Imperialisms, Revolutions, and Resolutions in the Caribbean Amazon - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 94

justbelowCaboNorte,whichtechnicallyflowedintotheAmazonestuary.Geographical
luminariesliketheroyalcartographerGuillaumeLisle,delaCondamineandevenPedro
Teixeira had placed the “Vicente Pinzón” below the Cabo Norte, giving that ubiquitous
name to the Araguarí River, what we might take as the “southern version” of the “Vin-
cente Pinzón.” Even von Humboldt weighed in, placing the “Vincente Pinzón” at the
Calçoene River, which, at latitude 2.3, was more or less the midpoint between rivers we
now call the Oyapoque and Araguarí. 22 Quite a bit of terrain was at stake depending on
the boundary: some 261,588 square kilometers, an area about half the size of California.
TheRioAraguaríwasoneofthelargestriversthatparalleledtheAmazon,sotravelers
on both the Brazilian and French sides often took it to be the political boundary line
between the two powers—as in fact periodically it was. Treaty after treaty followed in
an attempt to keep up with the social history that was racing ahead of the stumbling
diplomacy, with maps being recopied at a furious pace. These exercises in “geography
militant” included French geographers' intentionally inserting false latitudes for some
rivers. 23 Who in those backlands knew what documents were being prepared in the
European courts? What locals did know was that presence and powers of any European
state were tenuous in those watery forests.
The Treaty of Madrid (1750) gave Portugal control over Amazonian terrains to the
west ofthe former Tordesillas line andwasmostly concerned with demarcation between
Portugal and Spain in the Western Amazon, leaving the interior boundaries between
states in its former domain undefined. By introducing the idea of uti possedetis , the
treatyradicallytestedthebalanceofregionalpowers.MostEuropeanoccupationhugged
the coast, and the ability to penetrate further into the interior was limited by fugitive
communitiesandnativesettlements.TheMadridTreaty,however,nourishedtheimpulse
of Enlightenment leaders in both France and Portugal to enhance and consolidate their
territorial presence through what would turn out to be disastrous colonization schemes,
as we shall see shortly.
The French Revolution with its abolition of slavery and then the rise of Napoleon in
French governing circles also had significant effects in Contestado politics. In the un-
executed Treaty of Paris (1797), the French regime rejected the “northern” Pinzón (the
Oyapoque) in favor of one “middle” version of the Pinzón at the Calçoene River. This
boundary line, located about 2.3 degrees north, stretched back to the source of the river
and continued the line back to the Rio Branco. It would have annexed a huge swath of
Brazilian terrain to French territory. The next treaty, that of Badajoz in 1801, stated that
the boundary line was the Araguarí, whose boundary would stretch to its source of that
river and then back to the Branco. A few months later the Treaty of Spain delimited
the Carapanatuba River, a third of a degree north of the equator, which empties slightly
above Macapá, as the true boundary. This river also is an Amazon tributary and would