Santos, Brazil- Soccer/Futebol & Coffee!

SOCCER/FUTBOL- We visited the Santos Futebol Club (SFC), famous for many generations of famous futbol players and hundreds of trophies, which we saw in the museum in the stadium.

In 1912 (with the strength of coffee production and commerce here), the economy supported building the highly successful SFC. Sportsmen and investors: Raimundo Marques, Mário Ferraz de Campos and Argemiro de Souza Júnior, promoted an assembly to form a team to represent the town at the most important competitions. The "Alvinegro" ("white-black", the club's nickname) won their first game 3 to 0. The rest was history. When Pele joined the sport and the team in 1955 at 15 years old, th egame totally changed and the team's fame rose. Of course, a major focus of the museum was PELE and his 1,279 goals in 1,363 games!!!!

COFFEE- Santos has a long and intimate relationship with coffee as is clear when you enter their 1922 massive coffee exchange building of the Economy Department of the State of Sao Paulo. The building now tells the story of the history of coffee thru displays of 2000+ coffee related instruments , has coffee seminars, barista training, see stained glass by Benedicto Calixto on the ceiling, and the floor where the price of coffee was negotiated daily and thousands of historical documents. Note: the interesting beautiful Star of David on the floor of the main trading center and auction hall has been an interesting addition, there since the building was built while also showcasing a religious Christian stained glass ceiling.

In the 1700s, coffee began to be cultivated in Brazil by farmers from Pará and other provinces of the North and Northeast, with little focus on exporting. Around 1760, coffee arrived in Rio de Janeiro, where there was more fertile soil. In the following decades, coffee plantations spread to São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo. In Rio de Janeiro, part of the existing structure of the sugar crop is used in coffee production.

Prior to the consolidation of railroads, the transportation of coffee from the countryside to the port was done by troops of mules, covering 20 miles a day. With the growing international demand for the product, a faster, more secure, cheap and effective means of transportation became pressing for linking the areas of coffee production with the two exporting ports in Rio de Janeiro and Santos. In the late 1800s the industrial revolution in the US prompted production to grow as did the International distribution.Read more