History of Rondônia and Acre in Brazil
Rondônia
Acre
When the Portuguese first arrived in Rondônia, they thought the land they had found was an enormous island. The Madeira, Guaporé and Amazon rivers do almost form a circle, but the Guaporé was thought, erroneously, to link with the Rio Paraguai on the southwestern side. A group of indigenous Tupinambá, who fled from the Portuguese colonists on the Atlantic Coast, migrated up the Rio São Francisco to the Madeira, settling eventually on the Ilha de Tupinambaranas near the river's mouth. It was probably their accounts of the rivers in this region which encouraged the idea that the Amazon and Río de la Plata systems were linked, making Brazil an island.
Slave and gold hunters in the 18th century used the Guaporé and Madeira rivers for their expeditions. As a frontier area between Portuguese and Spanish colonization, the rivers were scenes of tension between the opposing powers, as well as of conflicts between indigenous tribes and slave-traders, and
bandeirantes
and Jesuits.
Rondônia became a state in 1981 after the central government's push to open up the unpopulated, undeveloped far west brought roads and settlers to the region. The destructive effects of this are well documented . One of those roads, the BR-364 highway, which was prompted by plans for exaggerated growth, led to widespread deforestation and the erosion of the way of life of many indigenous groups.
The state was named after Colonel Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, who founded the
Indian Protection Service
(
SPI
) in 1910. Rondon was of partly indigenous origin and the policies that he incorporated into the SPI included respect for native institutions, guarantee of permanent ownership by the
indígenas
of their land, the right to exclusive use of natural resources on their land, and protection against rapid change once contact between indigenous and 'civilized' worlds had been made. The pressures of contact between the
indígenas
and the people who subsequently encroached on their world (ranchers, gold prospectors, rubber tappers, Brazil nut gatherers and so on) made the SPI's task very difficult.
Rondônia falls within the same climatic zone as the rest of western Amazônia, with average temperatures of 24-26°C and 2-3 m of rain a year. The wettest months are November to April, the driest June and August. Rondônia can be subject to the phenomenon known as the
friagem
, a sudden drop in temperature to about 6°C, as a result of low pressure over the Amazon Basin attracting polar air from the south Atlantic. The cold weather can last for a week or more and occurs in the winter months. It is said to be an effect of El Niño, the changing patterns in ocean currents in the Pacific at Christmas time.
In the mid-19th century, what is now Acre was disputed land between Brazil and Bolivia. The Treaty of Ayacucho, 1866, gave the territory to Bolivia. However, the onset of the rubber boom in the 1880s upset this arrangement because many of the landowners who were exporting rubber from Acre and down the Rio Madeira were Brazilian. They resented the fact that the Bolivian government had nominal control, exacting duties, but had signed economic rights over to North American interests. Many
Nordestinos
also migrated to this western frontier at the time in search of fortune. In 1899 the Brazilians rebelled. Four years later the Bolivian government yielded the territory to Brazil under the Treaty of Petrópolis and the American company received US$2 million compensation. In 1913, Rio Branco became capital of the new Território Federal do Acre, which attained statehood in 1962.
Acre has a population of only 500,000 but, as its land is much more productive than that of Rondônia. In the 1990s there was a flood of migration from Acre's landless south into the its neighbouring state, and conditions have yet to be improved. Acre is slightly drier than Rondônia, with 1.5-2 m of rain a year.
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