Pará

Fort of the Nativity (Forte do Presépio), in Belém city, Brazil.

Marajoara funerary urn (1000-1250)

Archaeologists divide the ancient inhabitants of prehistory Brazil into groups according to their way of life and tools: hunter-gatherers of the coast and farmers. These groups were subsequently named by European settlers as "Indians". There are archaeological records proving the human presence in Brazil and the region of Santarém since 3000 BC.

Marajó people lived in farmers' huts or houses 3,500 years ago. These people knew ceramics, dyes, natural medicinal compounds; practiced slash-and-burn (to clear the land); and planted cassava. Their culture remains in Marajoara pottery, which has peculiar size and decoration. The period from 500 to 1300 was the height of the Marajoara culture.

The region of the Amazon valley, by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), was in possession of the Spanish Crown, the Portuguese expeditionaries, with the purpose of consolidating the region as Portuguese territory, founded the Fort of the Nativity (Forte do Presépio) in 1616, in Santa Maria de Belém do Grão-Pará (Saint Mary of Bethlehem of the Great Pará). The building was the first of the model on Amazon and the most significant in the Amazon territory until 1660. Despite the construction of fort, the occupation of territory was marked by early Dutch and English incursions in search of spices, hence the need of the Portuguese to fortify the area.[2]

In the 17th century, the region, integrated into the captaincy of Maranhão, was prosperous with crops and livestock. In 1616 the captaincy of Grão-Pará was created, belonging to the Portuguese colonial state of Maranhão. In the same year the state of Grão-Pará and Maranhão transferred capital to Belém, forming and attaching the captaincy of Rio Negro in 1755 by creating the State of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro.

In 1751, with the expansion to the west, the colonial state of Grão-Pará, which besides the captaincy of Grão Pará would host the captaincy of São José do Rio Negro (today the State of Amazonas).

In 1823, the Pará decided to join the independent Brazil, which had been separated during the colonial period, reporting directly to Lisbon. However, political infighting continued. The most important of them, the Cabanagem (1835), decreed the independence of the province of Pará. This was, along with the Ragamuffin War, the only to lift the regency period when the power was taken. Cabanagem was the only revolt led by the popular strata.

19th century engraving about the Cabanagem

Cabanagem, a popular and social revolt during the Empire of Brazil, in the Amazon region, was influenced by the French Revolution. It was mainly due to extreme poverty, hunger and disease that devastated the Amazon at the beginning of the period, in the former province of Grão-Pará, which included the current Amazonian states of Pará, Amazonas, Amapá, Roraima and Rondônia. The revolt spread from 1835 until January 1840, due to the process of independence of Brazil (1822), which did not occur immediately in the province due to political irrelevance to which the region was relegated by Prince Regent Pedro I. After independence, the strong Portuguese influence remained stable, giving political irrelevance in this province to the Brazilian central government.

Indians, blacks, and mestizos (mostly poor class members), all named cabanos (cabins), teamed against the Regent Government and rebelled, to increase the importance of the region in Brazil's central government addressing the issue of poverty as one of the reasons. All lived in mud huts (hence the name of the revolt).[4] At the bottom of the rebellion, there was a mobilization of the Brazilian Empire against the reactionary forces of the province of Grão-Pará in expelling the insurgents who wanted to keep the region as a Portuguese colony or territory independent. Many of the local leaders, who resented the lack of political participation in decisions of the centralizer of the Brazil government, contributed to the climate of dissatisfaction against the provincial government.

After the revolt, the local economy grew rapidly during the 19th century and early 20th century by exploitation of rubber, the latex, by extracting it. At this period the Amazon experienced two distinct economic cycles with the exploitation of the same raw material.

The intendant Antônio Lemos was the main character of the urban transformation that Belém experienced, which came to be known as Paris n’America (Paris in the America), as a reference to the influence of the urbanization that Paris had experienced at the time, which served as the inspiration for Antônio Lemos.

During this period, for example, the city center was heavily lined with mango trees transported from India and development inspired by the model of Paris. With the decline of the two cycles of rubber (1870–1920 and 1940–1945),[5] came a distressing economic stagnation, which stopped in the 1960s and 1970s,[6] with the development of agricultural activities in the south of the state. From the decade of 1960s, but mainly in the 1970s, growth was accelerating with the exploitation of minerals mainly in the southeastern region of the state, as with iron extraction in the Serra dos Carajás and the Serra Pelada gold.[7]

Köppen climate types of Pará.

A tropical rainforest climate is a type of tropical climate in which there is no dry season — all months have mean precipitation values of at least 60 millimetres (2.4 in). It is usually found at latitudes within five degrees of the equator — which are dominated by the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The equatorial climate is denoted Af in the Köppen climate classification.

The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tracts of tropical rainforest in the world. Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia.[8] As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. More than one-third of all species in the world live in the Amazon rainforest[9] The largest biodiversity of the planet is present across the state of Pará.

Amazon River in the Amazon Rainforest

Vitória Régia, in the Paraense Emílio Goeldi Museum in Belém

Large tracts of Pará state suffer from illegal deforestation and land occupation, mostly due to cattle ranching and soya farming. There have been conflicts between government, indigenous tribes, the Caboclos who are mixed-race peasants of the area, and ranchers over land rights. The situation is unlikely to be resolved soon, particularly due to the demand for beef from Europe and soya from China.

The controversial Belo Monte Dam is a proposed hydroelectric dam complex to be built on the Xingu River; opponents believe that it threatens the habitat of a relatively undisturbed area of Pará's rainforest, and would endanger several endemic fish species. It also is likely to attract further development and migration to the state, to the detriment of the state's rainforest.

Assurini Indians lived in isolation until 1971.

The majority of the population is mixed, due to the large indigenous population and, to a lesser amount, those with African ancestry. In the last IBGE census (2010), 817,000 Brazilians classified themselves as indigenous, about 0.26% percent of the country's population.[12]

Pará has attracted numerous Portuguese, Spanish, and Japanese immigrants. They have told their stories in a permanent space, the "Room Vicente Salles" of the "Memorial of the People", in Belém. The Portuguese colonists were followed by Spaniards fleeing wars and social unrest due to political disputes in the Iberian Peninsula. The Japanese have become established in agrarian communities, settling in towns such as Tomé-Açu.

Portuguese explorers and missionaries settled in the state in the 17th century. In January 1616, the Portuguese captain, Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco began the occupation of the land, founding the Fort of the Nativity, nucleus of the future state capital. Portuguese religious missions were used to establish settlements between here and the Fort St. Louis of Maranhão. Most settlers sailed up the Amazon River as travel overland was extremely arduous. The Portuguese were the first to arrive in Pará, leaving contributions ranging from cuisine to architecture.

The first Japanese immigrants who settled in the Amazon left the Port of Kobe in Japan, on July 24, 1926, and reached the city of Tomé-Açu, on 22 September of that year, with stops in Rio de Janeiro and Belém.

The Japanese introduced crops such as jute and black pepper in the 1930s; jute was so successful that it drove a boom in the regional economy. In the 1970s, Japanese farmers introduced cultivation of Hawaiian papaya and melon, for which there is international demand. The third largest ethnic Japanese community in Brazil is in Pará, with about 13,000 inhabitants (surpassed only by settlements in the states of São Paulo and Paraná). They live mainly in the cities of Tomé-Açu, Santa Izabel do Pará, and Castanhal.

Italian immigrants in Pará came predominantly from the south of Italy, originating in Calabria, Campania and Basilicata. It was a time of a wave of emigration. They were all settlers and devoted to trade. The first Italian trade was recorded in 1888 in Santarém. The immigrants planted family roots in Belém, Breves, Abaetetuba, Óbidos, Oriximiná, Santarém and Alenquer. The presence in western Pará was so pronounced that the Consulate of Italy established an office in Óbidos, which is the largest city populated by Italians in the state. The consulate was in Recife, Pernambuco.

In Belém, the Italians worked in commercial and retail services. They were important during the beginning of the industrialization of the state capital (1895). According to the 1920 census, about 1,000 Italians lived in Pará. At the end of World War II, another wave of Italian immigrants arrived after the persecution of Japanese, Italians, and Germans. Similar to French immigrants, this wave of Italians did not remain in Pará.

Lebanese immigrants arrived in Pará in the mid-19th century, at the time of the rubber boom, and through 1914. There were between 15,000 and 25,000 Syrian-Lebanese immigrants, of whom one-third went to Acre. In Pará, the Lebanese settled in Belem, and in the cities of Cametá, Marabá, Altamira, Breves, Monte Alegre, Alenquer, Santarém, Óbidos, Soure, Maracanã, Abaetetuba, among others.

The first French immigrants arrived in Brazil in the second half of the 19th century, settling in the colony of Benevides, the metropolitan region of Belém do Pará. The French were attracted to the region because of the rubber boom, eventually settling in Belém, which became known as Paris N'América.

Belém is the most important education centre of the state.

Portuguese is the official national language, and thus the primary language taught in schools. English and Spanish are part of the official high school curriculum.

• Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA) (Federal University of Pará);
• Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará (UFOPA) (Federal University of Western Pará);
• Universidade Federal do Sul e Sudeste do Pará (UNIFESSPA) (Federal University of Southern and Southeastern Pará)
• Universidade Federal Rural da Amazonia (UFRA) (Federal Rural University of Amazonia);
• Universidade do Estado do Pará (UEPA) (Pará State University);
• Universidade da Amazônia (UNAMA) (University of Amazon);
• Instituto Federal do Pará (IFPA) (Federal Institute of Pará);
• Centro Universitário do Pará (CESUPA) (University Center of Pará);

Belém International Airport

Belém International Airport (BEL) is 10 km from the center of Belém. Currently it serves demand of 2.7 million passengers a year, in a constructed area of 33,255.17 square meters (357,955.7 sq ft).

Traditionally called Val-de-Cães Airport, it is responsible for increasing tourism in the region, as well as for the outflow of products and attracting new investments.

The Port of Belém has restaurants, art galleries, a small brewery, ice-cream shops, artisan stands, regional food kiosks, coffee houses, a space for fairs and events, a theatre for 400 spectators, and a touristic harbour.

• Theatre of Peace
• Experimental Waldemar Henrique theatre
• Gabriel Hermes theatre
• Theatre of SESC
• Theatre of Emílio Goeldi Museum
• Margarida Schiwazzapa theatre
• Maria Sylvia Nunes theatre
• Gasômetro station theatre

Cathedral of Sé in Belém.

The biggest festival in the state of Pará happens in Belém, Círio de Nazaré (Nazareth Taper). This event is known to be the biggest religious event of the Western Hemisphere. The procession starts on the second Sunday of October and pays homage to Our Lady of Nazareth, patron saint of the state. Organised since 1793, at present it gathers around 2.3 million of followers, who go on a procession through the city to the Nazaré Basilica, where her image is worshiped.

In addition to its natural wealth, the state of Pará also shelters a valuable cultural treasure — about 40 indigenous groups, scattered through an area of over 23 million hectares (57×10^⁶ acres). Of these, more than eight million have been delimited by FUNAI (National Foundation of Indians), ensuring security and preservation of that space. Among the biggest indigenous communities there are the Andira Marau, Munduruku, and Kayapó.

• Olympic stadium of Pará
• Evandro Almeida stadium
• Jader Barbalho stadium
• Leônidas Castro stadium
• and many others