Humberto de Campos is a small city in the Lençois region of the state of Maranhão in the Northeast of Brazil. Its current name is that of a Brazilian writer, but it has had various names and administrative changes. The original indigenous name for the region was Miritiba and the name remains (a pousada carries that name, for example), but the indigenous people have long been displaced.
It is only about 180 miles from the equator (289 kilometers). The state capital of São Luís is only about 90 kilometers away, but the metropoles of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are over 2000 kilometers to the south.
The French arrived in 1612 (around the time they founded São Luís), but the occupation was ended by the Portuguese.
According to local history, the region figured in the Balaiada revolt (1838-42) and was part of the brief reign of the rebel and former slave Cosmé Bento. Cosmé and his force of former slaves were part of a broader revolt of liberals and middle-class and poor whites. The struggle involved much of the state of Maranhão. The conflict was actually triggered in 1838 when a group led by Raimundo Gomés attacked a jail in city now known as Nina Rodrigues to free his brother. The revolt spread to include thousands of poor farmers who were angry about the declining economy and predatory military draft. It has been estimated that some 8,000 rebels were involved, including some 2-3,000 former slaves, before being repressed by the military. Cosmè was captured and executed in 1842 in the final days of what was known as the Balaiada revolt, but not before occupying for a time the second largest city in the region, Caixias to the south. In the Portuguese practice of the time, Gomés was draw and quartered, and his body parts distributed around Maranhão as a warning.
Humberto de Campos was affected, but the end of the revolt was played out in Caxias to the south where Cosmé was defeated. Both the region of Miritiba and Maranhão as a whole have had a turbulent political and social history.
Humberto de Campos lies along the river Piriá, or Preá, which flows northward to the Atlantic. The city and the river are an access point to the Atlantic Ocean and the Lençois Dunes National Park. It was our starting place for a river trip and visiting the dunes, but also an interesting little city in its own right.
The river Preá or Piriá connects to the Atlantic and the transitional zones of brackish water are home to mangrove forests, flocks of red ibis birds and white egrets. Fishing is a major occupation along the rivers and in the dunes where fishermen live temporarily in lean-to shacks that protect them from the sun. The landscape is, by turns, lush, swampy, and desert-like.
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