Qualla: Santarém, Pará https://qualla.com/santarem-para en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:08 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/9/4/santarem-para-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Santarém, Pará https://qualla.com/santarem-para Santarém, Pará: Introduction https://qualla.com/santarem-para/ Photo credit Gabriel Rodrigues Da Silva, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before the Jesuits arrived in 1661, before the Portuguese, before any European, the Tapajós people had built an agricultural chiefdom here large enough that Spanish explorer Francisco Orellana, sailing down the Amazon in 1542, thought it worth sacking their corn plantations. They were the first people of this river, and the river took their name. Four centuries later, Santarém is still organized around the confluence where their chiefdom flourished: the point where the Tapajós flows clear blue into the brown Amazon and the two waters run side by side for kilometers without mixing. Everything else here, the Jesuit mission and the fortress and the soy terminal and the 306,000 residents, layered in on top of that geography.

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Image: Gabriel Rodrigues Da Silva | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/9/4/santarem-para-wp/6z94-santar-m-par-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Santarém, Pará: The Tapajós People and the Portuguese https://qualla.com/santarem-para/ Photo credit JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira came up the Amazon in 1621, ten years after the founding of Belém at the river's mouth, he found a settlement of people the Portuguese called Tupuliçus near the Tapajós mouth. They had already traded with Spanish explorers, and they now...

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Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/9/4/santarem-para-wp/6z94-santar-m-par-the-tapaj-s-people-and-the-portuguese.mp3 0:06 2 full Santarém, Pará: Where the Rivers Meet https://qualla.com/santarem-para/ Photo credit Vitogustavo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Santarém is defined by two rivers running past its front door side by side. The Amazon's milky water carries sediment from the Andes, thousands of kilometers upstream, and appears yellow-brown in the sun. The Tapajós runs warmer and clearer, with a deep-blue tone that comes from ...

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Image: Vitogustavo | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/9/4/santarem-para-wp/6z94-santar-m-par-where-the-rivers-meet.mp3 0:06 3 full Santarém, Pará: Cycles https://qualla.com/santarem-para/ Photo credit Own Work, CC BY-SA 3.0. Santarém has lived through a series of economic waves, each leaving a layer in the city's structure. Rubber extraction dominated the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Coffee production had its run. Gold mining surged in the 1980s when the Serra Pelada discovery to th...

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Image: Own Work | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/9/4/santarem-para-wp/6z94-santar-m-par-cycles.mp3 0:06 4 full Santarém, Pará: Richard Henington and Other Outsiders https://qualla.com/santarem-para/ Photo credit (WT-en) Mimi at English Wikivoyage, Public domain. In 1867, Richard Henington, born in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, arrived in Santarém. He was part of a migration of former Confederates who, after the American Civil War, had left the southern United States rather than accept Reconstruction. The Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II ha...

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

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/z/9/4/santarem-para-wp/6z94-santar-m-par-richard-henington-and-other-outsiders.mp3 0:06 5 full