In the Realm of Rubber - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 207

uvian trade that left Loreto. There were regions—especially in the upper northwestern
Amazon—whereitdominated.ThePutumayo,muchoftheMadredeDios,theCaquetá,
the Upper Ucayali, and the headwater areas of the Purús and Juruá Rivers were its main
sources. 4 Jacques Huber, the master of latex botany, later noted caucho 's wider distribu-
tion in the Lower Amazon and the island zone of the estuary. These areas entered into
caucho production in the 1910s to 1920s. Castilla entered Amazonian commerce late in
the day but was the basis for the rubber industry in Central America—and indeed had
been for millennia. Tropical latexes were always described as products of wild nature.
This is debatable for Hevea , as we will see further on, but Castilla was a domesticated
tree.
The Secret Life of Caucho
TheFrenchmathematician,explorer,andsavantCharlesdelaCondamine(1701-74)de-
scribedthemarvelsofrubbertotheFrenchAcademyofSciencesin1745andindoingso
publicly introduced northern Europe to these elastic gums. 5 He based his description on
that of the French botanist Fusée Aublet 6 and had fact capitalized on native knowledge
from the upper Amazon and the researches of François Fresneau, captain and engineer
of the French army at Cayenne. 7 While it was news to the French Academy of Sciences,
knowledge of the properties and uses of various latex trees was of great antiquity (and
ubiquity) and was recognized by Iberian natural historians by the early sixteenth cen-
tury.LoreadvancedbydelaCondaminehadnativesmerelymessingaroundwithrubber
balls and toys from the gums of “wild trees”; 8 the reality was different. Columbus him-
self returned to Seville with one of these rubber balls (an important ritual object), an oc-
currence duly noted by indigenous defender Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), who
himself remarked extensively on the rubber ball game in Hispaniola. 9 Spanish writers
notedrubberusesasearly1530, 10 butthisinformationwaskeptundertheveilofsecrecy
mandated by the Iberian crown and Vatican.
The word for rubber in Nahuatl is olli , and the Nahuas called the ancients from the
southernGulfCoasttheOlmec,meaning“peoplefromtheplaceofrubber.”Theetiology
isrelatedtothetermformovementorearthquake( ollin )becauseofrubber'selasticqual-
ities. The regular use of waterproof gum for shoes, cloaks, hats, containers and cloths,
and shrouds were recorded for pre-Columbian times and reported by Latin America's
earliest observers. Fresh latex was drunk with chocolate as a medicinal, used as an in-
cense,andwrappedaroundimplements likeaxesandstoneknivestocushiontheirhafts.
It was also used for illumination, as it still is today in parts of Amazonia. 11
There is a great deal of evidence that rubber harvested from Castilla elastica was
not a casual product used only for amusement in pre-Columbian times. Meso-American
people were already processing caucho by the second millennium BC. There are pre-