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Alagoas () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil and is situated in the eastern part of the Northeast Region. It borders: Pernambuco (N and NW); Sergipe (S); Bahia (SW); and the Atlantic Ocean (E). Its capital is the city of Maceió. It has 1.6% of the Brazilian population and produces 0.8% of the Brazilian GDP. It is made up of 102 municipalities and its most populous cities are Maceió, Arapiraca, Palmeira dos Índios, Rio Largo, Penedo, União dos Palmares, São Miguel dos Campos, Santana do Ipanema, Delmiro Gouveia, Coruripe, and Campo Alegre.
It is the second smallest Brazilian state in area (larger only than Sergipe) and it is 16th in population. It is also one of the largest producers of sugarcane, , and natural gas in the country. Alagoas also has oil exploration, mostly of onshore deposits.
Initially, the territory of Alagoas constituted the southern part of the Captaincy of Pernambuco and only gained its autonomy in 1817. Its occupation pushed the expansion of the captaincy's sugarcane farming, which required new areas of cultivation, southward. Thus arose Porto Calvo, Alagoas (now Marechal Deodoro) and Penedo, nuclei which guided the colonization, economic, and social life of the region for a long time. The Dutch invasion in Pernambuco was extended to Alagoas in 1631. The invaders were expelled in 1645, after intense fighting in Porto Calvo, leaving the economy in ruins. The escape of African slaves during the Dutch invasion created a serious labour shortage problem on the Engenho. Grouped in villages called , the Africans were only completely dominated at the end of the 17th century with the destruction of the most important quilombo, Palmares.
During the empire, the separatist and republican Confederation of the Equator received the support of noteworthy figures from Alagoas. Throughout the 1840s, political life was marked by the conflict between the lisos (lit. "straights", not the sexual orientation connotation), conservatives, and the cabeludos (), liberals. At the beginning of the 20th century, the region's hinterland lived through the pioneering experience of Delmiro Gouveia, an entrepreneur from Pernambuco who installed the Estrela thread factory, which came to produce 200 spools daily. Delmiro Gouveia was killed in October 1917 in circumstances still unclarified, after being pressured, according to rumor, to sell his factory to competing foreign firms. After his death, his machines would be destroyed and thrown into Paulo Afonso Falls.
Nicknamed the Land of the Marshals ( Terra dos Marechais), for being the birthplace of Deodoro da Fonseca and Floriano Peixoto, the first two presidents of Brazil, Alagoas gave the country numerous illustrious Brazilians among whom are the anthropologist Arthur Ramos, the maestro Hekel Tavares, the philologist Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, the musicians Djavan and Hermeto Pascoal the poet Jorge de Lima, the jurists Pontes de Miranda and Marcos Bernardes de Mello, besides the writers Lêdo Ivo and Graciliano Ramos.
The Portuguese lagoa under the spelling lagona (perhaps lagõna), is documented in the 14th century, and alternated with the other for a long time; the prosthesis is then explained by the introduction of the article, chiefly in locution (na lagoa, vindo da lagoa) ( in the lake, coming from the lake), and for morphologic regularization with the derivatives of the verb alagar ( to inundate) (alagadiço, alagado, alagador, alagamento, etc.) ( swampish, waterlogged, flooding, overflow, etc.).
The name appears as a competitor with the names of the lagoons of Manguaba Lagoon, a lagoa do sul ("the southern lagoon"), and Mundaú, a lagoa do norte ("the northern lagoon"), already in the 16th century, when settlements were founded near the Alagoa do Norte and the Alagoa do Sul, the Alagoas, with the inclusion of the rest of the lagoons in the area. Why Alagoas? Official site of the Civil Cabinet of the State of Alagoas. Pageg visited on August 16, 2011.
The suffix -ano is characteristic of Brazil: paraibano, Pernambuco]], alagoano, Sergipe]], Bahia]], goiano, and later acriano.
Still farther inland lies the Sertão of the Northeast region of the nation. The Sertão is a high dry region dominated by scrub that is often thorn-filled and sometimes toxic, the caatinga. This area and its people are famed in legend and song. It is the land of the cowboy who is clad from head to toe (if he is lucky) with very thick leather to avoid the sharp vegetation.
Initially, in the first years of the 16th century, Alagoas settlement went on slowly, however helped by Africans turned into slaves whose work urged the local economy. In the period of the 16th and 17th centuries, French pirates invaded its territory attracted by the commerce of Paubrasilia.
Some time later, Duarte Coelho, owner of the captaincy of Pernambuco, gave the control of the region back to the Portuguese, running the territory as part of his captaincy. He increased the number of sugar cane plantations and built some sugar mills, as well as founding the cities of Penedo and Alagoas – this last one originally baptized by Portuguese as Santa Maria Madalena da Alagoa do Sul (Saint Mary Magdalene of the Southern Lake), currently the historic heritage town of Deodoro da Fonseca.
In 1570, a second expedition ordered by Duarte Coelho and led by Cristóvão Lins, explored the north of Alagoas and founded the settlement of Porto Calvo and five sugar mills, which two of them still endure, Buenos Aires and Escurial.
In 1630, the territory was taken by the Dutch, whose interest was to manage the commerce of sugarcane in most parts of the northeastern region of Brazil. As part of one of the wealthiest Brazilian captaincies, Alagoas prospered along with the sugar trade. They built Fort Maurits in Penedo, on the river São Francisco. However, the Dutch colonizers abandoned the territory after being defeated in 1646.
Decades before Alagoas was formed in 1817, its sugar industry had 200 mills, and agriculture also involved cotton, tobacco and corn plantations. With Brazilian independence from Portugal in 1822, Alagoas became a province. In 1839, the capital of the province was changed definitively from the town of Alagoas to Maceió, mainly due to the increasing growth of the city because of its port.
Urbanization: 67.4% (2006); Population growth: 1.3% (1991–2000); : 779,000 (2006).Source: PNAD.
The 2022 census revealed the following numbers: 1,887,865 Brown (Multiracial) people (60.4%), 915,400 White Brazilian people (29.3%), 298,709 Afro-Brazilian people (9.6%), 20,095 Amerindian people (0.6%), 5,505 Asian Brazilian people (0.2%).
According to a genetic study from 2013, Brazilians in Alagoas have 53.7% European, 26.6% African and 18.7% Amerindian ancestries, respectively.
The economy has been agriculture, dependent largely on large sugarcane plantations with some tobacco farming that is concentrated around the city of Arapiraca. Sugar cane formed the basis for an alcohol industry that is in decline. Small to medium-sized tanker ships took alcohol on board in Maceio's port with considerable frequency during the peak period. Such loads still take place with less frequency. Another local industry is based on chemical products from brine pumped from deep wells on the outskirts of Maceió.
In the last twenty years the tourism industry has found the beaches and Maceió itself has changed from a rather sleepy little port with coconut palm plantations along its beaches to high-rise hotels. The northern coast, particularly around the towns Maragogi and Japaratinga is beginning to see some of this development in the form of resorts attracting people from the south and from Europe. There is considerable European investment (as of 2007) in beach property north of Maceió with walled compounds of beach homes.
In the new terminal, Infraero also brings to Maceió "Aeroshopping" – a concept that is transforming the country's airports into centers for leisure and high-quality products and services. The entire building has a computerized air conditioning, with commercial spaces that will be occupied gradually. The parking area was more than tripled. Demand will be able to grow to 1.2 million passengers a year since the new passenger terminal has 24,000 square meters, the triple of its former size. The check-in counters were doubled and can reach higher numbers without any structural remodeling. The building is "intelligent", meaning controlled by a computerized system that regulates factors ranging from the lighting level to air temperature and even the speed of the escalators. This system also controls access to restricted areas and the fire protection system, among others.
Maceió was one of the 18 candidates to host games of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, for which Brazil was the selected host, but it did not make the final cut.
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