Qualla: Altamira, Para

Altamira, Para: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is a tree stump in Altamira with a plaque beside it. In 1970 a Brazil nut tree, one of the largest in the Amazon, was cut down here to mark the start of construction on the Trans-Amazonian Highway, and when President Emilio Garrastazu Medici came to the ceremony the stump acquired a nickname: the president's stick. Brazil nut trees can live for centuries and are now protected by law precisely because they take that long to replace. This one is a monument by accident. Every argument Altamira has had since - about roads, about dams, about who the Amazon is for - was already implicit in the sound of that chainsaw, and the stump is still sitting there beside the highway that the felling announced.

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Altamira, Para: Tavaquara

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town began as a mission. In the 1750s a Jesuit priest, Father Roque Hunderfund, worked his way up the Xingu and asked Xipaia and Kuruaya men to guide him toward the Volta Grande, the enormous horseshoe bend the river makes before it turns north. Near the mouth of the Panelas ...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Altamira, Para: A Land Without People

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. Brazil's military government sold Amazon colonisation with a slogan: a land without people, for people without land. It was wrong in the first half and cruel in the second. Landless families from the drought-stricken northeast were trucked in along the new Trans-Amazonian Highway...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Altamira, Para: The Ruquis

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Túllio F, CC BY-SA 4.0. Then came the dam. Construction on Belo Monte began in 2010 at the Volta Grande downstream, and to make room for the reservoir the consortium emptied the parts of Altamira that sat lowest on the water. About a quarter of the city's urban population was moved, along with ribeirinh...

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Image: Túllio F | CC BY-SA 4.0

Altamira, Para: After the Payroll

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Larissa Saud, CC BY 2.0. During peak construction between 2012 and 2015, nearly thirty thousand workers were on the Belo Monte site, and Altamira's population swelled past 150,000 from the 99,075 recorded at the 2010 census. Rents tripled. Shopping centres appeared. So did the other things that arrive wi...

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Image: Larissa Saud | CC BY 2.0

Altamira, Para: Where the Pavement Ends

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Igor Cavallini, CC BY 3.0. Altamira covers 159,533 square kilometres, larger than any other municipality in Brazil and larger than 104 countries, at about 0.73 people per square kilometre. Nine of its ten districts are rural and separated from the seat by hundreds of kilometres of forest, dirt road and riv...

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Image: Igor Cavallini | CC BY 3.0