Rio repubican history

Imperial Period
After independence, the city became the capital of the Empire of Brazil.  The provincial agriculture was enriched not only with the sugar cane fields of the region, but particularly with the new cultivation of coffee in the Paraíba Valley.

In order to separate the province from the capital of the Empire, the city was converted, in the year of 1834, to a neutral city, though the province of Rio de Janeiro has Niterói as its capital.

As the country’s political center, the “Rio” concentrated the life and political party of the empire. Main stages were the Republican and abolitionist movements in the half end of the nineteenth century.  During the Old Republic, with the decadence of their coffee fields the state lost political power to Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais.

Republican Period
As the Proclamation of the Republic, in the last decades of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, Rio de Janeiro faced serious social problems arising from rapid and disorderly growth. With the decline of slavery, the city began to receive large numbers of European immigrants and former slaves attracted by the opportunities for employment. Between 1872 and 1890, its population doubled from 274 thousand to 522 thousand inhabitants.
The increase of poverty worsened the housing crisis, a constant feature of urban life in the River since the mid-nineteenth century. The epicenter of the crisis was still, and increasingly, the central core – the Old Town and its surroundings – where the houses multiplied and collective violence erupted.  The epidemics of yellow fever, smallpox, and cholera gave the city international fame as a dirty port.

Many campaigns of eradication, perpetrated by the governments of the time, were not well received by the population carioca. There were many popular revolts, including the Vaccine Revolt of 1904, which led to unpopular measures such as reform of the urban center, run by engineer Pereira Passos.

Several tenements were demolished, and the poor population of the central region moved to the slopes of hills, to the port area and to Caju, especially the hills of Health and Welfare. The population grew so disorderly, initiating the process of favelizacao.  The governments were not very worried at the time – which did not prevent the adoption of several other urban and health reforms that changed the image of the then capital of the Republic.

This period saw the opening of the Municipal Theater of Rio Branco Avenue, buildings inspired by elements of the Parisian Belle Epoque, and the inauguration, in 1908, of the cable car to Sugar Loaf.  This cable car was one of the landmarks of the Brazilian engineering.

The opening of the old tunnel, which made the connection between Botafogo and Copacabana, led to the occupation of the southern region.  The appearance of the Copacabana Palace, in 1923, started the process of occupation and tourism in the region, which experienced a population explosion. The Christ the Redeemer was inaugurated in 1931, becoming one of the major pictures on postcards of Rio and Brazil.

After the transfer of the Federal Capital to Brasilia in 1960, the River was transformed into a city-state with the name of Guanabara. On March 15, 1975 Guanabara was merged with the former state of Rio de Janeiro, and July 23 promulgated the Constitution of Rio de Janeiro.

In 1992, Rio de Janeiro hosted the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCTAD).  Also known as Rio-92, or ECO-92, it was the first international meeting of weight to be held after the end of the Cold War, with the presence of Delegations from 175 countries.

It was the seat of the Pan-American Games of 2007, during which time it invested in sports facilities (including construction of the new Joao Havelange Stadium), transportation, public safety and urban infrastructure.