Belém & the Eastern Amazon

The eastern Amazon had complex societies long before Europeans. On Marajó, the Marajoara culture flourished roughly from the 9th to the 14th century, building earth mounds above the floods and making elaborately painted funerary urns, while the Tapajó people around present-day Santarém left fine carved pottery. Rock paintings at Monte Alegre are among the oldest traces of people in the Amazon.

The Portuguese founded Belém in 1616 with the Forte do Presépio, to keep the French, Dutch and English out of the river mouth, and it became the base for missions, slaving raids and expeditions upstream. After independence, resentment among the poor, Indigenous and mixed-race population of Pará erupted in the Cabanagem of 1835 to 1840, a revolt that seized Belém and was crushed with enormous loss of life. The rubber boom later made Belém rich, paying for the Theatro da Paz, opened in 1878, and the iron market hall of Ver-o-Peso. In 1928 Henry Ford began a rubber plantation town, Fordlândia, on the Tapajós; it failed.

Amapá's border with French Guiana was settled in Brazil's favour by international arbitration in 1900, and the area became a federal territory in 1943 and a state in 1988. That same year Tocantins was carved out of northern Goiás, with Palmas built from 1989 as its capital. From the 1970s, roads, the Carajás iron mine, the Serra Pelada gold rush and the Tucuruí and Belo Monte dams transformed Pará, bringing settlers and violent land conflicts; in 1996 military police killed 19 landless protesters at Eldorado dos Carajás. Belém hosted the COP30 climate conference in 2025.

Belém's defining event is the Círio de Nazaré on the second Sunday of October, when a procession of well over a million people escorts a small statue of Our Lady of Nazareth through the city, with devotees straining to touch the long rope that pulls her carriage. It is recognised as UNESCO intangible heritage, and families gather afterwards for a feast as important as Christmas.

Pará has a rich musical life. Carimbó, a drum-led dance music with swirling skirts from the coast and Marajó, is a national heritage form; guitarrada is its twangy guitar cousin; and tecnobrega, electronic party music played through huge "aparelhagem" sound systems with light shows, grew up in Belém's outskirts. In Alter do Chão the Çairé festival pits two river dolphins, the tucuxi and the pink boto, in a contest of dance and pageantry. Potters in Icoaraci reproduce Marajoara and Tapajó designs.

In Amapá, marabaixo is an Afro-Brazilian drum dance and song tradition kept alive by Macapá's Black communities, and the state's Indigenous lands, such as those of the Wajãpi, cover large areas. Tocantins looks to the cerrado and the Northeast: the golden grass of Jalapão, capim dourado, is woven into bags and jewellery by the quilombola community of Mumbuca and neighbouring villages. Belief in forest and river spirits, such as the boto who seduces young women, colours the folklore of the whole region.

About ten million people live in the three states, most of them in Pará. Greater Belém has over two million people; Ananindeua, Santarém, Marabá and Castanhal are Pará's other large towns, Macapá has about 500,000 and Palmas about 300,000.

The economy mixes the ancient and the industrial. Açaí harvested from river palms is a major income for island families around Belém and is exported worldwide. Pará is also one of Brazil's great mining states, with the iron ore of Carajás shipped out by rail, bauxite and aluminium, while cattle ranching and soya have spread across the south and east of the state. Tocantins lives on soya, cattle and the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers, and Amapá on public employment, mining and fishing.

Pará has in many recent years recorded the largest area of deforestation of any Brazilian state, concentrated along the frontier roads in the southeast and south, although clearing fell after 2023. Illegal gold mining in the Tapajós basin has polluted rivers with mercury and brought conflict to Munduruku and Kayapó lands, and killings over land, such as that of the American-born nun Dorothy Stang in 2005, have drawn international attention. In Belém, daily life follows the tides, the market and the afternoon rain.

Pará's cooking is the most distinctive of the Amazon, built on manioc in every form. Tucupi, the yellow juice of manioc cooked for days to remove its toxins, flavours pato no tucupi, duck simmered in it with jambu, a leaf that tingles and numbs the mouth, and tacacá, the hot soup sold from street stalls in gourd bowls. Maniçoba, eaten at the Círio, is ground manioc leaves cooked for about a week with salted pork and offal, a dish sometimes called the Amazon's feijoada.

In Pará açaí is not a sweet bowl but a thick, unsweetened purple purée eaten with fried fish, shrimp or manioc flour at lunch. River fish include filhote, a large catfish, and dourada, and crab is picked in bars around Belém. Marajó's buffalo supply milk for queijo do Marajó, a soft, mild cheese, and buffalo meat.

Fruit is everywhere: cupuaçu, bacuri, taperebá, muruci and pupunha, a starchy palm fruit boiled and eaten with coffee. Belém's ice-cream shops turn them into dozens of flavours. Along the Araguaia in Tocantins, grilled river fish is eaten on the dry-season beaches, and cerrado fruits such as buriti turn up in sweets.

In Belém, Ver-o-Peso market spreads along the waterfront beside the Forte do Presépio and the colonial Cidade Velha, with its cathedral. The Estação das Docas turns old port warehouses into restaurants on the bay, the Theatro da Paz and the Basílica de Nazaré face leafy squares, and the Mangal das Garças and the Emílio Goeldi Museum's zoo-botanical park show Amazon wildlife in the city. Boats cross to Combu island for forest walks and chocolate made from local cacao.

Marajó, reached by ferry from Belém, is visited from Soure and Salvaterra, where water buffalo graze and pull carts, and beaches such as Pesqueiro face the brackish river mouth. Upriver, Alter do Chão sits on the Tapajós, with the Ilha do Amor sandbar opposite, the Tapajós National Forest nearby and Santarém's meeting of the Tapajós and the Amazon down the road.

In Amapá, Macapá's Marco Zero marks the equator, next to the Zerão stadium, and the bastioned 18th-century Fortaleza de São José guards the Amazon's northern channel. The Tumucumaque Mountains National Park protects a vast block of forest near the Guiana border.

In Tocantins, the Jalapão State Park offers orange dunes beneath the Serra do Espírito Santo, waterfalls and fervedouros, springs whose upwelling water keeps swimmers afloat. Further west, the Ilha do Bananal on the Araguaia is one of the world's largest river islands.