Euclides and the Baron - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 176

posts of Sepatini and Huitanãa to Manaus. The initial trajectory of 1,014 miles had to be extended
to take in the larger tributaries that went all the way up to Ituxi in Acre. And then finally to a city,
the real city of Lábrea. Lábrea! In its converging energies it was the integrating molecule of civiliz-
ation, rising unexpectedly from the vast, wild solitude. It brought to the headwaters a character quite
divergent from that of our other backwoods settlements: it had the improving aspect of two journals,
the Purús and the Labrense ,the sumptuous luxury ofa sought-after theater; it had schools, paved and
straight streets. These successes, which form the most uplifting chapters of our current history, are
also the most moving examples of the application of transforming principles to society. . . . Really,
what manifests itself there is the natural selection of the righteous.
For these pioneers to invest in the unknown, the simple craving for riches is not enough; one needs
more than anything a will, a perseverance, a stoic courage joined to a privileged physical constitu-
tion. These places are today,in the midst ofournational feebleness, the theater ofa vital competition.
Alfredo Marc found on the margins of the Juruá some Parisians—authentic Parisians!—trading the
charms of the boulevards for the arduous exploitation of a bounteous rubber estate. From our jungles
emerge all the valiant, converging there from all quarters of the earth. But outstripping them in num-
ber, in vitality, in a better organic adaptation to the climate, and with that debonair and fearless style
with which they have always faced danger, are our admirable, indomitable caboclos , the backwoods-
menfromthenortheastwhohavetransformedandmoldedtheforeignadventurers,imposingonthem
ourlanguage,ourcustoms,andintheendourdestiny,andsoextendingintheirenergiesthedominant
component of our nationality.
. . . Returning to the earlier parallel, the Yankees, after pausing for years at the base of the Rockies,
enthusiastically traversed them, attracted by the rich mines of California. This is exactly the moment
when we advanced all the way to Acre. . . . In the same year of 1869 when we claimed our forgotten
frontiers with a riverboat company, the Americans linked the Pacific with a railroad from Missouri,
audaciously wending through mountains and deserts.
Let us also parallel them in this episode of national life of a great Republic.
Let us accept the lesson of Bryce. 25 Magisterially tracing the pattern of Yankee expansion, the his-
torian shows us that faced with the enormous distance from the East Coast, the people residing on
the Pacific would have inevitably formed another nation if the engineering resources of the day had
not permitted a permanent intimacy with the rest of the country. Our case is identical, or even more
serious.
The new boundaries of the upper Purús, upper Juruá, and Acre must also reflect the unrelenting
action of the Government in a labor of incorporation that, as a practical matter, demands facilities,
communication, and the alliance of ideas promptly transmitted through the vibrant enervation of tele-
graphs out to the remotest outposts. Without national integration as a firm and driving objective,
Amazonia is merely an arena of natural selection. The spirit of von Humboldt thrilled to a dazzling
vision of a setting where “sooner or later one must concentrate all the civilization of the globe.”
Amazonia otherwise could stand out from Brazil, naturally, irresistibly, a world detached from a neb-
ula—through the centrifugal force of its own energies.
This last essay regarding the “civilizing molecule” of Brazilian settlement takes the
region from its emptiness through a nation building “from below.” The bandeirantes ,
with all their historical brio, did not effect the day-to-day transformation from inchoate
wilderness to the comforting civilization and urban delights of Lábrea, and they lacked
the will (as did the nation itself) to press forward into the great wildness. Instead it is the