Manaus


Manaus is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It is the seventh-largest city in Brazil, with an estimated 2024 population of 2,279,686 distributed over a land area of about. Located at the east centre of the state, the city is the centre of the Manaus metropolitan area and the largest metropolitan area in the North Region of Brazil by urban landmass. It is situated near the confluence of the Negro and Amazon rivers. It is one of the two cities in the Amazon rainforest with a population of over 1 million people, alongside Belém.
The city was founded in 1669 as the Fort of São José do Rio Negro. It was elevated to a town in 1832 with the name of "Manaus", an altered spelling of the indigenous Manaós peoples, and legally transformed into a city on October 24, 1848, with the name of Cidade da Barra do Rio Negro, Portuguese for "The City of the Margins of the Black River". On September 4, 1856, it returned to the name "Manaus".
Manaus is located in the center of the Amazon rainforest, and home to the National Institute of Amazonian Research, being the most important center for scientific studies in the Amazon region and for international sustainability issues. It was known at the beginning of the century as Heart of the Amazon and City of the Forest. Its main economic engine is the Industrial Park of Manaus, a Free Economic Zone. The city has a free port and an international airport. Its manufactures include electronics, chemical products, and soap; there are distilling and ship construction industries. Manaus exports Brazil nuts, rubber, jute, and rosewood oil. It has a cathedral, the Amazon Theatre opera house, zoological and botanical gardens, an eco-park, and regional and native peoples museums.
The Solimões and Negro rivers meet just east of Manaus and join to form the Amazon River. Rubber made it the richest city in South America during the late 1800s. Rubber helped Manaus earn its nickname, the Paris of the Tropics. Many wealthy European families settled in Manaus and brought their love for sophisticated European art, architecture, and culture with them. Manaus was one of the twelve Brazilian host cities of the 2014 World Cup, as well as one of the six hosts of football matches at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Etymology

The name Manaus comes from the native people called Manaós, which means Mother of the Gods.

History

Early settlement of Manaus

The history of the European colonization of Manaus began in 1499 with the Spanish arrival at the mouth of the Amazon River. The Spanish then continued to colonize the region north of Brazil. Development continued in 1668–1669 with the building of the Fort of São José da Barra do Rio Negro by the Portuguese in order to ensure its predominance in the region, especially against the Dutch, at that time headquartered in what is today Suriname. The fort was constructed in rock and clay, with four cannons guarding the curtains. It continued to function for more than 100 years. Next to the fort there were many indigenous mestizos, who helped in its construction and began to live in the vicinity.
The population grew so much that, in 1695, the missionaries built a nearby chapel dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Conceição, who, in time, became the patron saint of the city. A Royal Charter of March 3, 1755 created the captaincy of São José do Rio Negro, with capital in Mariuá, but with the governor, Lobo D'Almada, fearing a Spanish invasion, the seat went back to Lugar de Barra in 1791. Being located at the confluence of the Rio Negro and Amazon Rivers, it was a strategic point. On November 13, 1832, Lugar da Barra was elevated to town status and named Manaus. On October 24, 1848, under Law 145 of the Provincial Assembly of Para, it was renamed the City of Barra do Rio Negro. On September 4, 1856, the governor, Herculano Ferreira Pena, finally gave it the name "Manaus".

Cabanagem

The Cabanagem was the revolt in which blacks, Native Americans, and mestizos fought against the white political elite and took power in 1835. The Cabanagem reduced the population of the then state of Grão-Pará from about 100,000 to 60,000. The involvement of rebels from the Upper Amazon in what was originally a movement based in Belém was crucial for the birth of the current state of the Amazon. During the brief period of revolution, the Cabanos of the Upper Amazon, bands of rebels, roamed throughout the region, occupying Manaus twice, and, in most settlements, their arrival was greeted by the non-white population spontaneously joining their ranks, leading to a greater number of adherents to the movement. With that there was an integration of people in the region thus forming the state.

Rubber boom

Manaus was at the center of the Amazon region's rubber boom during the late 19th century. For a time, it was "one of the gaudiest cities of the world". Historian Robin Furneaux wrote of this period, "No extravagance, however absurd, deterred" the rubber barons. "If one rubber baron bought a vast yacht, another would install a tame lion in his villa, and a third would water his horse on champagne." The city built a grand opera house, with vast domes and gilded balconies, and using marble, glass, and crystal, from around Europe. The opera house cost ten million dollars. In one season, half the members of one visiting opera troupe died of yellow fever. The opera house, called the Teatro Amazonas, was effectively closed for most of the 20th Century. However it was used in scenes of the Werner Herzog film Fitzcarraldo. After a gap of almost 90 years, it reopened to produce live opera in 1997 and is now attracting performers from all over the world.
When the seeds of the rubber tree were smuggled out of the Amazon region to be cultivated on plantations in Southeast Asia, Brazil and Peru lost their monopoly on the product. The rubber boom ended abruptly, many people left its major cities, and Manaus fell into poverty. The rubber boom had made possible electrification of the city before it was installed in many European cities, but the end of the rubber boom made the generators too expensive to run. The city was not able to generate electricity again for years.

Free zone

In the 1960s during the establishment of the military dictatorship in Brazil, the newly installed government concerned about the "demographic gap in Brazil", began to introduce numerous projects in the interior of the country, especially in the Amazon region, with the introduction of the Manaus free trade zone in 1967, and with the opening of new roads within the region, the city had a wide period of investments in financial and economic capital, both national and international, attracted by the tax incentives granted by the free zone, in this period, Manaus had enormous demographic growth becoming one of the most populous cities in Brazil.

Recent events

Manaus was one of the host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and one of the seats of some Olympic football games. It was the only host city in the Amazon rainforest and the most geographically isolated, being further north and west than any of the other host cities. A massive prison riot occurred in January 2017, having begun in Manaus and later spreading to two additional cities in Brazil, thus unleashing security problems within the country.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, an estimated 76% of the population of Manaus was infected with coronavirus, and the possibility of herd immunity was discussed. However, a second outbreak infected people in Manaus, this time with the Lineage B.1.1.248 variant starting in early January 2021.

Geography

The largest city in northern Brazil, Manaus occupies an area of, with a density of. It is the neighboring city of Presidente Figueiredo, Careiro, Iranduba, Rio Preto da Eva, Itacoatiara, and Novo Airão.

Vegetation

Manaus is located in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world. Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species-rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia. As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. More than one-third of all species in the world live in the Amazon rainforest.

Green areas

Despite being located in the Amazon, Manaus is densely developed and has few green areas in the city. The largest green areas are:
  • Mindu Park, located in the center-south of the city, the district Park 10. The Park of Mindú, established in 1989, is one of the largest and most visited parks in the city.
  • Bilhares Park, established in 2005, located in the south-central region of Manaus, in the neighborhood of .
  • Area of the green hill of Aleixo, created in the 1980s, located in the east of the city and is one of the largest urban green areas.
  • Sumaúma State Park, a state park located in the north of Manaus, in the New Town district. It is the smallest state park of the Brazilian Amazon Basin.
  • Castanheiras Pied Tamarin Wildlife Refuge, a refuge created in 1982 to protect a population of endangered pied tamarins.
  • Adolfo Ducke Forest Reserve, a biological reserve established in 1963, and covers an area of 100 square kilometres. The Reserve is managed by INPA.
  • Part of the Anavilhanas National Park, a conservation unit that was originally an ecological station created in 1981.
  • About 75% of the Rio Negro Left Bank Environmental Protection Area, a sustainable use conservation area created in 1995.
  • The Tupé Sustainable Development Reserve, created in 2005, about west of the city.
  • The Rio Negro State Park South Section, created in 1995, about by boat to the northwest of the city.