By State Law No. 1039 of December 12, 1953, the district of
Ipatinga was created, In this period, a new industrial nucleus was being formed with the creation of
Usiminas. Despite the dismemberment, most workers of the steel companies continued to live in Coronel Fabriciano, while tax revenues and most of the social actions promoted by the industries were destined only to neighboring cities, which hosted them. In 1970, the population reached 41,120 inhabitants, rising to 75,701 residents in 1980 and 87,439 people in 1990, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (
IBGE). In 2003, the city reached the 100,000 inhabitants mark, with 103,694 residents according to the 2010 census data.
Administrative evolution By the same law No. 1039 of 1962, Barra Alegre became part of Ipatinga and the district Senador Melo Viana In the 1960s, neighborhoods and housing developments emerged from subdivisions in areas that had previously been occupied by farms and ranches. Amaro Lanari, in contrast, is one of the few planned neighborhoods in the city, having been designed by
Usiminas to house the workers of this company between the 1950s and 1960s. The neighborhoods far from the first housing nuclei were formed more recently, such as
Recanto Verde,
São Vicente, Santa Rita and
Floresta, created in the 1980s; and Caladão, Contente, Santa Inês, Silvio Pereira I and Silvio Pereira II, in the 1990s. This was the largest public housing project in the city since the creation of Sílvio Pereira I and Sílvio Pereira II, in the 1980s. The end of the 2010s was also marked by the direction of a new axis of urban growth in the region between the Caladinho and Sílvio Pereira II neighborhoods.
Politics The first city hall headquarters functioned in the so-called Casa São Geraldo, built by Rubem Siqueira Maia in 1948. It is located in downtown Fabriciano and is occupied by a chain store on Rua Pedro Nolasco. The politician (Maia) lived upstairs and rented the property when he was elected the first mayor, in 1949, and the place also served as a stage for parties and public events. In 1961, the seat of the
Executive was moved to the Sobrado do Armazém, located at the end of Rua Coronel Silvino Pereira, but in 1969 it began to function in its building at Louis Ensch Square, the so-called João Sotero Bragança Building. Behind this the Paço Municipal was built, which became the seat of the government after the inauguration of the new building on April 30, 2021. The headquarter of the City Council of Coronel Fabriciano was completely consumed by a fire in 1988, causing several changes of (temporary) headquarters in the following years. However, in 2020, the project to build its headquarters for the City Council of Coronel Fabriciano in the Santa Helena neighborhood was initiated. The County of Coronel Fabriciano, in turn, was installed on April 3, 1955, and its forum existed in a rented building until 1966 when it was transferred to the Doutor Louis Ensch Forum, whose name honored the former president of the local branch of
ArcelorMittal. In 1999, the building was re-inaugurated and renamed the Forum Doutor Orlando Milanez, in honor of the city's first public prosecutor and because other public buildings already bear the name "Dr. Louis Ensch." There are no records of extreme violence in the political history of Coronel Fabriciano, the only scandal being the buying of votes and exchange of packed lunches for votes between the 1950s and 1960s. Even with the emancipation processes of
Ipatinga and
Timóteo, in 1962, there was little that could be done in the face of strong pressure from politicians and businessmen from the former districts. The Ipatinga Massacre, however, which occurred on October 7, 1963, in the district that was about to be emancipated, marked the peak of the repression by the State. The massacre occurred against the Usiminas working class in search for better work conditions. On this date, thousands of striking workers were in front of the gates of the Usiminas steel mill, stripped by a heavy search the day before, in which milk and food could not be taken home, leading the
Military Police armed with machine guns in trucks to open fire on the workers. An estimated 8 to 80 were dead and some 3,000 wounded. A three-day rebellion ensued, with the destruction of the local police station, the public jail, and company property. Before the
1964 coup, the most representative parties in Coronel Fabriciano were the Social Democratic Party (
PSD), the National Democratic Union (
UDN), and the Brazilian Labor Party (
PTB). who also continued another four of twelve consecutive years of Workers' Party (
PT) mandates at the head of the city government. On June 20, 2013, about 3,000 people walked the entire Avenida Magalhães Pinto to the city center, extending to the Caladinho neighborhood region, as part of the
protests in Brazil that year. The main claim at the municipal level was the sluggishness of public works. In the 2016 elections, the victory of Marcos Vinícius da Silva Bizarro (PSDB), reaffirmed with his reelection in the 2020 election with 83.75% approval, put an end to the sequence of PT mandates in the mayor's office. The current Pedro Nolasco Street, which already represented the main commercial center of the city, favored by the stops of the
EFVM passenger trains that brought hundreds of consumers from other cities every day, was also established as the main stop for the urban and interurban public transportation buses. In the 1950s, the first cab services appeared, many of which transported Acesita's directors and were concentrated at points near the railway station. In the mid-1960s, many bus companies were created, that became responsible for connecting the central region, Melo Viana and Caladinho; Coronel Fabriciano, Ipatinga and Timóteo. Until the construction of MG-4 in the 1950s, later annexed to
BR-381, access to João Monlevade was via a dirt road that passed through Dionísio, with a total length of 100 km, compared to 60 km after the opening of the highway. At that time the increase in the automobile fleet implied the need to create roads and increase the availability of parking lots. In the 1950s, the city's first bus terminal was built, located in the Giovannini neighborhood, in an area donated by Alberto Giovannini. In 1958, the Commercial, Industrial and Services Association of Coronel Fabriciano (ACICEL) was created and, complementing its activities, the Chamber of Shopkeepers (CDL) was created in 1963. The effervescence of commerce in the central region culminated, as of the 1990s, in the exhaustion of lots and properties for sale and the subsequent overvaluation of real estate in surrounding neighborhoods, such as Santa Helena,
Professores and Todos os Santos. Consequently, commercial and residential investors increasingly migrated to the neighborhoods of the Senador Melo Viana district, which started to show higher growth rates than the city. From then on there was a considerable increase in business activity in the inner city neighborhoods. In 1995, the first companies were installed in the Industrial District, in the Belvedere neighborhood, initially comprising around 40 companies from different branches and a total area of 182,970 m2, later restructured by the Minas Gerais State Economic Development Company (Codemig). At the beginning of the 21st century, the discovery of precious and semi-precious stones, such as
aquamarine,
tourmaline,
quartz,
topaz,
garnet, and
graphite, made it possible to start and legalize mineral extraction in the municipality. With the strong growth of the region, the political boundaries between the municipalities became ineffective, and in 1998, the
Vale do Aço ("Steel Valley") was formed, which was elevated to the category of metropolitan region on January 12, 2006, involving Coronel Fabriciano and the cities of Ipatinga,
Santana do Paraíso and Timóteo, besides the other 24 municipalities of the metropolitan ring. The maintenance of the steelmaking activity contributed to the creation of the metropolitan region, which corresponds to one of the main urban poles of the state, although commerce and services remain the main economic sources in Coronel Fabriciano. Since then renovations or even rebuilding began to be speculated, but only in December 2017, after two failed bids, did the latter win a bid. The bridge reopened and was cleared for regular traffic on January 20, 2020.
Infrastructure and communications The unbridled population growth contrasted by the dismemberment of the industrial areas of
Aperam South America (former Acesita) and Usiminas, which were responsible for the receipt of tax revenues and social actions, culminated in an urban growth of the municipality that was not accompanied by economic and social development. According to statistics from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in 2010, 19.7% of the population lived in slums, approximately 21 thousand inhabitants, being the largest portion of inhabitants living in such conditions among the municipalities of
Minas Gerais. Tragedies such as the
1979 floods, which flooded a large part of the urban perimeter due to the overflowing Piracicaba river; the December 15, 2005 storms, which caused floods and landslides throughout the city and left it in a state of emergency; the 2013 rain season, with floods and mudslides that displaced dozens of people and left neighborhoods and entire streets covered in mud; and the floods of January 2020, with a balance of 420 residents displaced, three homeless and one dead, show that the city is still subject to the forces of nature. Since the 1960s, electricity has been provided by the Companhia Energética de Minas Gerais (
Cemig), which supplied more than 99% of the municipality at the beginning of the 21st century. Also in the 1960s, the Companhia de Saneamento de Minas Gerais (
Copasa) became responsible for water supply and sewage collection. The agency inaugurated in September 2001 the Coronel Fabriciano water treatment station, located in the Amaro Lanari neighborhood, where since then the water supplied to the city and a vast part of the
Vale do Aço Metropolitan area is extracted and treated. On March 18, 1968,
Rádio Educadora was created, the first radio station in Fabriciano and the entire Vale do Aço area, initially having only amplitude modulation (AM). Among the periodicals, besides the newspaper
O Progresso (1948), which was the first to be created in the then district of Coronel Fabriciano and collaborated with the fomentation of political force, As for television stations, the most successful one locally is
InterTV dos Vales, created in 2007 as an affiliate of
RecordTV, later becoming affiliated with
TV Globo in 2008.
Health Due to the dense forest and the climate, the incidence of tropical diseases was common in the region, leading to the opening of the first hospital, the Siderúrgica Hospital, built in the 1930s. After victimizing thousands of people in the region,
malaria was eradicated at the end of the 1940s, at the same time that a
tuberculosis epidemic was emerging. Diarrhea was also constant since there was no drinkig water. In the early 1960s, the former district clerk, José Zacarias Roque, promoted the creation of a cemetery on the banks of the Piracicaba River, but the project was disapproved by the mayor Raimundo Alves de Carvalho due to the proximity to the old bohemian area. The privately owned Vale da Saudade Cemetery is the city's other cemetery and was built between 2000 and 2006, located in the Todos os Santos neighborhood. After being managed by the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, the Siderúrgica Hospital, in turn, came to be governed by the Associação Beneficente de Saúde São Sebastião. It closed, however, due to financial problems. This mobilized the Union, the state, and the City Hall, and on September 15, it was decided that the Beneficent Society São Camilo would be the new maintainer. In May 2012, the state health secretariat announced that the hospital would be reopened after undergoing renovations, under the name "São Camilo" Hospital. The contract with the São Camilo network came to an end in May 2017, when the municipal administration announced to take over the management of the hospital, which was renamed
Doutor José Maria Morais Hospital. The same management also inaugurated the Emergency Care Unit (UPA) Doutor Walter Luiz Winter Maia in the Sílvio Pereira II neighborhood on June 25, 2020. The city faced, especially between the 1990s and 2000s, a considerable reduction in the rates of malnutrition, infant mortality, and early pregnancy. In 2000, 17.2% of all children who were weighed by the
Family Health Program were malnourished, while in 2012 this index was 0.7%. In 1998, the infant mortality rate was 28.5 deaths per thousand live births, while in 2012 the rate was 17.4. The percentage of children born to adolescent mothers fell from 16.5% in 2001 to 13.3% in 2011. On the other hand, following the trend that was once restricted to large centers and has become a reality in much of the interior of Brazil, in 1990, one case of
AIDS was identified in the municipality, with 15 records in 1997 and 16 in 2006. In 2020, Coronel Fabriciano felt the impacts of the
COVID-19 pandemic. On March 15, the municipality registered its first case, which was also the fifth in the state. As a preventive and preparatory measure, commerce was paralyzed for five days in March, while classes and events remained suspended for the following months. However, contrary to the guidelines prepared by the municipal government to allow commercial activity to continue and the recommendations for social distancing made by health organizations, crowds and disrespect for the instructions were recorded by part of the population. As a result, by September 15, six months after the first case, 3,137 cases had been confirmed, and 64 deaths had been reported, although more than 2,859 individuals had already recovered. The number of cases was lower than in
Ipatinga (8,183) and higher than in
Timóteo (1,708).
Education campus, in 1990. The
Professor Pedro Calmon State School, created in 1952, was the first school built in Coronel Fabriciano. On the other hand, by the end of the 1950s, education in Coronel Fabriciano was still precarious, with high dropout and illiteracy rates. Pedro Calmom did not support the demand for enrollments, the same situation faced by the elementary school of the then district of Ipatinga, which operated in the police station headquarters, and by the Padre Deolindo Coelho School Group, in Melo Viana.
Colégio Angélica, founded by the Archbishop of the
Archdiocese of Mariana, Dom Helvécio Gomes de Oliveira, was the first private educational institution. Its activities extended to other sectors of society, such as teaching catechism to children in support of the
Saint Sebastian Parish, and social assistance to the residents of Morro do Carmo, where they developed courses in manual labor, cooking, and sewing. The Alberto Giovannini State School, founded on June 28, 1969, in the presence of the governor of Minas Gerais
Israel Pinheiro, was the first state school in the Vale do Aço region. Also in the late 1960s, the University of Labor (UT) was established, the current Catholic University Center of Eastern Minas Gerais (Unileste), whose foundation on April 1, 1969 was due to the Congregation Padres do Trabalho. The institution developed into the largest educational complex in the
Vale do Aço, part of a network of other higher education institutions and colleges in the
Federal District,
Tocantins and eastern Minas Gerais. Along with the coming of Unileste, in the early 1970s, the Padres do Trabalho were in charge of building the university neighborhoods, intended to serve as housing for students and professors. and the Father Joseph Cornélius Marie de Man Museum, which was established in 1993 and contributes to the preservation of local and institutional history. In October 2014, the José Avelino Barbosa Museum was opened, which was the first public museum in the municipality and whose name reveres the businessman and merchant who was one of the pioneers of the city.
Religion , inaugurated in 1993 and since then the seat of the Diocese of Itabira-Fabriciano. Photo from 2015. The accelerated and sometimes uncontrolled demographic growth favored an increase in the housing deficit and violence. Thus, religious institutions began to intervene with religious teachings and social projects. and the hospitals Siderúrgica and Nossa Senhora do Carmo. and the
Society of Saint Vincent de Paul was responsible for building houses for the victims of the
1979 floods in the current Frederico Ozanan neighborhood. The Nossa Senhora Auxiliadora Musical Corporation, created in 1943, was deactivated in 1960, becoming active again after receiving musical instruments donated by ALMG, and was maintained for some time by the Vincentians. On January 20, 1963, the Santo Antônio Parish was created, corresponding to the Senador Melo Viana district. The function of the
co-cathedral was assigned to the Mother Church, but there was a need for a larger temple, due to crowding, and on July 4, 1993, the co-cathedral of
Saint Sebastian was inaugurated. On March 27, 2011, the creation of the São Francisco Xavier Parish occurred, dismembered from the Santo Antônio Parish. On May 9, 2021, Nossa Senhora de Fátima Parish was emancipated from the Saint Sebastian Parish. Since the 1950s
Culture and leisure Coronel Fabriciano was an important regional cultural center in terms of nightlife, especially between the 1960s and the 1980s. During this period, the city had almost 40 bars, restaurants, and nightclubs that initially aimed to cater to the workers of the local steel mills, which sometimes attracted people even from the capital of Minas Gerais. After the 1990s, the nightlife flow observed a considerable reduction, migrating from the Center of Fabriciano to Avenida Magalhães Pinto. Carnival dances, held by the city government from 1960 on, ceased to exist around 1990.
Junina parties have largely been present since the 1970s, most of them organized by Catholic communities or schools. The Casa de Cultura do Vale do Aço, created in 1978, was one of the main stages for scenic and theatrical performances and workshops in the region, and the space was later occupied by the São Lucas Hospital in the Santa Terezinha II neighborhood. The Tapajós Scout Group was created in 1963, offering the population activities related to
Scouting. On the same occasion, the Cine Marrocos was built, housing one of the largest movie theaters in the region, to replace the Cine Glória, located on the current Rua Moacir Birro. The latter, in turn, was inaugurated in the 1950s, and in the first years of its operation was the main form of leisure for families from the city since there was still no television in the houses. At the end of the 1980s, the 1,300 seats of the Cine Marrocos were bought by the São Sebastião Parish for the completion of the cathedral works, after the closing of the theater. In the 1990s, there were rumors that the city would receive a large shopping center, the so-called Shopping Três Cidades Mall, which would be located in front of the Unileste campus. The first columns of the development were placed, however, the land was judicially blocked in 1997 and the area was abandoned. In
Serra dos Cocais, the handicrafts and
marujadas of the rural communities and tourism gained prominence and incentives in the course of the second half of the 20th century. Coronel Fabriciano's football, in turn, obtained regional prominence for its amateurism tradition. The Social Futebol Clube, founded in 1944, was the most successful football team in the city, having participated in the elite division of the
Mineiro Championship after the 1990s. On October 10, 2012, the Trio Futebol Clube was founded by Marcelo Vieira, one of the founders of Fabriciano Futebol Clube. The latter had been created in Coronel Fabriciano in 2008 but had its headquarters transferred to the municipality of Nova Serrana, becoming the Nacional Esporte Clube Ltda. Another important occurrence in sports was the passing of the torch relay of the
Summer Olympic Games on May 12, 2016, traveling through streets in the central region between the Terra Mãe Monument and the Estação Square. == Notes ==