Maguari (Tapajós) - It was about 9 am when ‘Mr.’ Walter was awaiting us by the banks of a clear watercourse of the riverside township of Maguari. “Every day, I or one of the other two boys that work as guides, take a tourist to visit that tree nicknamed Granny. And I mean people from all over the world”, happily volunteered our communicative and agreeable ‘Mr.’ Walter.

The Sumaúma, also called Samaúma or Sumaumeira, (known in English by the name of Kapok or Ceiba) is a very special tree, especially for the very good reason of being regarded as the largest species of the entire Amazon Rainforest. There are naturally many legends and stories about this giant all over Brazil. However, the nickname and fame of this specific Sumaúma of Maguari comes from its age, estimated to be somewhere between 900 and a thousand years old. A veritable elder of the forest.



Maguari is located within the Tapajós National Forest, or FLONA in the environmental jargon, a federal conservation unit of approximately 600 thousand hectares. Created in the midst of the repression years of General Médici’s government, it was the first national forest of the Amazon Rainforest and, as such, a pioneer in facing the challenge of uniting conservation of the environment with the presence of economic activities of traditional communities that already inhabited the region.

To reach the township from Santarém, one must cover some 60 kilometers both of paved and bumpy dirt tracks over the PA-457 road towards Alter do Chão and then through the BR-163 highway. The controversial federal highway that connects Santarém to Cuiabá (MT) borders the FLONA and brought illegal deforesting and land speculation to the region. Many soy farms have spread all over as we saw on the way, ousting older inhabitants. Attracted by the money, many ended up selling their land and migrating to urban centers such as Santarém, where they discover that the money received wasn’t that much after all. This harsh reality translates into unemployment, precarious dwellings and violence. In just five years, according to Pará’s Civil Police, crime increased by 135% in Santarém.

A happy story


Departing from this line of development, the community of Maguari and its millennial tree have a much happier story to tell. As they live within the National Forest, they have been able to escape the bite of agricultural businesses while at the same time benefitting from NGO and government projects. In this manner, they eventually became a role-model riverside community that even warranted a visit by the heir of the British Throne. Prince Charles paid them a visit in 2009, danced the Carimbó and was so enchanted with what he saw that he decided to donate some cash to the community to purchase photovoltaic cells to capture solar energy.

The township enjoys Internet access through a community telecenter from the NGO project Health and Happiness. With computers and web access, the community is aware of what is going on outside its borders and can generate its own news for the world to check out in its very own blog (http://maguari.redemocoronga.org.br/). The community is also involved in a project to manufacture ecological leather, made from rubber extracted from rubber trees, still abundant in the region, as leftovers of the rubber cycle. They make shoes, bags, key rings and other hand-crafted items which are sold in their local shop and also in initiatives conceived to support fair trade.

In search of Granny

The trek was undertaken as one would a guided tour in a museum. At every turn we would run into yet another ‘masterpiece’, so to speak, with appropriate explanations from our guide, who learned to wander through the forest while still a boy with his father. Copaíba, Jatobá, Quina-Quina, Apuí vines, Curuá straw and Breu Branco resin... the vocabulary of the biodiversity we encountered on the way to Granny is indeed vast. We were looking at a deep lesson in ecology. The forest of gargantuan proportions closed in around us, its canopies reaching into the sky, gently filtering the sunlight onto the vegetation below.

After about a four-hour walk, there we were standing before her. Time to catch our breadths and remain in silent reverie, taking in all the details that comprise this Granny of all trees. The entwining vines, lianas and all manner of plant and animal life are an impressive sight as they seem to seek sanctuary under Granny. Around her, true to Amazonian magic, hundreds of blue butterflies fluttered, basking in the sudden rays of sunlight that broke in under the shade of the Sumaúma. As its canopy is scanty and lofty, at some 30 meters from the ground, it affords generous amounts of sunlight. It is even said that some native tribes like to grow corn and beans around it for this reason.

The Sumaúma is not the tallest tree in the world, dwarfed as it is by the giant North-American sequoias, however, in girth it can easily enter the competition to win. For example, to embrace Granny, one has to summon some 20 people to circle its trunk hand-in-hand. Some others require 30 or even 40 people for the task. This tree trunk, prodigious like the Great Wall of China, forms wings, so to speak, known as sapopemas that spread out horizontally like arms that seem to embrace the earth. On these arms, a loud sound can be resounded that reaches far into the forest. For this reason, it is called “the communicator” by the peoples of the forest.

‘Mr.’ Walter also tells us that the Sumaúma is the dwelling of the elemental being Curupira, the chosen protector of the forests that wanders its hidden alleys bewildering and haunting unwary hunters. Records show that this is Brazil’s oldest legend, its first report appearing in a letter to Father Anchieta in 1560. “There are some demons here, which the indigenous people refer to as the Curupira that often ambushes us in the jungle”, wrote Anchieta to the Portuguese Crown.

Legends and stories that comprise a kind of ethno-botanical mythology around the Sumaúma fire our imagination and increase our admiration for this giant of the Amazon. However, the Granny of the Tapajós went further and gained its own story as the symbol of a threatened forest: it is a millenary tree that offers work and earnings to those who know how to live in nature without destroying it. As in the verses of Olavo Bilac, in his poem “Old Trees”:

“Look at these old trees, handsomer than
the younger and friendlier ones,
that grow more beautiful as they age,
Conquerors of time and storms...
Man, beast and insects, in their shade
Live, free from hunger and fatigue:
And their branches are a sanctuary for the songs
And the loves of chattering birds. (...)”



Juliana Radler is a journalist specialized in the environment by the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ), of Berlin. She is a collaborator of the German magazine, Development and Cooperation (D+C) and in Brazil, of the web Portal ((o)) eco and director and producer of the Sumaúma video, in Rio de Janeiro.


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