Cabo Verde

Cabo Verde lies in the forested uplands of southern Minas Gerais, where the Mantiqueira escarpment separates the São Francisco basin from routes descending toward the Paraíba do Sul. Puri communities inhabited this broken country before Portuguese expansion. The later settlement grew at a crossroads of ridges and streams, with high ground offering cooler conditions and reliable springs.

The presence of gold drew prospectors into southern Minas Gerais in the eighteenth century. Veríssimo João de Carvalho founded an arraial here in 1762, and by 1766 a chapel dedicated to Nossa Senhora do Rosário do Cabo Verde had become the focus of a growing village. The Rosary dedication connected the settlement to lay brotherhoods widespread in Minas Gerais, where enslaved and free Black residents organized religious life and communal identity.

Mining gave way to subsistence farming, cattle and small commerce as the richest alluvial gold declined. Coffee cultivation expanded across the uplands in the final decades of the period, supported by enslaved labor and by routes toward Rio de Janeiro. The chapel remained the center of an expanding parish whose name carried the memory of an early prospecting camp.