São José do Xingu of them passengers. The survivors were discovered only after 4 of the occupants walked for 3 hours through the forest to find help. São José do Xingu São José do Xingu is a municipality in the state of Mato Grosso in the Central-West Region of Brazil. On 3 September 1989, a Varig Boeing 737-241 registration PP-VMK operating flight 254 flying from São Paulo-Guarulhos to Belém-Val de Cães with intermediate stops, crashed near São José do Xingu while on the last leg of the flight between Marabá and Belém due to a pilot navigational error, which led to fuel exhaustion and
Xingu peoples number had been reduced by foreign epidemic diseases such as flu, measles, smallpox and malaria to less than 1,000. Only an estimated 500 Xingu peoples were alive in the 1950s. The Brazilian Villas-Bôas brothers visited the area beginning in 1946, and pushed for the creation of the Parque Indígena do Xingu, eventually established in 1961. Their story is told in a film, "Xingu". The number of Xingu living there in 32 settlements has risen again to over 3000 inhabitants, half of them younger than 15 years. The Xingu living in this region have similar habits and social systems, despite different