Vista Gaúcha is a municipality in the state Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Vista Gaúcha is located in the northeast of the province, 480 km from the capital, Porto Alegre.

The population of the municipality was 2,725 people, according to the IBGE Demographic Census of 2000.

Its area is 88,72 km², comprising .033% of the province, 0.0157% of the region, and 0.001% of the country.

Its IDH is .0784 per the Atlas de Desenvolvimento Humano/PNUD (2000).

Paulo Paim (born March 15, 1950) is a Brazilian steelworker turned politician. He served as a federal deputy from Rio Grande do Sul for the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) from 1987 to 2002. On 2002, he was elected Senator from the same state. Re-elected in 2010, he is currently the only Afro-Brazilian Senator. He also served as Vice-President of trade union center Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) from 1984 to 1986.

Paulo Renato Paim was born in Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, on March 15, 1950. He became a trained steelworker after receiving a professional education degree from SENAI. Paim worked on Abramo Eberle and Forjasul metallurgical factories before becoming the president of the Canoas steelworkers trade union on 1981. Two years later, he became Secretary-General of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores, prior to becoming the Vice-President of that same organization on 1984.

On 1985, Paim became a member of the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) and, in the following year, became a federal deputy for the party. As a constituent deputy, he would engage in the writing of the current Constitution of Brazil. From 1989 to 1991, Paim was the deputy leader for the PT in the Chamber of Deputies. From 1993 to 1994, he was the head of the Chamber's Labour, Administration and Public Service committee. On 1997, he authored a bill which would be enacted by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as the Elderly Statute, a set of laws which guarantees the rights of elderly people in Brazil. He became nationally known after the adoption of US$ 100 minimum wage, which he had proposed. Paim would later spark controversy, in 2001, after he ripped a copy of the Constitution as a protest to a bill seeking to change the Consolidation of Labor Laws.

Luís Nicolau Fagundes Varela (August 17, 1841 – February 18, 1875) was a Brazilian Romantic poet, adept of the "Ultra-Romanticism" movement. He is patron of the 11th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

Luís Nicolau Fagundes Varela was born in Rio Claro in 1841, to Emiliano Fagundes Varela and Emília de Andrade. He spent most of his childhood at the farm where he was born, later moving to innumerous places, among them the city of Catalão, Goiás, where he met Bernardo Guimarães. Returning to Rio, he lived in Angra dos Reis and Petrópolis, where he concluded his primary and secondary studies. In 1859, he goes to São Paulo and, in 1862, enters at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo, but abandons it to dedicate himself to the literature and to the bohemianism. He published his first poetry book, Noturnas, one year before.

He married a circus artist from Sorocaba, Alice Guilhermina Luande. This provoked a scandal in his family and made his financial condition worse. His first son, Emiliano, died with 3 months of age, what inspired Fagundes' poem "Cântico do Calvário" (that can be found on the book Cantos e Fantasias). His woman died in 1865 or 1866, while Varela was travelling to Recife. Returning to São Paulo, he matriculated himself once more in the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo in 1867, quitting once more. He then returns to his house in Rio Claro, living in there until 1870. He marries once again, with his cousin Maria Belisária de Brito Lambert, having with her two daughters and one son.