Gateway to the Pantanal — where Campo Grande is the jumping-off point for the Pantanal (the world's largest tropical wetland, covering 150,000 sq km — more biodiverse than the Amazon for wildlife viewing), the city's Japanese-Brazilian community (the largest per capita in South America outside São Paulo) produced Campo Grande's distinctive fusion of Japanese and Guaraní food traditions, terere (cold mate tea drunk through a metal straw in the Guaraní tradition) is the official cultural drink of Mato Grosso do Sul and consumed by construction workers, judges, and farmers equally, and the 700 km Estrada-Parque Pantanal (the road through the Pantanal) begins at the city's southern edge
Campo Grande (930,000) is the capital of Mato Grosso do Sul state in the Centre-West of Brazil — a relatively young planned city (state capital since 1979 when Mato Grosso do Sul was carved from Mato Grosso) whose primary identity is as the logistical hub for Pantanal access, Guaraní-influenced culture, and a Japanese-Brazilian community that arrived primarily from 1908 onward as agricultural workers and now constitutes the cultural heart of the city's food, temple, and commercial districts. The surrounding Cerrado (the world's most biodiverse savanna, shared with Goiânia) transitions to Pant…
The region that is now Mato Grosso do Sul was inhabited by the Guaicuru (Kadiwéu), Terena, and Guaraní peoples for thousands of years before Portuguese contact. The Campo Grande area was a late colonial settlement — the town of Campo Grande was formally established in 1899 as a cattle-ranching station and only grew significantly when the Noroeste rail line arrived in 1914 (connecting it to São Paulo). The Paraguay War (Guerra do Paraguai, 1864–1870) — the deadliest war in South American history, killing an estimated 300,000 people and destroying 60–90% of Paraguay's adult male population — wa…