Imperialisms, Revolutions, and Resolutions in the Caribbean Amazon - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 101

was thought—the administrator, Jean Baptiste Mathieu Chanvalon, encouraged a lively
round of parties, intrigues, and distractions (clowns and musicians did come in handy).
These frivolities, however fun, did little to check the malaria and yellow fever, the prob-
lems of the putrid provisions, and the insalubrious life in swampy tents during the rainy
season. Few colonists ever even left the squalid settlement of Kourou to take up the cul-
tivationoftheirlands. 49 Whileestimatesvary,ofthetwelvetofourteenthousandsettlers
at least ten thousand died quite quickly. 50 Of the remainder, about nine hundred stayed,
impoverishedandill,andafewhundredreturnedtoFrance.Theepisodeestablishedthis
partofAmazonia asawhite man'stombandreinforced slavery asthemodel fortropical
colonization, and with it the cultures of slave flight, everyday forms of resistance, and
rebellion. 51
Yet other enterprises were discussed. In 1776 the Baron de Bessner, inspired by
the successes of the Jesuits in Paraguay, suggested that the ecclesiastics (banned from
French and Portuguese holdings) could be transferred back from Europe to create new
colonies by rounding up 100,000 Indians and 20,000 Bush Negroes from their sanctuar-
ies in the interior, thus reviving the Jesuitic utopia of Paraguay in the Wild Coast. 52 This
scheme was mercifully nipped in the bud, but it at least recognized the viability of the
hybrid black and native settlements in the interior.
Figure 7.2. The banished in Kourou. Some are burying comrades, while others dance with the Mulat-
resses.
Morocco in Amapá
Pombal was aware of the French failure but had a different approach to the labor ques-
tion, one not based on white yeoman colonization but thoroughly rooted in tropical
laborers.HeviewedthestagnationoftheAmazoncolonyastheoutcomeofthreecentral
problems: first, the monopolization of native workers by ecclesiastics; next, the lack of
slaves (and credit to buy them) so that even with a perfect climatic conditions, sugar
cane and tree crops like cacau languished for lack of hands; finally, white colonists and
overseers' lack of familiarity with frontier conditions and slavery. 53