Pará

Pará, estado (state) of northern Brazil through which the lower Amazon River flows to the sea. It is bounded to the north by Guyana, Suriname, and the Brazilian state of Amapá, to the northeast by the Atlantic Ocean, to the east by the Brazilian states of Maranhão and Tocantins, to the south by Mato Grosso, and to the west by Amazonas. It is the second largest state in Brazil. The capital and chief city is Belém.

Belém was founded by the Portuguese in 1615, chiefly to keep other European nations from settling there. Spanish Jesuit missions were the first settlements upstream, including Santarém in 1661; they were finally expelled by the Portuguese in 1710. Pará was made a captaincy in 1652, reunited with Maranhão in 1654, and reestablished in 1772. It did not acknowledge the Brazilian empire established in 1822 but yielded to force in 1823. It became a state when the new Brazilian republic was founded in 1889. Between 1850 and 1910 there was a period of feverish economic activity in the state as workers went out into the forests to tap the rubber trees. Rubber in large quantities was shipped out through Belém, and the city grew rapidly in size and importance. Production dropped quickly after 1910, however. A gold rush in the 1980s and large-scale exploitation of natural resources marked the development of the region in the late 20th century.

The dominant physical feature of Pará is the outlet of the Amazon River, which crosses the state for about 500 miles (800 km) from west to east before entering the Atlantic Ocean. The lower Amazon River valley is comparatively narrow, with the territory on both sides rising in steep bluffs about 150 to 200 feet (50 to 60 metres) above the river to the level of the ancient plateau that once covered this part of the continent. The chief towns in the state lie on the bluffs. To the north rise the Guiana Highlands, and to the south the country rises in forested terraces and is broken by escarpments caused by the erosion of the northern slope of the great central plateau of Brazil.

The state is crossed by the Equator, and the climate is equatorial. The average annual temperature is 78 °F (26 °C), with a range between the coldest and warmest months of between 2 and 3 °F (1.1 and 1.7 °C). Rainfall, which occurs throughout the year, and humidity are high. Average annual rainfall is more than 59 inches (1,500 mm).

An enormous amount of water pours into the ocean through the state of Pará. The Amazon itself winds about on its floodplain, leaving a maze of abandoned channels in the form of oxbow lakes and an intricate crescentic pattern of levees and swamps. At Óbidos the Amazon’s floodplain is scarcely a mile in width, but it opens out again downstream. The Amazon receives the water of several great tributaries, including, from west to east on the southern side, the Tapajós, the Xingu, and the Tocantins. At the mouth of the Amazon is Marajó Island, as well as several other large islands. Marajó Island is 183 miles (295 km) long and 124 miles (200 km) wide, with an area of 18,519 square miles (47,964 square km). Except for a few patches of savanna, most of the state is covered with dense tropical rainforest, or selva, with thousands of species of broad-leaved evergreen trees. The soil under the selva, where little light reaches the ground, is deeply leached and, when the forest is cleared, quickly loses its capacity to produce crops. The largest land animal of the selva is the tapir; there are many smaller animals, including several species of cat.

Pará’s population density is higher than that of the other states (Acre, Amazonas, Rondônia, Roraima, and Amapá) in northern Brazil. The state’s population is concentrated in the few cities and towns; the largest is Belém on the Pará River, and others include Santarém on the Tapajós, Marabá on the Tocantins, Abaetetuba near the juncture of the Tocantins and the Amazon, and Castanhal and Braganc̦a in the east. There are a few small settlements and trading posts on the principal rivers and tributaries, and there are also plantations and small, scattered groups of Indians. Some of these Indians are so remote and isolated that even at the end of the 20th century they still had little or no contact with modern civilization.

Ethnically, the population is composed of people of European, Indian, and mixed European and Indian ancestry, as well as Afro-Brazilians, who have come to constitute a decided majority. Since the 1930s, Japanese have settled in northern Pará. In Pará, health, education, and welfare programs in the cities are limited but slowly increasing; outside the cities, they are almost nonexistent.

Belém is the leading educational and cultural centre of northern Brazil. The Federal University of Pará (1957) is there, as well as a school to train teachers, an institute for research on tropical diseases, and an institute specializing in tropical agriculture.

The economy of Pará was traditionally based on the collection and export of forest products, chiefly Brazil nuts, malvas (a palm-shaped herb), medicinal herbs, organic oils and insecticides, tropical fruits, and fibres. After World War II some plantation products were introduced with considerable success by Japanese colonists, including jute along the Amazon River and black pepper just to the south of Belém and near Santarém in the north. With the opening and development of the Amazon region, several large companies opened facilities in Pará. Mining—especially for iron ore, gold, and bauxite—gained prominence in the latter part of the 20th century. During the Amazon “gold rush” of the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of garimpeiros (transient miners) excavated the Serra Pelada and sites near Carajás in the Serra dos Carajás. Large-scale gold-mining operations were organized in the 1980s and ’90s at Igarapé-Bahia, Carajás, Andorinhas (near Rio Maria), and elsewhere in the eastern part of the state. Massive iron-ore and bauxite mines are located around Carajás, and there are significant deposits of copper, nickel, manganese, and tin. Powering the eastern mining complexes and the state capital, Belém, is one of the world’s largest dams in terms of power capacity, the Tucuruí Dam (1984) on the Tocantins River. One of the world’s largest bauxite mines is at Trombetas in the northwest corner of the state. Its ore is both exported and processed into alumina and aluminum near Belém.

Transportation within the state and externally is almost entirely by water, road, or air. The main port for Amazon River craft as well as for international and coastal shipping is Belém, and the Belém Airport is the principal air facility in northern Brazil.

The construction of the Belém do Pará–Brasília Highway, the Transamazônica Highway running west from Belém to the Peruvian border, and the Cuiaba-Santarém Highway, all of which were built during the 1960s and ’70s, led to a new tide of pioneer settlement and resource development in the hitherto most isolated parts of the Amazon basin. In 1985 a 554-mile- (892-km) long railway linked the mining centre of Carajás with the port of São Luís in Maranhão state. Area 481,736 square miles (1,247,690 square km). Pop. (2010) 7,581,051.