Boa Vista

The Rio Branco valley was home to Indigenous peoples such as the Macuxi long before Europeans arrived, and its position on the route from the Guianas made it contested by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and Spanish. To secure it, the Portuguese built the Fort of São Joaquim in 1775 at the junction of the Uraricoera and Tacutu rivers, about 32 km north of the present city. The settlement that became Boa Vista grew up on the river around the parish of Nossa Senhora do Carmo, and the municipality was created on 9 July 1890 as Boa Vista do Rio Branco.

In 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, Boa Vista became the capital of the newly created Federal Territory of Rio Branco, renamed Roraima in 1962. The first governor, Ene Garcez, had the town rebuilt to a radial plan drawn up between 1944 and 1946 by the engineer Darcy Aleixo Derenusson, who took Paris and Belo Horizonte as models: sixteen avenues fan out from a civic centre on the riverbank.

Mining drove the territory's growth, and Boa Vista's population multiplied in the 1970s and 1980s. Roraima became a state under the 1988 constitution, with its government installed in 1991. Machine mining was later banned for the damage it did, which slowed the local economy. In the 2010s the crisis in Venezuela brought tens of thousands of Venezuelans to the city, around 50,000 by one estimate.

Boa Vista is a young city of newcomers: migrants from the north-east and the rest of Brazil, Indigenous people from across Roraima, and Venezuelans who crossed the border at Pacaraima. Its links run north and east as much as south, with trade to Lethem in Guyana and Santa Elena de Uairén in Venezuela, and a relationship of brotherhood with Caruaru in Pernambuco.

The riverfront is the centre of social life. On the Orla Taumanan, evening concerts mix Brazilian popular music with Roraimeira, the regional sound that draws on the savanna and its Indigenous and caboclo traditions. The June festivals are celebrated with bonfires, fireworks and folk dancing, as in the north-east from which many families came.

Religion is mixed: the 2022 census found about 36 per cent of residents Catholic, a similar share evangelical or Protestant, and nearly 18 per cent with no religion. Football clubs such as Baré and São Raimundo carry local loyalties, the main ground being the Canarinho stadium in the south of the city, and the city's planned avenues and squares give it a calm, orderly feel unusual in the Amazon.

The Brazilian statistics institute IBGE estimated Boa Vista's population at about 470,000 in 2024, and the city holds more than half of Roraima's population. The state capital is the centre of government, commerce and education: the Federal University of Roraima and the federal institute are here, and an important Brazilian Air Force base shares the airport.

Commerce depends above all on Manaus, linked by the BR-174, and on cross-border trade with Venezuela and Guyana. Beyond those roads, aircraft are the only practical link with the rest of the country, which makes goods and travel expensive and leaves the city feeling remote.

The arrival of Venezuelans in the 2010s has reshaped daily life, with Spanish heard on the streets and Venezuelans working across the city's economy. The weather sets the year: a hot dry season from December to March, when the river falls and its beaches appear, and rains in the middle of the year.

Damurida, a soup of Macuxi Indigenous origin, is among Roraima's typical dishes, along with tambaqui stew and roast tambaqui. River fish from the Rio Branco, grilled, fried or stewed, is eaten with rice, beans and farinha, the coarse manioc flour of the Amazon, and tacacá, the sour soup of tucupi broth, tapioca and lip-numbing jambu leaves, is sold in the afternoon.

The north-eastern roots of many families show in the food: carne de sol, sun-cured salted beef, is an everyday favourite, and the June festivals bring maize-based dishes such as pamonha, green corn cooked in its husk. In Roraima the hearty breakfasts and meat dishes of the north-east sit beside the fish and manioc of the Amazon.

Eating out is relaxed and outdoors. The food courts of the Orla Taumanan and the food square of the Ayrton Senna complex are the city's favourite places for an evening meal, and in the dry season shacks on the river beaches sell drinks and snacks. Fruit juices of cupuaçu and açaí are drunk all day.