Penal colony of Clevelândia

The penal colony of Clevelândia, located in the current district of Clevelândia do Norte, Amapá, functioned from 1924 to 1926 in the extreme north of Brazil, bordering French Guiana. It was installed in the "Cleveland Colonial Nucleus", an agricultural colony founded in 1922, and received a total of 946 to 1,630 prisoners. They included enemies of president Artur Bernardes' government (tenentist rebels, militant workers and anarchists) and common prisoners (criminals from the "dregs of society" and the homeless, capoeiras, and minors caught on the streets). They came from Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Amazonas and Pará. In addition to these, the colony's population was made up of Brazilian Army guards, employees, traders and settlers, the last three totaling 204 inhabitants at the end of 1926. At the beginning of 1927, the Washington Luís administration allowed the prisoners to return. The original agricultural colony was already losing its inhabitants to neighboring Martinica (present-day Oiapoque) in 1924, when the Bernardes government needed a remote and isolated prison. In response to the tenentist military revolts, the government had imposed a state of emergency and overcrowded prisons. Miguel Calmon, then Minister of Agriculture, offered the location, as it was the most remote agricultural colony in the country. This has precedents in the governments of Floriano Peix

Prison data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).