Qualla: Serra dos Martírios/Andorinhas State Park

Serra dos Martírios/Andorinhas State Park: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TurismoPara, CC BY-SA 4.0. The range was renamed out of embarrassment. For most of its history it was the Serra dos Martirios - the Martyrs Range - but in the 1960s the mountains harbored something the Brazilian military dictatorship preferred not to commemorate: the Guerrilha do Araguaia, an armed left-wing movement that hid among these escarpments until counterinsurgency operations crushed it in the mid-1970s. After the guerrilha ended, officials rebranded the range as Serra das Andorinhas, the Swallows Range, a gentler name for a place that had seen violent things. The old name never fully went away. Today, both are official, stacked together with a slash between them like a wound half-healed.

Image: TurismoPara | CC BY-SA 4.0

Serra dos Martírios/Andorinhas State Park: Eight Thousand Years of Art

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The oldest residents of this land left their marks on stone. The park holds more than 80 archaeological sites, 150 cave paintings, and over 5,000 rock engravings - some estimated at 8,300 years old. These pre-Columbian artists worked the escarpments of a landscape where the Amazo...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Serra dos Martírios/Andorinhas State Park: The House of Stone

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vilma Pinheiro, CC BY-SA 3.0. Casa de Pedra sits in the northern part of the park, accessible only by a steep climb from the BR-153 highway about five kilometers to the west. Inside a large rock shelter, devotees have built a church to the Trinity. Every year between April and May, the Feast of the Divine Hol...

Image: Vilma Pinheiro | CC BY-SA 3.0

Serra dos Martírios/Andorinhas State Park: The Escarpment and the River

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vilma Pinheiro, CC BY-SA 3.0. Serra das Andorinhas contains a steep fault escarpment with drops that plunge 250 meters in places. The Araguaia River, which forms the park's southeastern and eastern border, also divides Para from Tocantins. Its waters run fast and very rocky, demanding experienced pilots for t...

Image: Vilma Pinheiro | CC BY-SA 3.0

Serra dos Martírios/Andorinhas State Park: Who Lives Here Now

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Deyvisonpplayer20, CC0. As recently as 2011, 83 families were still practicing subsistence farming inside the park, using slash-and-burn techniques, grazing cattle on the harpy eagle's hunting grounds. Illegal hunting has declined but not disappeared. The park's management balances the interests of thes...

Image: Deyvisonpplayer20 | CC0