Texas of Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul nickname)

Rio Grande do Sul (“Great River of the South”) is the southernmost state of Brazil. Like Texas, there is a large cattle-growing industry and there are gauchos (similar to the cowboys of Texas). Rio Grande do Sul has been called the “Texas of Brazil” since at least the 1920s.
 
 
Wikipedia: Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul pron. IPA: [ʁiu ‘gɾɐ̃.de do suɫ]; lit. “Great River of the South”) is the southernmost State of Brazil, and the State with the fourth highest Human Development Index (HDI). In the largest and most populous state of the region is the most southern city of the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. The mountain region, where the winter can be rigorous, has cities with European characteristics, such as Gramado and Canela. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine producing center of Brazil, the attraction is the Italian gastronomy. Besides the European influence, the gaucho cultivates the traditions of the Pampas - region of the border with Uruguay and Argentina -, such as the chimarrão, the typical barbecue churrasco and wears the bombacha, boots and large hats. 
     
24 August 1924, New York (NY) Times, pg. RP3 photo caption:
THE STRONG RIGHT ARM OF THE BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT TROOPS: INFANTRY FROM THE STATE OF RIO DO SUL,
the Texas of Brazil, Resting After an Attack on the Rebels Entrenched in the Quartel da Luz, Sao Paulo, in Which They Gained the Credit for Being the Gamest and Best Fighteres of the Government Troops. 
 
Google Books
Rio
by Hugh Gibson
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
1937
Pg. 93:
Porto Alegre is the capital of the important state of Rio Grande do Sul, which is the Texas of Brazil. 
 
4 May 1941, New York (NY) Times, pg. SM9:
Born in Rio Grande do Sul, the “Texas of Brazil,” he received his early education in military schools. 
 
26 May 1941, Port Arthur (TX) News, pg. 5, col. 2:
Rio Grande do Sul, most southern of Brazil’s states, is known as the Texas of Brazil because of its rolling grass-grown pampas and an extensive cattle growing industry.
 
19 January 1942, Dallas (TX) Morning News, section 1, pg.
Both are gauchos—cowboys from the Rio Grande Do Sul, the extreme southern state, often called the Texas of Brazil.
     
Google Books
Battle for the Hemisphere:
Democracy Versus Totalitarianism in the Other America
by Edward Tomlinson
New York, NY: C. Scribner’s Sons
1947
Pg. 199:
...and those three far southern states of Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, which constitute the Texas of Brazil.
 
3 November 1949, Dallas (TX) Morning News, section 3, pg. 1:
The State of Rio Grande do Sul is the Texas of Brazil, he said.
 
“It looks like Texas. Same climate. And the people have the same progressive mentality,” said our ambassador to Brazil.
   
Google Books
The New World Guides to the Latin American Republics
by Earl Parker Hanson
New York, NY: Duell, Sloan and Pearce
Volume III
1950
Pg. 111:
The state of Rio Grande do Sul, the Texas of Brazil, is S of Santa Catarina and is bounded S by Uruguay, W by Argentina.
 
8 September 1961, Dallas (TX) Morning News, section 4, pg. 4:
A wealthy rancher from the “Texas” of Brazil, the cattle-raising state of Rio Grande do Sul, Goulart is equally at home as a playboy in the gay night life of Rio de Janeiro and as the self-acclaimed champion of the toiling masses of his country.
 
Google Books
Brazil: The Once and Future Country
by Marshall C. Eakin
New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press
1997
Pg. 86:
Just as the image of the fiercely independent cowboy remains a dominant symbol in many states of the North American West, the inhabitants of Rio Grande do Sul define themselves by their gaucho heritage (and the inhabitants of the state are referred to as gauchos).
 
In many ways, Rio Grande do Sul is the Texas of Brazil, a former frontier of the Spanish empire, settled by immigrants, with a cattle-ranching culture and a stubbornly independent view of themselves as at once citizens of the nation yet separate and unique. Much like Texans, the gauchos have often bucked national political control and tried to go their own way.