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Guajará Bay is a bay formed by the meeting of the mouths of the rivers Guamá and Acará in the state of Pará, Brazil. It is part of the Amazon region, and is located southeast of the mouth of the Amazon River. It has low-depth zones of approximately 5 metres (16 ft) and channels of approximately 5 metres (16 ft); 70% of the bottom of the bay is mud-covered.
They bay was called Paraná-Guaçu by the Tupinambá Indians of the region. Fishing in the bay was the primary means of survival of the indigenous population. The bay later became the gateway to the Amazon region by the the Portuguese, who attempted to occupy a large swath of land as the Captaincy of Grão-Pará. The land belonged to Spain under the Treaty of Tordesillas, but at that time the territories were unified by the Iberian Union.
Three Portuguese vessels entered the bay on January 12, 1616: the patacho Santa Maria da Candelária, the caravelão Santa Maria das Graças, and the lancha grande Grande Assunção. They docked in the prensent-day city of Belém under the command of Francisco Caldeira de Castelo Branco, accompanied by 150 men. Caldeira called the settlement Feliz Lusitânia. Chief engineer Francisco Frias Mesquita began construction of a for, the Forte do Presépio (today, Forte do Castelo) on the east bank of the bay. This became the nucleus of the city of Santa Maria de Belém do Grão-Pará, now known as Belém.
The bay was subsequently the scene of several battles. The Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French all disputed for control of the Grão-Pará region. Only the Portuguese settled in the region; the remaining powers south land further north, in the Guianas. Fishing in the intensified after the settlement of the Portuguese, and continued until the beginning of the Rubber Cycle in 1879.
Fish from Guajará Bay remain both a staple of the population of Pará and forms a basis of the traditional cuisine of the region. The Círio de Nazaré, a large-scale religious festival in Belém, crosses areas near the bay over several days of the procession.