Salt Port is a complex of ports located in the intense island landscape of Guajará Bay. In the 1930s, it was an important trading point for Amazonian spices, such as black pepper, Brazil nuts and salted fish.
For more than eight decades, these ports have connected Belém to the countless islands around it. Salt Port is a mixed zone, where urban and riverine culture coexist, vectorizing knowledge such as naval typography, the construction of wooden boats, fishing nets, among others. The peculiarity of its culture and landscape is based on this characteristic. Located in Old Town neighborhood, a territory of narrow streets, baroque churches and houses with Portuguese architecture; it is also occupied by bridges and stilt houses built on the mangrove, mostly with boards and scrap wood. It is also a trading area, full of warehouses, sheds and resorts.
The region has been undergoing a gradual process of transformation, due to real estate speculation. There is a project to unify the irregular and precarious ports in Salt Port, focusing on standardizing such locations. With its implementation, several warehouses where riverine knowledge and practices circulate, remaining in the urban territory of Belém, will be extinguished. Such as the artisanal weaving of fishing nets and wooden shipbuilding.
In the surroundings of Salt Port Market and Carmo Church, there are two neighboring communities, Carmo and Malvina Alleys. Both belong to the territory that Arruda calls the “riverine Old Town”, as they are houses that occupy the riverbank and border the “historical Old Town”. In other words, the buildings that belong to the official historic center and are considered heritage.
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THE MARKET
Salt Port Market was built in 1933 in the Old Town neighborhood, in Belém. In its origins, the market functioned as a supply and flow center for production from the islands located on the surroundings of the capital, especially for salted pirarucu fish.
During that period, the then governor Magalhães Barata determined a standard market to be built in Salt Port, as there were only two buildings there, a port – which in reality was a warehouse for docking ships – and a soap factory, the rest was aninga vegetation. Over time, the riverbank suffered the disorderly occupation of dwellings, mainly stilt houses.
The market is the central axis of Salt Port, as several ports are located around it. Currently, its stalls supply the population living in the neighborhood, mainly in Carmo and Malvina Alleys.
Initially named Guamá Market, referring to Guamá River that runs in front of the building, it became popularly known as Salt Port Market and had its name officially altered. As previously mentioned, its main trading activity was the sale of salted fish, having a very intense flow during the period, eventually determining its name.
Salt Port Market has a reinforced concrete structure, a material that was still scarce in Belém in 1930s. The building was designed by Ricardo Schimandek, an engineer of German ancestry who was in Belém in the early 20th century. Its facade with Moorish features reveals a unique character in relation to the other markets in the city.
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Photography by BEN, Débora Flor and Dudu Lobato
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PERSONALITIES
The people who make the market.
