Porto Alegre, the Joyful Harbour, is nestled on the east bank of the Guaíba River, a subsidiary waterway of Lagos dos Patos, the largest lagoon in South America. Since its founding in 1769, the city's economy has hummed to the tune of transient ships and laboring dockworkers, who together comprise the salient cause for its prosperity.

As the locus for the opening maneuvers of the Farrapos War, Porto Alegre is the birthplace of the myth of the gaucho, wily and insubordinate horsemen of the Southern Cone who are nonetheless skillful and daring, and feature heavily in the South American literary canon. For nearly two hundred years, the clamor of Porto Alegre's docks has rung through South America; what new chimes will the Joyful Harbour compose?