In the Realm of Rubber - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 206

the Upper Amazon and the relentless debt peonage that characterized parts of the in-
dustry at the turn of the twentieth century, when prices went stratospheric, do not ac-
tually represent all the social relations that prevailed in the rubber economy over time
throughout the basin, or even necessarily in given watersheds. The Juruá and Purús, for
example, had enslaved Indians tapping their caucho , as well as debt peons and yeomen
tappers in the Hevea zones.
Although rubber (like caucho in Spanish) is today a generic and inclusive term, there
were many terms for varied latexes in commerce, and the languages of the day dis-
criminated a great deal among them. There were four main genera that occurred in the
Amazon trade— Hevea , Castilla , Manilkara , and Sapium —and each included different
species with varying qualities of latexes and many names, which were further differ-
entiated by how the gum was handled and the form in which it was sold. Two species
dominatedthetrade, Hevea and Castilla .Thebest-knownandmostvaluablespecieswas
Hevea brasilenses , or “Pará rubber” or “Acre fina” of commerce (in Spanish known as
jebé or sheringa ),largelyfoundonthesouthwesterntributariesoftheAmazon.Anarray
of “lesser” Hevea species, such as Hevea guyanense , distributed mostly to the north of
theAmazonalongthefloodedforests,and Hevea benthamiana ,foundalongtheAndean
foothills ofPeruandColombia andwell into the Ucayali, also entered the market. These
latter varieties were known as “jebé fraca” or “Pará fraca”—“weak” Heveas that were
pressed into commerce in the Upper Amazon, and possibly mixed in with Pará rubber
when prices exploded. 2 “Pará fina” or “Acre fina” was the top-quality processed rubber;
“Entre fina” was lesser quality, perhaps contaminated with other latexes; “Sernambi”
wasunprocessedscrapings,knowninEnglishas“scrappy.”Therewereevengeographic
“brandings” such as “Putumayo rabos,” although each estate literally branded its rubber
as the product was shipped. Hevea s were tapped on a weekly schedule except during the
wet season, when access to the trees on the floodplain was difficult and the latex would
bedilutedbyrainandofpoorquality.Duringtherains,tappersmightmigratetocitiesor
might engage in caucho extraction onthe uplands. 3 Tapping Hevea involved a relatively
sedentary population with access to several tapping trails.
Caucho rubber came from “caucho negro” ( Castilla ulei ) or “blanco” ( C. elastica )
and was also widely marketed and fetched respectable prices in the Amazon trade, al-
though it was considered of lesser value. Caucho came to market in several ways, with
designations referring to the tree source (caucho negro, caucho blanco) or form—slabs
(planchas), balls (bolas), or scrapings (sernamby de caucho), and the aforementioned
“rabos”—tails—orlargesausagesofrubber.Duringtheboom,Amazon caucho wastyp-
ically harvested by cutting down the tree and draining its milky sap into small excava-
tions under the fallen trunk. It came to roughly a tenth to a fifth of the total latex out-
put (depending on the year) that went through Belém, and a third to half of the Per-