Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the lineages of practically all the races. These also find their alienated expression in the pillage of
history and landscape. . . . In these disordered energies is resumed the inevitable conflict of tempera-
ments. Life unfolds there without connections, without the discipline that derives from that harmony
of forces so necessary for production, and that extinguishes the dispersive impulse: instead, it is a so-
ciety without qualities, with no defined traditions nor incisive national trace, one shot through with
recent migrants whoprofitandabandon.Thispolitical disordermirrorstheupheaval ofnatural forces
that periodically convulse the landscape. Peru is a place of a perennially incipient national culture.
It hasn't escaped Peruvian statesmen that this play of contrasts derives in large part from a society
that lives contingently and seems merely warehoused on the stretch of land along the Pacific. Per-
uvians come from that unfortunate place where barren earth conceals infrequent riches that diminish
day by day and are never restored, and gives the unproductive labor of locating such wealth the sorry
elements of pillage, . . . a restless mingling all the races but not yet a people.
In [Amazonia], so other, there is redemption in the work and the stability of farming for those
people with the best elements for a higher historical apprenticeship. But even as their hopes emerge,
they are thwarted by the Cordillera. . . . In fact, the Pacific Ocean, even as they scrape out the Canal
in Nicaragua, will have little impact on the national progress. Peru's true sea is the Atlantic, and its
obligatory egress is through the Purús.
Manyofitsbeststatesmenknewthis.TheexpansionintotheAmazonwasviewedasanelementary
task in their struggles for survival.
Da Cunha then describes the several failed efforts to build rail lines over the Andes
and points out how “the great tributary of the Amazon . . . has oriented for some time
cessive expeditions were launched to the east, impelled by some self-abnegating souls
to those remote places in an extraordinary intuition of the true interests of their coun-
try. These precedents reveal, in the disturbances that swirl today throughout that zone,
a meaning much more complex than a few melees with rubber tappers.” In terms of the
larger conflict, he argues that unlike the Paraguay War, where the caprices of a caudillo
were stopped only by a protracted guerrilla war with terrible slaughter, a military en-
counter with a nation seeking its future would be profoundly unpredictable.
This essay, “Inevitable Conflict,” was compelling on several fronts, especially be-
cause the populations' composition provided racial material for a contrast between the
“nationness” of Peru and that of Brazil. Peru, like Brazil, was awash with ethnic mix-
turesofeverykindbut,asdaCunhaargues,unconsolidated.Thiswasanimportantpoint
since Peru was (and is still) often perceived as more racially uniform than the famously
multihued Brazilian polity. Given the pervasive influence of racialist ideas in scientific
anthropology,especiallytheconceptofmestizoizationasracialdegeneration,thesimilar
starting point permits an almost experimental analysis of two multiracial societies and
theevolutionofdifferingtropical“civilizations.”Peru,shapedbyapoliticaleconomyof
pillage,generatedasocietythatremainedfundamentallyunstable,uncohesive,nomadic-
allyimmigrant,andincoherent,aplaceof“perenniallyincipientnationalculture,”andin
Search WWH ::
Custom Search