Part of my family is from Rio de Janeiro for many generations now and my grandmother always say to me that her mother always told her that people would go to the beach only to fish or rent a boat. The famous beaches we go to nowadays were too far away (Copacabana, Ipanema, and others) and they would visit beaches and islands by the Guanabara bay, where there are no waves.
So I wonder when did this practice to go to the beach to enjoy the sun started. If it is possible to have an answer focused in Latin America/Brazil, I would appreciate.
I had a lecture about this in University and pulled up my notes. Historically the beach and the ocean were scary to people, being associated with shipwrecks, natural disasters and monsters. This view can be traced back to ancient times including in the Bible. The romantic movement saw the beach as a place of beauty but not a place to enter (think of the common image of introspectively looking out into the ocean.) Beachgoing doesn't really take off until industrialization and modern science. In 18th century England several doctors advised swimming in the cold water to treat illnesses such as melancholy (depression.) The discovery of oxygen in 1778 made this even more common because it was thought sea air had more oxygen. Industrialization created tourism as a way to get away from city life. Going to the ocean becomes popular with the upper classes in England and the activity trickled downward. By the late 1800s Blackpool became the first seaside resort and was available to the new middle class. The practice had spread to the US by the late 19th century and places like Coney Island and sports like surfing came out of it.
This thread has quite a bit of references to historical beach-a'going across cultures.