Map - Augusto Pestana (Augusto Pestana)

Augusto Pestana is a Brazilian municipality in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. It is located at 28°31′01″S 53°39′01″W, at an altitude of 390 m (1,279 feet). The city is 320 km northwest of Porto Alegre, 1,540 km southwest of Brasília and just 120 km east of the border with Argentina.

It was named after Augusto Pestana (1868-1934), a Brazilian engineer and politician.

The area was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples of South America ("Umbu" tradition) about ten thousand years ago. In 1697, Spaniard Jesuits founded a Reduction in São João Batista, 40 km west of present-day Augusto Pestana. The whole region was eventually annexed by the Portuguese in 1801. One hundred years later, Augusto Pestana, then director for Public Lands in Northwest Rio Grande do Sul, founded a settlement on the Cadeado Range, between the Conceição and the Ijuizinho rivers (the name "Cadeado", padlock in Portuguese, is a reference to a checkpoint that existed on the road between Cruz Alta and Santo Ângelo).

The first settlers were German immigrants, most of them from Pomerania. During World War II, soldiers from Augusto Pestana fought for Brazil against Nazi Germany. The list of Pestanense members in the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB), active in the Mediterranean Theatre of the conflict, included Artur Goergen, Eugenio Ladvig and Helmuth Matte, now honored with street names in the city. The other FEB veterans were Sebaldo Goergen, Waldemar Senn, Albino Wilhens, Benno Müller, Oswin Wunder, Alípio Schmitt, Osvino Henrique Geiss, Adelino Mathias Dambroz, Emílio Papke, Alfonso Steiernagel e Arnoldo Gustavo Frantz.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the settlement experienced a boom in wheat production and was incorporated in September 1965 as the municipality of Augusto Pestana. The first city government was formally installed on 14 May 1966.