Wall Street, Rebels, and Rio Branco - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 145

right to purchase the entire territory. These were exactly the same territories that Azanel
Piper had yearned to colonize (and on similar terms), but these lands now would come
under the aegis and management of the new corporation. Sir James Conroy—later the
director of the Bolivian Syndicate—had spent some time in these regions and saw in
theman“AmazonianTransvaal.”ItmaywellhavebeenthattheAcre,throughextremely
valuable on its own, helpfully diverted attention away from the Caupolicán, the golden
jewel in the crown of the Syndicate, and thus permitted more complete possession of, as
Church put it, “these auriferous lands.”
The members of the Bolivian Syndicate included the great financial powers of Wall
Street and American business: the US Rubber Company, Metropolitan Life, Export
Lumber,FrederickWhitridge,EmlinRoosevelt(cousinofthesoontobepresidentTeddy
Roosevelt), the Central Trust, Vermilya and Co., the banking firm of Morton, Bliss and
Company, the British bankers Brown, Shipley and Co., and clandestinely, through an il-
legitimate son, the House of Rothschild. 26 Several members of the Syndicate were play-
ers in Panama as well: Flint, Morgan, the House of Rothschild. International territorial/
infrastructure deals and speculations were exceedingly appealing to these Gilded Age
magnates.
Baron Rio Branco, still in charge of the Berlin legation in 1901, was extremely dis-
tressedatthesuddenEuropeaninterestintheupperAmazonianterritories. Chartercom-
panies, as evidenced by the African Scramble, were a dangerous precedent and would
ignite further insurgency, rather in the same way that Rhodes's Transvaal Charter had
exploded in the ongoing Boer War. In the midst of guerrilla war, the region's future was
up for grabs.
A Simple Contract
The charter was straightforward. The Syndicate, based in New York, would have fiscal
administration of the Acrean territory, with exclusive rights for thirty years to levy taxes
and exact customs, tolls, and land rents in conformity with Bolivian law. It had the
right to use force, to maintain an army to defend its rivers and privileges. No less than
60 percent of the profits on the initial capital of 500,000 pounds sterling would go to
Bolivia, and the rest to the charter company. The company could buy any land in Acre
not claimed by others under Bolivian law, and all mineral rights would belong to it. The
Syndicate would construct or subcontract the development of roads, ports, telegraphs,
and other crucial infrastructure, had rights of free navigation and could, at its discretion,
grant navigation concessions. It would study ways of uniting the Acre river systems by
rail with the rivers Orton and Madre de Dios. Both parties—Bolivia and the Syndic-
ate—wouldmaintainaregionalmanagertofacilitatecommunication.Moresinisterwere
the articles that indicated that the company would respect local property rights as long