OUR PEOPLE
Caiçara – A term of tupi-guarani origin (caá, thicket; içara, trap) used by the natives to denominate the stakes placed around the villages and also to designate the traps made with branches of trees to catch fish in the rivers, or the mud wall built around the open brush to protect the animals.
The first caiçara nucleus appeared during the colonization of the Vale do Ribeira on the coast of São Paulo, through the half-breeding of white and native and, posterially, through the presence of the negro.spreading itself throughout other coastal areas of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio de Janeiro, where traditional caiçara populations still maintain their way of life practising artisan fishing, subsistencial agriculture, vegetal extract and sometimes hunting.