Tapuitapera

Tapuitapera was an Indigenous village on the mainland shore opposite the island of São Luís. Its position on the bays of Maranhão connected it with the island and the rivers of the interior. By 1612 it was part of a group of villages known to Europeans on this coast. The place later became Alcântara, a colonial settlement whose streets and churches grew above the shore.

After the Portuguese regained the region from the Dutch, Tapuitapera was raised to the town of Santo Antônio de Alcântara in 1648. Sugar estates and, later, cotton production supported its development. During the eighteenth century the wealth of the surrounding plantations helped shape the town’s architecture, while enslaved people supplied much of the labour on which the colonial economy depended.