A “Safe Haven”: Runaway Slaves, Mocambos, and Borders in Colonial Amazonia, Brazil

A chapter in the saga of Portugal’s Atlantic discoveries can be reconstructed by following the trails blazed by the settlement of the colonial Amazon between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in the eastern border regions of Brazilian Guyana. This immense sector of the Amazon was known as Terras do Cabo Norte (Lands of North Cape) throughout most of the colonial period. Like other parts of the Amazon, it was not necessarily impervious to the process of colonization. While the metropole was paying close attention to the crates of sugar leaving the northeastern ports, missionaries and travelers ventured out and borders were demarcated in the far-flung corners of the vast Amazon region. In the beginning, the eastern Amazon was not occupied in economic terms, but it soon attracted the attention of the authorities in Portugal. Although scattered, some small forts were built, beginning in the seventeenth century. And they were...