With a heavy grey fog hanging over the small rural town, thousands of Brazilians gathered yesterday in Gonzaga for the funeral of Jean Charles de Menezes, killed by British police last week.
After the carnival-like reception of Mr De Menezes' body on Thursday - at which 6,000 people gathered to celebrate his life, according to the city's mayor - dozens of mourners from neighbouring towns held a vigil in front of the church throughout the night.
A small bonfire still smouldered as Mr De Menezes' father, Matozinho Otoni da Silva, 66, arrived, weeping, at the church at 6am to spend his final hours alongside his son.
As the sun rose over cobbled roads, rumours were circulating that the Brazilian president, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, would appear at the funeral, along with the governor of Minas Gerais, Aecio Neves, himself tipped as a future president.
"I hope he comes," said Rubens de Menezes, Jean Charles's cousin. "We need all this publicity to show exactly what the British police have done."
Among the stony-faced mourners milling around outside the church there was also anger at the suggestion that Mr De Menezes had been living illegally in the UK.
"I don't believe he was illegal," said Gonzaga's mayor, Julio Maria de Souza, standing in front of the church where the body was awaiting burial. "How could his visa have expired two years ago if he managed to get back in three months ago? It's irrelevant anyway. It doesn't give anyone the right to shoot someone and kill them."
Rubens de Menezes also denied the 27-year-old was illegal. "He legalised his situation. I don't know why the government don't want to accept this," he told the Guardian.
Yesterday, long queues of people poured into the elegant yellow church in Gonzaga's Praca Joao XXIII to pay their last respects.
On seeing Mr De Menezes' face, his skin blanched and bloodless, many broke down and wept.
Only a small part of the Brazilian's features were visible through a thin plastic slide in the coffin; on the left side of his neck the pale skin puckered together, a grim reminder of the eight bullets that took his life.
"I was born to be a happy person," Maria Otoni de Menezes, his mother, sitting beside the coffin, told the Guardian. "But I just don't know now. I don't think I will ever be happy again."
Also at the church was Bruna Alves de Souza, 18, a local girl who met Mr De Menezes during this year's Gonzaga carnival and had hoped to become his girlfriend.
"He was such a joker," she remembered, visibly glowing. "He used to say: 'Let's get together, I'm going to ask your family if we can go out.' He was half joking, but deep down he was being serious. Now I'll never know what might have happened."
Thousands of people were expected in Gonzaga for the funeral. On the hillside high above Gonzaga a humble grave has been dug out of the red earth, chosen by family members as Mr De Menezes' final resting place.
Banners hung by locals on the steep path leading to the cemetery captured the feeling of revolt that has overcome this quiet countryside region. One read bluntly: "Jean Charles - a martyr of British terrorism."
Inside the cemetery, among dozens of simple wooden crucifixes, many eaten away by mould, was a reminder of how tragedy is nothing new to the Menezes family. Alongside the newly prepared grave is a concrete headstone, erected in 2001 when Mr De Menezes' cousin, 20-year-old Geirton Menezes de Oliveira, was killed when a bridge he was building in Portugal collapsed.
"I go to meet God, but I won't forget those that I loved on earth," read a simple caption on the grave.
"It wasn't just Jean that the British police shot," said the mayor. "These shots injured every single Brazilian heart.
"It's a great relief to have the body back, but we will never forget what has happened."