Euclides and the Baron - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 166

myoverworkedobligations. . .”MachadodeAssisreceivedlettersofhumorousprotest:
“I'm completely caught up in a labyrinth of . . . sewers!” 1 In April of that year, the São
Paulo economy slumped. When da Cunha's superiors informed him of a cut in salaries,
hesimplyhadhadenough.Inoneofhisfuries,heinsultedhissupervisorandlefthisen-
gineering job with the Santos sanitation department with the usual drama of bitter words
andslammeddoors. 2 Nothingbywayofnewemploymentwasinsight.Afewdayslater
hesoldthefuturerightsto OsSertões ,includingtranslationrights,fortherelativelytrivi-
al sum of one conto and eight hundred milréis, about two months' salary. 3 The volume
would eventually go through more than sixty printings and was widely translated.
He had been elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1903, and that carried
glorybutnostipends.Bymid-1904,theunemployeddaCunhawasmullingovervarious
projects: perhaps a book on the Duque of Caxias, the repressor of countless black and
peasantuprisingsintheNortheastwhowashailedasthemilitarygeniusoftheParaguay-
an War. Or should he write on the Naval Rebellion? or a biography of Emperor João
IV? 4
Da Cunha was strongly supported in his writing and in his politics by Júlio Mesquita,
the editor of the O Estado de São Paulo , who had even tried (unsuccessfully) to launch
him into a political life in São Paulo. With no prospects after his contretemps with the
czars of the Santos sewer system, da Cunha began again to write his columns for the O
Estado and another paper, País. Their subjects were the tensions heating up in the upper
Amazon and the conflict with Peru. As he had with “Nossa Vendéia,” he was about to
capture the mood of the time.
The Geopolitics of Euclides da Cunha
Between May 14 and 29, da Cunha wrote four major articles on Amazonian geopolitics
“Contrasts and Comparisons,” “Inevitable Conflict,” “Against the Caucheiros ,”
“Between Madeira and the Javari” 5 —a lot of Amazoniana for someone who had barely
mentioned the region before. 6 These with other essays on geopolitics were gathered in
Contrasts e confrontos , a collection published after he became part of the Rio Branco
team. 7 As with “Nossa Vendéia,” he was angling intellectually and politically for a role
in the unfolding conflict.
As tensions had escalated between Peru and Brazil throughout the spring of 1904,
as we have seen. Rio Branco resolved to send a battalion of three hundred men to this
Amazon frontier, and he signed a secret nonaggression pact with Ecuador in order to
consolidate upper Amazonian allies on an increasing volatile and militarized frontier.
Ecuador had a simmering resentment with Peru over Amazonian boundaries, 8 based in
Ecuador's claimed right to sell to a British charter company what Peru had deemed na-
tional territory. Using colonial maps, Peru argued that the administrative claims of the