Peru, Purús, Brazil - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 160

descended to Manaus and returned the next year with merchandise—and with a “secret
agent” from Peru, Manuel Pablo Villanueva, who would later become Peruvian envoy
in Manaus. Villanueva, clearly on the authorization of Lima, or Pedro Portillo, the ma-
gistrate in Iquitos, hoisted the Peruvian flag at the settlement of Cátiana at more or less
the old boundary line of the Madeira-Javari where it crossed the Purús, and proceeded
to open a customs house. As had happened in Acre when Bolivians erected a taxing en-
trepôtatPuertoAlfonso,thelocalsroseupindefiance.OtonBacelar,theostensiblemas-
teroftheCátianasettlement,challengedtheimpostswith seringueiro rebellion.Collazos
and Villaneuva quickly decamped to Iquitos, where they began to make military prepar-
ations with the garrison there for the conquest of the upper Purús.
At the end of1901,Carlos Scharffhad traveled from the Ucayali to the Juruá and into
the upper Purús watershed with several hundred Indians. Historian Leandro Tocantins
has described Scharff and his modus operandi this way: “Insinuating, ambitious and vi-
olent, the ideal characteristics for success in that savage environment, he soon obtained
the power and respect among the local populations.” 23 Scharff used the Peruvian mil-
itary based in Iquitos to mediate his local quarrels, rather than the bands of thugs that
more powerful river masters typically commanded. Rubber barons of all types and na-
tionalities were using nationalist arguments to advance and ensure their personal eco-
nomic claims, even as states used them and their workers as materializations of national
authority in remote outposts. 24
Scharff is interesting on another level. He used the native “tribute model” extensively
in his estates and seems to have depended on the discipline maintained by powerful
chiefs. 25 These might be indigenous peons or populations governed under their tribal
structure,aswasthecasewithVenâncioCampa,whomobilizedhisclansmenfor caucho
extraction and himself became a kind of patron . Da Cunha would note the large planta-
tion managed by Chief Venâncio. Scharff ultimately had more than two thousand “civil-
ized” and native laborers on the upper tributaries of the Purús. 26
Figure 10.3. Barbadians and enslaved Indians.
Scharff had an ambiguous role in the Peruvian Scramble. He makes appearances as a
backwoodsman in the remoter tributaries of the upper Amazon, but he seems in many
ways to have been an agent provocateur mobilized to bring attention to Peruvian pres-