Qualla: Itaituba https://qualla.com/itaituba en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:25:05 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/0/p/itaituba-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Itaituba https://qualla.com/itaituba Itaituba: Introduction https://qualla.com/itaituba/ Photo credit Wevertoncordeiro, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 22 October 1994, thieves hijacked a TABA turboprop that had just lifted out of Itaituba and took the gold it was carrying to Belem. It is a story locals still tell, and it says almost everything about what this town was in those years. Itaituba sits on the west bank of the Tapajos in western Para, about 123,000 people on a bluff above a river so wide and so clear that in the dry season it lays down white sand beaches like a coastline. Its Tupi name means, roughly, place of gravel. Its nickname is cidade pepita, nugget city. Both names are about what is in the ground and the riverbed, and for seventy years everything that has happened here has followed from that.

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Image: Wevertoncordeiro | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/0/p/itaituba-wp/6z0p-itaituba-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Itaituba: Four Hundred Landings a Day https://qualla.com/itaituba/ Photo credit Wevertoncordeiro, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gold turned Itaituba from a river settlement into a boomtown. Through the mid-1980s and into the early 1990s the garimpos of the Tapajos valley ran flat out, and by some estimates more than 500 tonnes of gold came out of the region in that period. The town could not be reached ea...

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]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/0/p/itaituba-wp/6z0p-itaituba-four-hundred-landings-a-day.mp3 0:06 2 full Itaituba: What the Mercury Found https://qualla.com/itaituba/ Photo credit (WT-en) Mimi at English Wikivoyage, Public domain. Garimpo gold is separated with mercury, and mercury does not stay where it is put. It washes into the Tapajos, bacteria convert it into methylmercury, fish accumulate it, and people who eat fish accumulate it in turn. The Munduruku, whose territory covers a vast stretch of this r...

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Image: (WT-en) Mimi at English Wikivoyage | Public domain

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/0/p/itaituba-wp/6z0p-itaituba-what-the-mercury-found.mp3 0:06 3 full Itaituba: Seventeen Years for a Line on a Map https://qualla.com/itaituba/ Photo credit Notafly, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two large Indigenous territories reach into the municipality. The Munduruku Indigenous Territory, 2,382,000 hectares, was established in 2004. The Sawre Muybu territory took far longer. Funai first began the demarcation process in 2007; when it stalled, the Munduruku went out in ...

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]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/0/p/itaituba-wp/6z0p-itaituba-seventeen-years-for-a-line-on-a-map.mp3 0:06 4 full Itaituba: Fifteen Hundred Trucks a Day https://qualla.com/itaituba/ Photo credit Wevertoncordeiro, CC BY-SA 3.0. Across the river from the town centre lies Miritituba, a district that was a quiet riverside neighbourhood a generation ago and is now one of the busiest grain transfer points in the Amazon. Soybeans from northern Mato Grosso come up BR-163 for something like a thousand kilometre...

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]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/0/p/itaituba-wp/6z0p-itaituba-fifteen-hundred-trucks-a-day.mp3 0:06 5 full Itaituba: The River in July https://qualla.com/itaituba/ Photo credit Aimberesena, CC BY-SA 4.0. None of this has cancelled the ordinary life of the place. Itaituba's biggest celebration is the feast of Nossa Senhora de Sant'Ana, the town's patron, held over the first half of July and closing with a Cirio procession on the 26th. July is also when the water drops and the sand...

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Image: Aimberesena | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/0/p/itaituba-wp/6z0p-itaituba-the-river-in-july.mp3 0:06 6 full