Rio Branco's Cultural Scene: Museums, Identity & Forest Art
Rio Branco has a cultural scene built around forest identity — the rubber museum, the indigenous art, and the contemporary artists who work with Amazon themes create a distinctly Acrean cultural voice
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Museu da Borracha
The Rubber Museum in a colonial building near the river documents the history of the Amazon's rubber economy – the seringal social system, rubber tapping technology and the booming history of the forest
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Museu da Floresta
The Forest Museum - a natural history and cultural museum in the Rio Branco coastal area - presents the Amazon forest ecosystem, the indigenous people and the ecological knowledge of forest communities
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Acrean Contemporary Art
Acre's art scene produces artists who work with forest materials — seeds, bark, gum and natural pigments — creating works that are formally contemporary but rooted in the local ecological identity
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Raimundo Irineu Serra and Santo Daime
Rio Branco is the birthplace of Santo Daime - the Amazonian syncretic religion founded in the 1930s that uses ayahuasca (daime) as a sacrament; the religion has spread globally but its origins and headquarters are in Acre
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Ayahuasca Cultural Heritage
Ayahuasca—the visionary brew used by indigenous peoples throughout western Amazonia—is legal in Brazil as a religious sacrament; The Rio Branco area has several centers that welcome researchers and spiritual seekers
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Rubber Tapper Music: Forró Acreano
The music of Acre's rubber tapping communities – forró with Amazonian themes, the memorial songs of isolation and the ritual music of the forest communities – is a distinct tradition within the northeastern forró genre