This thesis combines a significant Belém’s Urbanisation Plan –developed in the 1940’s by the urban planner and mayor Jeronimo Cavalcanti with social, political and economic struggles of an era of many changes in the Amazon, in Brazil and in the Western world. The Plan was elaborated during the Second World War, at the time of the Washington Agreements and during the Estado Novo. Suddenly, the Amazon began to occupy a central place in the Vargas policy, bringing a kind of a nostalgia for the golden age of rubber as well as a kind of a impression that the new moment was very specific and different. There was a French pattern and after that there was a North American standard; there were trams, zeppelin buses, rails, asphalt, Italian pallazi, skyscrapers. Everything was related to modernization, but everything seemed very different: the models had become. The urban planner who has accepted that challenge was known in circles of engineering and architecture in Rio de Janeiro; however, he was inept in the political field. His plan provided the complete restructuring of the city, ranging from the modernization of the supply industry and markets, to profound changes in public services, transport and roads. However, Cavalcanti and his ideas did not resist the simplest political crisis. Despite the short time as a mayor and his precarious political tact, his plan left roots and worth to be remembered especially because it occurred in a historic moment of construction and affirmation of Urbanism as a scientific field of power in Brazil and, especially, in the Amazon. His ideas were often referenced and, in important moments, developed, even if people did not agree with them. However, its early history was still unclear. This thesis based on many sources, but especially in newspapers and period reports discusses the old and new debates between Belle Époque’s Belém and the new Belém created by the urban planner Cavalcanti.
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