lang="EN-US">The rapid development of the coffee
cultivation brought wealth and progress to the city, which by the 1880s had
become the largest coffee producer in the world. Coffee, the “green gold” as it
was called, was responsible for a kind of “gold rush” in the region, which attracted
workers and adventurous people from several parts of the world. This movement
was helped by the new Mogiana Railway, which linked Ribeirão Preto to São Paulo
and to the port city of Santos, and by the abolition of slavery in Brazil, in
1888. The end of slavery created a strong demand for labor and the “coffee
barons”, as the coffee farmers were called, stimulated European immigration -
mostly from Italy but also from Portugal, Spain and Germany - to Ribeirão
Preto. Later, after the stock market crash of 1929, several of these immigrants
bought the farms from their indebted former employers.
