolis: Where the Rails Stop https://qualla.com/rondonopolis/ Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. For decades the fundamental problem of Mato Grosso agriculture was distance. Grain grown here had to travel by truck down BR-163 to ports more than a thousand kilometers away, and freight cost eroded the advantage that cheap land and good yields provided. The rail terminal that o...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/1/4/rondonopolis-wp/6v14-rondon-polis-where-the-rails-stop.mp3 0:06 5 full Rondonópolis: Red Cliffs and the Road to the Pantanal https://qualla.com/rondonopolis/ Photo credit Orleansvg, CC BY-SA 4.0. It would be easy to picture Rondonópolis as nothing but flat cropland, and wrong. The city sits on cerrado tableland cut by deep gorges, with buttes and mesas standing out of the plain in bands of red rock. The 6,422-hectare Dom Osório Stoffel State Park, created in 2002, protect...

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]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/v/1/4/rondonopolis-wp/6v14-rondon-polis-red-cliffs-and-the-road-to-the-pantanal.mp3 0:06 6 full