Wall Street, Rebels, and Rio Branco - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 138

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Wall Street, Rebels, and Rio Branco
Preboard for Syndicates: Wilmington and the Republic of Poets
In 1899, a new customs house was installed at Puerto Acre 1 at the behest of Bolivian for-
eign minister and plenipotentate José Paravicini. This customs house taxed the revenues
of the rich Acre basin above its confluence with the Purús, as well as the rubber from
other watersheds such as the Orton, and even some rubber from the Madre de Dios. The
levy caused a three-million-dollar loss to the state of Amazonas, highly displeasing to the
Manaus businessmen and the state government, not to mention the seringalistas —rubber
baronsandtradersobligedtopayit. 2 ParavicinihadsomeotherpoliciesforAcreandevel-
opment—education of girls, for example—but the fundamental appeal of the territory for
the fiscally precarious Bolivian government was the potential revenue from a booming
rubber economy. The Acreans had different a different view: a few months later the cus-
toms house was a broken ruin. The seringueiros were in a guerrilla war with the Bolivi-
ans, ambush by ambush.
Inthislight,thetravelsofthegunboat Wilmington totheupperAmazoninMarch1899
was cause for considerable alarm. The entrance of a US warship to the rivers of the most
valuable forests on the planet without authorization was perturbing, and it suggested that
a more complex Scramble was coming into play. It did not bode well that the Americ-
ans were more than two thousand miles into the Amazon basin at an especially robust
imperial moment for the United States. After all, this was the country that had annexed
much of the North American continent, an expanse that previously been in the hands
of French, English, Spanish, and Indigenous nations. The Americans had seized about a
third of Mexico, had filibustered around Central America (including William Walker's
slavepolityinNicaragua),andwerenegotiatingfortheconstructionrightsforacanaland
with it the annexation of a Colombian province that would soon become the client state
of Panama. 3 All this with the ink barely dry on the Paris Peace Treaty that ended 1898
Spanish-American War,whichhaddelivered Spain'sgreat island colonies—Cuba, Puerto
Rico, Guam, and the Philippines—into the hands of the United States. It did not help that
the Wilmington 's captain, Chapman Todd, had neglected to get formal permission for his
Amazon itinerary.
It was in these treacherous seas of clandestine war and territorial anxieties that Todd
and the Wilmington had to navigate when he arrived in Belém. At a formal reception he
stated he stated he was on “a mission of friendship and solidarity with Brazil.” He fur-
ther framed the nature of his friendship in this way: “Remember: there is room enough