Belterra Information: Tickets, Venues, Events and More

The municipal seat ‘Belterra’ is a rubber plantation site in some 40 km south of the city of Santarem in Brazil. It is situated at the edge of Planalto at 165 m above the sea level.

When economic failure of Fordlandia was in the light in 1934, Henry Ford founded Belterra as a rubber plantation. The US Department of Commerce had intended in 1920 to produce rubber in Brazil to import it. New breeding methods with the local varieties were applied in Belterra that used to prevent leaf diseases which were often caused as a result of monoculture. It was highly labour intensive and expensive as well. But its plantation was not cost effective anymore with the worldwide decline on demand on natural rubber. Hence Ford preferred to sell it to the Brazilian government that still runs the plantation.

The area today has plants for some 10 - 20 km² covered extensively with many old rubber trees. It still gives the impression of a plantation with some 1000 - 2000 inhabitants. The city once had a peak time with the population of some 8 - 10,000 inhabitants. According to the 2004 census, the entire district had the population of 16,790 people.

Belterra is famous amongst soil scientists for its fertile, anthropogenic soil of 'Terra preta' that might have been amongst the criteria for the selection of this site for plantation. While Terra Preta soil patterns occur all over the Brazilian lowland, this site is extraordinarily well developed and also scientifically surveyed and documented.

Some analyses of the 14th century based upon Terra Preta ceramic artifacts found out that Belterra was an area populated with the cultivators and indigenous population in an intensive manner. This tertiary highland is composed of some 40 - 50 m clay layers, which is famous as Belterra clay of caolinitic sediments of a Pliocene lake, with a distinct escarpment to the North and West of the plain. It ultimately leads down to the Varzea lowland at the river bank of the Tapajos River. The region maintains its importance since centuries.