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Despite maintaining some kind of contact with the surrounding population since the 1920s, the Arara were contacted by the old Indian Protection Service (SPI) only at the end of the 1940s. Contact was disastrous for the Arara communities. Hundreds of Indians died from diseases brought by non-Indians (mainly pneumonia, flu and measles), and the few who survived went to work in the rubber camps of the region, together with the non-Indian population.

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It was only at the end of the 1960s that a FUNAI employee, supposedly the head of the Lourdes Indigenous Post, Mr. Brígido, was able to regroup the Arara, who then came to live together with the Gavião. After many misunderstandings, in the mid-1980s, the Arara decided to found their own village, near the Prainha stream, about 5 kilometers from where it flows into the Machado River. Soon they got recognition of the village by the Funai, and the Iterap Indigenous Post was then created.

At the beginning of the 1990s there was an internal power dispute among the Arara, and the then chief Pedro Agamenon moved with his family group to another part of the Indigenous Land to establish their own village, presently called Paygap. According to the FUNAI technicians, there doesn’t exist a sufficient number of inhabitants in the village of Paygap to justify the setting up of another Indigenous Post.