diff --git a/_plugins/000_utf8_encoding.rb b/_plugins/000_utf8_encoding.rb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12fc990
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_plugins/000_utf8_encoding.rb
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# Build environments without a UTF-8 locale (Cloudflare Pages: "cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8)") make Ruby read
+# files as US-ASCII. `encoding:` in _config.yml covers pages only; _data YAML is read with Ruby's default, and
+# kramdown then fails on accented pt-BR text. Plugins load before the site is read, so this fixes it for every file.
+Encoding.default_external = Encoding::UTF_8
+Encoding.default_internal = Encoding::UTF_8