Qualla: Amazonas (Brazilian state)

Amazonas (Brazilian state): Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Larissa Saud, CC BY 2.0. In 1541, a Spanish conquistador named Francisco de Orellana paddled down a river he had not meant to descend and reported a battle with women warriors. Whether the encounter happened as he described it, or whether his men fought long-haired male warriors and he embroidered the tale with Greek myth, nobody today can say. What is certain is that Orellana called the river the Rio de las Amazonas, after the fighters of Homeric legend, and the name stuck. Nearly five hundred years later, the state that carries it is the ninth-largest country subdivision in the world, an area of 1.57 million square kilometers that is larger than Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay put together, and still 98 percent forest.

Image: Larissa Saud | CC BY 2.0

Amazonas (Brazilian state): Deep Time, Slow Forest

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit COMUNIDADE BELA VISTA DO JARAQUI, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Amazon once ran the other way. Fifteen million years ago, before the Andes rose and blocked its course, the proto-river flowed westward, possibly draining into a system that continued across what is now Africa. When the South American Plate collided with the Nazca Plate and t...

Image: COMUNIDADE BELA VISTA DO JARAQUI | CC BY-SA 4.0

Amazonas (Brazilian state): The Portuguese Push Upstream

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Corttez, CC BY-SA 3.0. For most of the colonial era, the upper Amazon lay inside the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. The Portuguese were supposed to stay on the far side of the Tordesillas line, but a river system this navigable could not hold an imaginary boundary. Beginning with the founding of Belem at...

Image: Daniel Corttez | CC BY-SA 3.0

Amazonas (Brazilian state): The Rubber Fortune and Its Cost

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit user:Pontanegra, CC BY-SA 2.5. The late 19th century brought a commodity that the rest of the world suddenly could not do without. Automobile tires, telephone lines, bicycle tubes and industrial belts all needed latex from the Hevea brasiliensis tree, and Amazonas had Hevea in abundance. Migrants poured in fro...

Image: user:Pontanegra | CC BY-SA 2.5

Amazonas (Brazilian state): The Free Zone Experiment

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jason Auch from Calgary, Canada, CC BY 2.0. In 1957, with the old economy gone and the region depopulating, Brazil's government tried something new. Act 3.173 created the Manaus Free Trade Zone, later expanded under military-government decree in 1967. The idea was to pull industry into the Amazon by waiving import taxes on...

Image: Jason Auch from Calgary, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Amazonas (Brazilian state): Sixty-Two Municipalities, Mostly Water

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michellblind, CC BY-SA 3.0. Amazonas divides into 62 municipalities, but most of them do not connect to each other by road. Parintins, Manacapuru, Itacoatiara, Tefe and Coari string along the Amazon in the state's eastern half. The western reach runs to the tri-border at Tabatinga where Brazil, Peru and Col...

Image: Michellblind | CC BY-SA 3.0