started to be called the "Mother of Brazilians". Petitions were made for the Empress to receive the title of "Guardian Angel of this nascent Empire". During the period in which she was ill in her last days of life, processions were carried out on the streets of Rio de Janeiro; churches and chapels filled with people in deep sadness. The news of her death caused a stir throughout the city. The people took to the streets in tears, and there are reports of slaves who lamented with screams: “Our mother died. What will become of us? Who will take sides with blacks?”. With her death, the popularity of Dom Pedro I, allied to the problems of the first reign, declined considerably. The writer and biographer of her life, Carlos H. Oberacker Júnior, says that "rarely has a foreigner been so dear and recognized by a people like her". During her life, Maria Leopoldina looked for ways to end slavery. In an attempt to change the type of labor in Brazil, the Empress encouraged European immigration to the country. Maria Leopoldina's arrival in Brazil fostered the beginning of German immigration to the country, first coming from the Swiss, settling in Rio de Janeiro and founding the city of Nova Friburgo. Then, to populate southern Brazil, the Empress encouraged the Germans to come. The presence of Maria Leopoldina in South America attracted attention as a way to "propagandize" Brazil among the Germanic milieu. The importance and relevance of the Empress on Brazilian soil is also due to the fact of the scientific mission that accompanied her on a journey from the Italian Peninsula, composed of European painters, scientists and botanists. As Maria Leopoldina was interested in botany and geology, two German scientists came with her: botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius and zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, known names in the natural sciences of the 19th century, in addition to the traveling painter Thomas Ender. The research of this mission resulted in the works Viagem pelo Brasil and Flora Brasiliensis, a compendium of approximately 20,000 pages with classification and illustration of thousands of species of native plants. Together, the scientists traveled another 10,000 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro to the borders with Peru and Colombia. Maria Leopoldina's stance in refusing to return to Portugal still divides opinions, because while for a group of writers that was a revolutionary attitude, for others the