Before it was a municipality, this was a mission. The Aldeia de Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres de Caucaia was established somewhere in the long window between 1603 and 1666, and Jesuits worked it steadily from 1741. Then the Marquis of Pombal expelled the order and dismantled the Jesuit aldeias across Portuguese America in 1755, converting mission villages into ordinary towns under royal administration. Caucaia was raised to vila and, on 15 October 1759, renamed Vila Nova Real de Soure - a Portuguese name for a place that already had one. Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres stayed on as patroness. After independence the town became simply Soure, and only in 1943 did a decree return the Indigenous name. The Igreja Matriz, finished in 1749 with a five-towered facade and four bells, has watched every one of those changes from the same square.

The Tapeba are the descendants of Potiguara, Tremembe, Kariri and Juca people who were gathered into that colonial aldeia and slowly became one community under the pressure of it. The mission took their languages; the Tapeba speak Portuguese today. What it did not take was the ground or the memory of holding it. FUNASA counted about 6,600 Tapeba in 2010, living in villages scattered across the metropolitan fringe of Fortaleza. Their fight for legal recognition of that land is a case study in how long the state can make people wait. Work with a support team from the Archdiocese of Fortaleza began in 1985; a FUNAI working group made its identification in 1986; a 1987 survey found 118 non-Indigenous occupants on the territory. In 1988 the whole process was shelved on the argument that the Tapeba might not be genuinely Indigenous at all - a community asked, in effect, to prove it existed. The file was reopened in 1989 with traditional occupation recognized, and in 1997 the Minister of Justice declared the territory. Local political challenges did not stop there.

From July to November the trades come in hard and steady, and Caucaia turns into one of the world's reliable kitesurfing addresses. Cumbuco is the center of it, with the freshwater Lagoa do Cauipe just inland offering flat water when the ocean gets rough. The rhythm shifts in March and April, when the swell arrives and surfers move down the coast to Icarai looking for shape rather than speed. Around 300,000 visitors a year make Caucaia the second-busiest tourist destination in Ceara, which is a strange status for a place most people reach by accident on the way somewhere else. Inland the land climbs: Serra da Rajada and Serra do Jua give walkers hills and valleys within sight of the sea.

The other Caucaia is industrial. The Pecem port and industrial complex has pulled the municipality's economy up to among the largest in Ceara - a gross product of some 10.4 billion reais in 2021, third in the state - and the investment interest that follows it now runs to offshore wind farms and desalination plants. A deepwater port on a windy coast next to a water-scarce sertao is a specific kind of opportunity, and the state has been selling it hard. Caucaia has spent some of the proceeds unusually: in 2021 it made all public transport free for residents under a program called Bora de Graca, becoming the largest Brazilian municipality to do so, with roughly 400,000 people covered.

For all that, the center of town still behaves like a town. The market carries fish, fruit and souvenirs. Trains and buses run in from Fortaleza through the Feiras district downtown. At night people circle the church square, and the stalls sell bon bons and small sweet things to whoever is walking. The Museu do Caju gives the cashew - the crop that has shaped this coast's economy and kitchens for generations - a building of its own, with local handicraft and cooking alongside. It is a modest museum for a plant that deserves one.