“An island”, is how the Queimada dos Britos locals call the tiny oasis they live in. Surrounded by a sea of sand and lagoons in the winter season that composes the Lençois do Maranhão National Park, this area stretches 155 thousand hectares on the State of Maranhão, Brazil. The closest village is four hours walking on the sand. No one really knows when the community was founded but the legend says that the founder Manuel Brito, due to a drought that was scorching his homeland in the Ceará State, ran away and ended up settling down in the only non-sandy portion of the Lençois. Generations later everybody is a relative, cousins intermarrying frequently as a normal course.
Around 60 people live in Queimada dos Britos, but the locals are not sure, since there is always someone going away or coming back. They live of fishing in the sea, which is two hours away. In the winter they breed fish in the lagoons, and cattle and goats, which run free on the dunes. They have small gardens for farming but nothing major since they are afraid of the accelerating advance of the dunes that have already covered several houses.
Nowadays tourism is reaching the quiet life of Queimada dos Britos bringing some income, which is well received when the visitors walk in. The downturn is that more and more agencies from nearby cities are bringing tourists into the park on motor vehicles, which the locals claim is affecting the environment and their peaceful way of life. But not only their life is threaten by the tourists and the sand, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA) is planning to remove them since they live in a National Park. The residents refuse to move since many of them were born there and lived all their lives in the Queimada. They claim that more than a threat; they are a protection to the Lençois do Maranhão.