House of the Azores of Minas Gerais (II)
—Tenth Island / Filamentos Series

There are genealogies that do not live in archives alone, but in the quiet persistence of names whispered across generations, in the invisible cartography of blood that binds islands to continents.

As we noted in the previous installment, the House of the Azores of Minas Gerais—the eighth in Brazil and the nineteenth across the world—was officially founded on July 26, 2025, in the state capital of Belo Horizonte. It was born with its gaze fixed forward, yet anchored in a past that refuses erasure. For beneath the formal act of founding lies a deeper sediment of history—one that reaches back three centuries, to the enduring memory of what came to be known as the Three Ilhoas.

They were three sisters from the Azores, carried across the Atlantic not merely by ships, but by necessity, by hope, by that restless human instinct to begin again. Around 1723, they arrived in Brazil and made their lives in Minas Gerais, where they would become the living roots of some of the region’s oldest and most prominent families. They were daughters of the parish of Nossa Senhora das Angústias, in the then-town of Horta, on the island of Faial—an island that, like so many others in the archipelago, has long been a threshold between departure and belonging.

One was Antónia da Graça, born in 1687, who settled in São João del Rei and bore four children, giving rise, among others, to the Junqueiras and the Meireles. Another, Júlia Maria da Caridade, born in 1707, also made her home in São João del Rei, where her fourteen children extended her lineage into families such as the Garcias, Carvalhos, Nogueiras, Vilelas, Monteiros, Reis, and Figueiredos. The third sister, Helena Maria de Jesus, born in 1710, established herself in Prados, where her fifteen children would become the ancestors of the Resendes.

Three women. Three departures. Three lineages that, over time, became a multitude.

It is no coincidence that, on the occasion of the founding of the House of the Azores of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte hosted the 25th Resendão—an annual gathering of the Resendes and Rezendes families, direct descendants of that same Azorean woman who crossed the ocean three hundred years ago. In such moments, history ceases to be distant. It breathes. It gathers. It remembers itself.

And so we recognize that the blood that runs through many families of Belo Horizonte—and, more broadly, across Minas Gerais—may well carry this Azorean origin, this maritime inheritance that time has neither diluted nor erased.

To reclaim this history is not merely an act of homage to the past. It is, above all, an investment in the future.

For the challenge before us is clear: to inscribe Minas Gerais onto the Azorean map of Brazil. Alongside Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bahia, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Maranhão, and Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais now takes its place within this constellation—with its own House of the Azores. A space shaped not only by descendants, but also by friends of the Azores, committed to honoring a shared past while forging new paths of cooperation and exchange between the Brazilian state and the Atlantic islands.

Such a project does not emerge by chance. It is the work of vision, of persistence, of belief.

In this case, it bears the unmistakable imprint of Dr. Cláudio Motta—co-founder and first president of the House of the Azores of Minas Gerais. A businessman, lawyer, journalist, and writer, he embodies, in many ways, the very bridge he seeks to build: a native of Minas Gerais, married to an Azorean descendant, holding dual Brazilian and Portuguese citizenship, and guided by a vocation that has made his professional life an ongoing exercise in transatlantic connection.

As president of the International Relations Council of the Associação Comercial e Empresarial de Minas Gerais (ACMINAS), and director of international relations for the Associação Brasileira de Jornalistas de Turismo (ABRAJET), among other public roles, he has long worked at the intersection of culture, economy, and diplomacy—spaces where the local and the global meet.

The path to this founding was neither abrupt nor accidental. It was shaped through encounters—two, in particular, that proved decisive. The first took place in May, in the Azores, during a visit to Ponta Delgada, where discussions unfolded within the Regional Directorate for Communities. The second came in September, in Minas Gerais, during a meeting in Belo Horizonte at the Historical and Geographical Institute. From these moments, dialogue deepened, contacts intensified, and the project took form.

What followed was not merely the creation of an institution, but the continuation of a long journey.

For Dr. Cláudio Motta is not only the one who brought this vessel safely to harbor; he is, above all, the one prepared to navigate it forward—into future crossings, future exchanges, future solidarities—always to the benefit of both the Azores and Minas Gerais.

In the language of the Tenth Island, where geography yields to memory and identity expands beyond borders, the House of the Azores of Minas Gerais is more than an institution. It is a reaffirmation that the Atlantic does not divide—it circulates. That belonging is not fixed—it travels. And that the past, when properly remembered, becomes a compass.

A compass pointing, always, toward one another.

José Andrade is the Regional Director for Communities of the Government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores

Text based on remarks delivered at the founding ceremony of the House of the Azores of Minas Gerais, held on July 26, 2025, at the headquarters of the Historical and Geographical Institute of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.