Soure

Marajó was the home of one of the most complex societies of the ancient Amazon. The Marajoara culture flourished on the island from about AD 400 to 1400 and may have supported as many as 100,000 people, building earth mounds above the floods and making elaborately painted pottery. When the Portuguese arrived, the eastern part of the island, then called the Ilha Grande de Joanes, was the land of the Maruanazes.

In 1653 the Jesuit Antônio Vieira reached Belém with powers to intervene in the wars between the Portuguese and the island's Indigenous peoples, and after negotiations he founded a settlement at Joanes where peace agreements were made. Jesuits, Carmelites, Mercedarians and Franciscans set up missions on the island, and fishing stations spread along its eastern coast, including the area of today's Soure. In 1757 the parish of Menino Deus was raised to the status of a vila and named Soure after a town in Portugal; in the same reforms the island was renamed Marajó.

A royal fishery, the Pesqueiro Real, was established in 1786 to expand the catch of mullet and other fish, and cattle ranching spread across the island's grasslands. The town lost its status in 1833 and regained it in 1847. Its urban area was formally laid out in 1890, Salvaterra split off as a separate municipality in 1961, and in the 20th century the road to the Pesqueiro beach was built and paved.

Soure's culture is the culture of Marajó: buffalo, fishing, mangroves and pottery. The water buffalo, introduced to the island and now numbering some 450,000 — more than its human population — is everywhere, grazing the flooded fields and supplying milk, cheese and meat, and buffalo farms are part of the island's identity.

Marajoara ceramics are the town's best-known craft. Workshops and studios use traditional techniques and draw on the geometric designs of the ancient Marajoara pottery, and the market and craft shops sell ceramics and objects made from plant fibres by communities around the island.

The town is mostly Catholic, and religious festivals and saints' days structure the calendar. Like much of Pará's coast, Marajó is linked to carimbó, the drum-led dance music with swirling skirts, and to the legends of forest and river spirits that colour the folklore of the whole region. Life is unhurried, and visitors are struck by the calm of the mango-lined streets.

Soure had 24,204 people at the 2022 census, spread thinly over a large municipality of grassland, mangrove and coast. The town is a service centre for the eastern side of the island, with a municipal hospital and a psychosocial care centre that also serves neighbouring municipalities, and many families depend on fishing, the gathering of crabs in the mangroves, buffalo and cattle ranching and, increasingly, tourism.

Poverty is high: official data from 2022 placed more than half the population in extreme poverty, and only a tiny share of homes had adequate sewerage. Much of the coast and mangrove lies within the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve, created to protect the mangroves and the livelihoods of traditional communities, though managing and policing it remains a challenge, and deforestation and damage to mangroves are concerns.

The day runs by the tides and the heat. Boats come and go with the water level on the Paracauari, fishing families head out early, and in the late afternoon people gather on the riverfront and in the squares. In the dry season the beaches fill at weekends with visitors from Belém.

Food on Marajó comes from the river, the sea, the mangroves and the buffalo. Fish such as tucunaré, pirarucu and tamuatá are seasoned with roots following Indigenous traditions, and the uçá crab gathered in the mangroves is an important local catch.

The buffalo provides meat and milk, and the milk is made into queijo do Marajó, a fresh, soft and creamy cheese made on the archipelago in the traditional way for more than 200 years. Buffalo meat is served in local restaurants alongside fish. Much of what is eaten in Soure is caught or raised on the island itself.

The dishes of Pará are eaten here too: tacacá, the hot soup of tucupi, shrimp and numbing jambu leaves; açaí; and a cake made from piracuí, a flour of dried fish. Eating is simple and informal: grilled or fried fish with rice, beans and manioc flour at a market counter, or crab and a cold drink at a kiosk on the sand at Pesqueiro.