How Brazil Acquired Roraima

Abstract

N 1988, the northernmost part of Brazil became the state of I Roraima. This kite-shaped territory has an area of 230,000 square kilometers, and embraces the valley of the Rio Branco, a northern tributary of the Amazon River system. Near the headwaters of this great river, the dense rainforests of Amazonia open in a natural savanna, a gently rolling plain that stretches eastward for some 30o kilometers to the upper Essequibo in what is now Guyana. This plain is closer to the Atlantic Ocean than it is to the main Amazon River, and it is separated from the rest of Brazil by hundreds of kilometers of tropical forests. How did it come to form part of the Portuguese colonial empire to the south rather than become part of the Dutch colonies to the northeast or of Spanish Venezuela to the northwest? The plains of the upper Rio Branco were occupied by tribes speaking two major language groups: Aruak and Carib. These were the most common languages throughout the Caribbean and northern South America, and there was traditional hostility between the people who spoke them. In Roraima, this animosity has persisted almost to the present. We do not know which group of Indians reached the region first. The Aruak speakers, of whom the Wapixana are the largest surviving tribe, may have come via the Rio Negro and its tributary, the Uaupes. The Caribs migrated in from the north. The first attempt at permanent settlement by Europeans in the upper Rio Branco was made by Spaniards in 1773. This was unexpected, because they entered the region from the northwest, crossing the difficult Pacaraima range from the Orinoco basin into the upper Amazon. It was particularly surprising that the first settlers of what is now Brazilian Roraima should have been Spaniards from Venezuela since the upper Rio Branco had been penetrated sporadically since the early eighteenth century by