Peru, Purús, Brazil - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 154

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Peru, Purús, Brazil
A Simple Dichotomy . . .
Peru's caucheiros recognized the virtues of the Purús. The upper reaches of the Madre de
Dios and the Ucayali had had significant stands of the latex known as caucho , from the
genus Castilla , but output was declining because to get the latex the trees had to be cut
down.TheterrainsoftheupperJuruáandPurúswereanuntappedfrontierandincarnated
alooseeconomicboundarybetweentheproductionsystemsassociatedwith Hevea —rub-
ber or seringa —and those of Castilla , or caucho. A simple dichotomy can be made about
the forms of extraction of latex and labor. Caucho extraction required killing the tree, so
exploitingitwasanomadicbuthighlyprofitableproposition.Thelatexofone caucho tree
could equal the returns of a year of tapping rubber. Hevea trees, on the other hand, were
tapped every few days by a sedentary population. 1 Caucho was largely worked by nat-
ive labor under varying forms of coercion. Hevea trees were tapped by migrants in more
or less stable settlements under many forms of labor deployment, including debt peon-
age.IntheupperPurúsandtheJuruáthesetwosocio-environmentalsystemsencountered
each other, with the ricochets of their gunshots echoing from the remotest tambo —tapper
hut—to international capitals and the highest realms of diplomacy.
This frontier between caucho and Hevea rubber is often taken as a biogeographic
boundary, but analysts like Jacques Huber, director of the Museu Goeldi and rubber spe-
cialist during the boom; Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Schultes; and USDA rubber spe-
cialistRussellSeiberthavenotedthattherangesof H.brasiliense and Castilla oftenover-
lapped throughout the basin. 2 The encounter of Hevea s and caucho was really a clash of
political ecologies, one that would ultimately be expressed in an international boundary.
While “Acre fino”—fine Pará rubber—was taken from H. brasiliensis , the high prices in
theglobalmarketsinthe1890sand1900smademanygumslessintegratedintotheearlier
trade like Castilla and balata ( Manilkara ), economically viable and sent adventurers into
themostfar-flungAmazonianbackwaters.Other“weakheveas” 3 like H. lutea , H. viridis ,
and H. guyanensis , and H. benthamia occurred widely alongside Castilla and were also
in use, especially on the Ucayali and Putumayo. They fetched the lowest prices and were
often used as an additive (or adulterant) for other latexes. But the Hevea s in the eastern
Amazon were being overtapped, 4 and news of the extensive Hevea forests of the Purús
began to galvanize the trade.
Overexploitation of rubbers of all kinds had certainly affected the trees—whether
Castilla or Hevea —driving their collectors fromthe eastern Amazon andwestern Peruvi-