Wall Street, Rebels, and Rio Branco - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 144

the resistance of the Acrean seringueiros to Bolivian Syndicate echoed the South Afric-
an situation.
Aramayo saw in charter companies great relevance for the economic exploitation to
the Bolivian Amazon. Anentrepreneur alive to the potentials ofprivate capital bolstered
by state securities, he and his family had already acquired extensive mining interests in
Bolivia. Aramayowaswellintegrated intotheinnercircles ofPresident Pando'sregime,
and as a financier, he was sensitive to the economic and imperial possibilities provided
byLondon'sfinancial“City.” 23 AndtheBolivianstatewasbroke.Aramayo,notsurpris-
ingly, looked to the Continent, to Belgium.
The Charter and the Brazilian Congo?
Belgian companies held large concessions throughout the southern tributaries of the
Amazon. The cattle operation Cibils produced beef extracts (basically Bovril) used for
invalids and for military campaigns from its large herds in Mato Grosso near São Luis
de Caceres, a spread of some 750,000 hectares. Large Belgian concessions existed on
the Rio Juruéna, a tributary of the Madeira in Mato Grosso. The Belgian Banque Afri-
caine had financed 11,000 hectares of rubber estates on islands in the Amazon estuary
and lower Amapá. Belgian interests had purchased from a former president of Bolivia,
Adolfo Ballivian, rubber forests on the Abunã, and when George Church's companies
failed, they bought monopoly rights to steam navigation on the Guaporé and the right to
construct a railway around the San Antonio falls, rights that were later sold to the Amer-
ican entrepreneur Percival Farquar. 24 Leopold himself had kept an eye on Amazonian
resourceseversincehehadofferedtotakeoverthe“neutralizedzone”intheAmapáand
turn it into an independent state along the lines of the Congo Free State. The king had
maintained significant interest in the Araguaia-Xingu region, where he hoped to use de-
velopment of railways to the São Francisco River and steamships to colonize and later
expropriate the terrain, as he had done in the Congo. Belgian “shock troops of empire,”
field managers and surveyors who had cut their teeth on Belgian African enterprises,
could be foundin numerous enterprises in Brazil. The same resources—rubber,animals,
andmetals—wereinplay,aswellasa“cannibal”populationthathadtobesubdued.The
AmazonasamirrorimageoftheCongowasnotedwidelyatthetime.Thusthemonarch
lurked on the edges of the Acre deal, although ultimately he declined. 25
While success eluded Aramayo with the Belgians, on June 11, 1901, Aramayo and
Frederick Willingford Withridge, financial agentfortheVanderbilt family,signedacon-
tract that wouldlease 207,200square kilometers ofBolivian Acre territories foraperiod
ofthirtyyearsthroughthecreationofachartercompany,theBolivianSyndicate.Anoth-
er 25,900 square kilometers in the Caupolicán were also leased but on quite different
terms. There all mining rights for fifty years belonged to the company, and it had the