Belém: A city of stones in the middle of the forest.

Belém city is the Para state capital. It was founded on January 16, 1616 by Captain General Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco, charged by the Portuguese crown to conquer, occupy, exploit and protect the mouth of the Amazon River against the Dutch and English privateers.
The Cabanagem
Cabanagem, a revolution that broke out in Pará on January 7, 1835, was the first in Latin America, and the only one in Brazil, where the people actually took power. As most of the fighters were made up of humble people who lived in huts, they were called Cabanos; And, as a result, the revolution became known as Cabanagem.
There were many remote and immediate causes of the revolution. Among them, the nationalist frustration after verifying the adhesion of Pará to the Independence of Brazil in 1823; and that while adhering to the Brazilian empire, Pará continued away from political decisions, and power remained concentrated in the hands of the conservatives, that is, those that were exploiting the state since the days of colonial Brazil.
The Cabanagem was a nativist explosion, a kind of broad front that brought together the dissatisfied bourgeois nationalists who wanted their share of the economic pie.
The military who wanted to climb higher positions; And others who wanted their turn; The landless who longed for land; The Indians and mestizos, who had hatred against the dominators since the times of sacking and conquest: the black slaves who fought for Liberty. It is logical and understandable that, after the bloody victory, these groups clashed with each other, by the heterogeneity of classes, and of interests.
He still lacked, to the Cabanagem, a program and a great Leader.
This Leader was Batista Campos, who died six days before the armed struggles. Cabanagem had a lot of action.
From Belém, it was irradiated throughout the Amazonian interior, because at that time, the whole of Amazonia was Pará Province. In the capital, they resumed power on May 13, 1836; But in the interior, the fights continued until 1840. In all, there was a balance of 30,000 dead, 1/4 of the Amazon population of the time. But it left, as a positive balance, the breakdown of the mercantile monopoly and the loss of political control by the conservatives and the overthrow of the slavery system of Pará.
By Carlos Roque