State-led Development and Migrants’ Resilience in the City of the Forest

Abstract State-led initiatives to nationalize Brazilian Amazonia during the interwar period framed uncontrolled human mobility as a significant threat to state and property interests that needed to be managed. As political centralization intensified disparities and decision-making power in the region, a culture of internal-migrant resilience became stronger. By focusing on dynamics taking place in Manaus, the city of the forest, this article shows that the ability of self-driven people-on-the-move to navigate fraught environments and negotiate socioeconomic inequality was crucial not only during the economic rubber boom but also in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly throughout Amazonia’s rubber crisis.