Indaiatuba

Indaiatuba is a city in the state of São Paulo.

Understand
The name Indaiatuba is a mix of two terms originating from the tupi-guarani language: "Indaiá" stands for a kind of palm and "tuba" is the equivalmente for "a big amount of something". Therefore "Indaiatuba" means "many indaiás". The denomination attached itself on the environment's features as well as the place's vegetation, which today aren't the same as it used to be. Indaiatuba turned into a municipality in 1830, although it is told the city was born previously.

The remarkable existence of the "indaiá" type of palms, loaded with tiny coconuts, were the reason for Indaiatuba to receive, at the end XVIII Century and the beginning of the XIX Century, the name of "Cocais" (Portuguese for "Coconuts"). The people who lived at first in the municipality would have firstly received the name of "Votura", designation of the river whose mouth was close to the village.

Ever since the XIX Century, Indaiatuba received many immigrants from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Spain and, at the XX Century, immigrants from Japan. These men and women dedicated themselves to agriculture but also in the market, the factories and manufacturers. Along with its economy divided between germination of coffee and potato and also some small factories, the city expanded very little in the first half of the XX Century. In 1950 there were 11.253 inhabitants in the municipality. In 1964 they were 22.928. Since then the expansion has been faster, mainly because of the factories' and services' growth. Based on the 1991's census there were 92.700 inhabitants, a number of which in 2000 surprisingly grew to 146.829, and keeps increasing.