Travel Guide Belterra

60 km from Santarém, a town next to old rubber plantations, established in the 1930s by Henry Ford (to counteract the monopoly of British companies on the latex trade). The town was built in the American style, long straight streets lined with small wooden houses. Today, the town is home to a research center of the Ministry of Agriculture. The project of Forlandia, was disproportionate. The rubber plantation, which substituted monoculture for traditional polyculture, quickly led to soil exhaustion and accelerated the development of parasitic diseases that ravaged the plantations