The Settlement of Calama, one of the first communities of Rondonia State, Brazil

 
It was created by the Ordinary Federal Law nº 7.470, 17 April 1945.
History

“The Jesuit Priest Manuel Fernandez auxiliary of the priest John Sam Payo, with the remainders from the mission of Santa Antonio das Cachoeiras which was destroyed by the Mura, found near the mouth of the river Ji-Paraná, in 1742 the mission of Camuan, place where the bandeirante Manoel Felix de Lima end his followers came from the village of Gold a t the high river Guaporé, they have been assisted by the priest Fernandez who gave a bigger boat and food in order to kept their way to Belém do Grão Pará. At the beginning of the following year, in front of the Mura’s persecution and the local endemism abandoned the mission retracting himself with his fellow travelers in the mission of Trocano* (actual city of Borba). It had been des-occupied the mouth of Ji-Paraná.” 

Only at the beginning of the second half of the century XIX, with an extractives activity of rubber production and the organization of the rubber estate and which rise properly, the actual village of Calama, at the same time as a simple point of support for the explorers wich went to the village of the river Ji-Parana and the river Madeira, no having a fixed population. 

In 1877 it passed to be foothold of the firm Calam S/A which were propriety of the Spaniard Manoel Antonio Parada Carbacho, owner of the rubber estate of the lower and middles valleys of the river Ji-Paraná and the rubber estate Campinas and Boa Esperança in the river Madeira totalizing two million hectares, granted by Dom Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil. 

It were constructed residential houses, imported from Philadelphia/USA, sheds for housing for the skin of the rubber that would be exported and imported merchandises for the supplies of the rubber plantations. The town had much movement port; its population were growing and consolidating. At the beginning of the quotation of XX century a firm from Para Ascenci & Cia bough Calama S/A and its concession. The devaluation of the quotation of the rubber at the international market, bringing a serious economical crisis in the Amazon, reaching Calama too, was carrying the city to the doldrums. 

What rest from the installations is one shed used by the CERON, it’s a big house in where lived for some time an owner of rubber estate at the river Ji-Parana, after that it become to be a catholic missionary house. 

The city experimented again the surge of an economical welfare during the second world war with the revitalization of the rubber estate, after that, normalized the political and economical reltions returning the industrial potencies to provided from the Asiatic Rubber with the consequent collapsed of the price and that Brazilian product, and gradually brought down the rubber plantations and the emigration of the population. Calama become to survive from the workmanship, fishery and the agriculture of subsistence.

In 1946 o Bishop D. Joao Batista Costa and the priest Francisco Pucci (Chiquinho) built in the village a small church dedicate to Saint John. 

Ita population in the census of 2000, totalied 1.915 in habitants (urban) predominate those with age amog zero of fourteen years old. 

The name Calama was adopted from one alike one island from the river mouth of Ji-Paraná given by the luzus paraensis belonged to the fluvial flagz of XVII century I, because its vegetation is composted in abundance by Calâmea palms.

Fonte: Abnael Machado de Lima