Beberibe
State	Ceará Ceará Ceará is one of the 27 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is currently the 8th largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the main touristic destinations in Brazil. The state capital is the city of...
Mesorregião:	Norte Cearense
Microrregião:	Cascavel Cascavel Cascavel is a city and municipality in western Paraná state, Brazil. The population is 296.975 inhabitants.The city is on a plateau 781 meters above sea level...
Area:	1,616.389 km²
Population:	46,439 (est. 2006)
Population Density:	28.7 hab/km²
Mayor:	Marcos de Queiroz Ferreira
Website:	www.beberibe.ce.gov.br
Map

Beberibe is a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 in the state of Ceará

Ceará

Ceará is one of the 27 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is currently the 8th largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the main touristic destinations in Brazil. The state capital is the city of...

 in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

. Its estimated population in 2006 is 46,439.

The current mayor

Mayor

In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....

 (Prefeito) of Beberibe is Marcos de Queiroz Ferreira. His term ends in 2008. The municipality was created on June 5, 1892, and incorporated July 18, 1892. The name 'Beberibe' means "where the sugar cane grows".

Geography

The headquarters of the municipality are located in the town of Beberibe, which is situated about 80 km SE of Fortaleza

Fortaleza

Fortaleza is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. With a population close to 2.5 million , Fortaleza is the 5th largest city in Brazil. It has an area of and one of the highest demographic densities in the country...

, the state capital of Ceará. Near the town of Beberibe, and extending south-east along the coastline, are many magnificent beaches, popular with tourists. Sports such as kitesurfing

Kitesurfing

Kitesurfing or Kiteboarding is an adventure surface water sport that has been described as combining wakeboarding, windsurfing, surfing, paragliding, and gymnastics into one extreme sport. Kitesurfing harnesses the power of the wind to propel a rider across the water on a small surfboard or a...

 are also popular at many of these beaches.

The municipality is divided into several rural districts, aside from the municipal seat of the township of Beberibe. The districts are Parajuru, Paripueira, Itapeim, Sucatinga, and Serra do Félix. The districts are named after the major towns in them.

History

The first register of Beberibe is in 1691, when a small cluster of buildings were built on the "sesmaria" given to Manuel Nogueira Cardoso, Sebastião Dias Freire, João Carvalho Nóbrega and Capitão Domingos Ferreira Chaves.

But it was not until the start of the 19th Century that the village became occupied, when Baltazar Ferreira do Vale, a resident of Riacho Fundo, in Cascavel, and Pedro Queiroz Lima, a resident from the farm of Mirador, in Aquiraz, bought farms there. The farm of Baltazar was suitable for population, and the town of Beberibe developed from there.

The area around Beberibe was originally named Uruanda by the native peoples of Brazil, and Beberibe was the name of the plot of land owned by Brasiliano Ferreira de Araújo, which is currently the site of the city's municipal headquarters. Brasiliano donated some of this land for the construction of the local church, which encouraged rapid growth of the town. The church was inaugurated in 1875, by which time the town was widely known as Beberibe. The Municipality of Beberibe was created in 1892, and fell in the judicial district of Cascavel.

However, the status of Beberibe as a Municipality or a District continually changed up until 1951, when, petitioned by Appeals Court judge Boanerges Facó, the governor Raul Barbosa passed a law establishing Beberibe as a municipality, and the autonomy which came with such a designation. It was not until 1955, however, that the Municipality was officially installed.

Beberibe, as its name origin may suggest, experienced rapid economic growth as a result of the construction of numerous sugar mills in the region. The wealth which was produced by the rapadura

Rapadura

Rapadura is the Portuguese name for a form of sugarcane juice, used as a sweetener or as a candy, common in Latin American countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela and the Caribbean. See also panela...

industry led to the city being nicknamed "Vila Rica" (Rich Town). Many mills have now gone bankrupt, and the rapadura industry declined, so the name no longer applies.