General map of the Amazon Valley.

Historical summary, current situation and personal testimonies of Augustinian Recollect missionaries who have worked side by side and built part of their personal history at the service of the people of Tapaua, the Amazon, Brazil.

Tapaua is a small Brazilian municipality with an estimated population of 18,152 people (2015). The actual figure could be higher, due to the existence of pockets of a dispersed population who lack “legal existence”. In the last few years the population has diminished because of emigration. In the 1991 Census the population was 25,394 inhabitants, the highest population peak in the history of the municipality.

In terms of area, it is one of the largest municipalities in the world. There are 85, 488 kilometres2, a little less than Portugal (92,212) or Andalucía in Spain (87,268), or greater than Austria (83,855). For every inhabitant there is 4.7 km2 of territory, with the irony that one of the great problems here has been, precisely, the distribution of land.

Tapaua is in the Purus valley – the tributary of the Amazon -, which flows from South-east to North-east from its birth in the mountain range of Contamana (Ucayali, Peru) until its meeting point with the Amazon, after covering 1,839 miles. It has an average water flow of 8, 400 m3 per second.

It is one of the most zigzagging rivers in the world, and its length in a straight line, between its origin and its end, is less than half the length of the distance it actually travels. This influences any human or pastoral action, because it causes slows down communication and isolates the population. You can only get to Tapaua by boat or by light aircraft.

It was one of the last places for Western civilization to arrive at, even in comparison with the rest of the Amazonian region, with less than 150 years of non-indigenous areas of existence and exploration in the region. As a separate municipality, Tapaua has existed since December 1955, with the peculiarity that the municipal headquarters and the urban zone were created almost from nothing as it was the only viable area for the construction of the city for being on “solid earth”.

The Purus river, like all the Amazon rivers, has two seasons every year: from July until January it runs its normal course, but between February and June it floods the surrounding areas and the river bed can gain between ten and sixty meters in breadth. Only the higher zones are saved from this flooding and for this reason they are deemed “solid earth”.

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