In the Realm of Rubber - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 219

da Cunha. 69 The Arana enterprise was known for its ruthless muchachos , callous teen-
age natives used to hunt down and discipline recalcitrant indigenous workers and rival
clans. The ethnographies of caucho production were varied but, more often than not,
horrible. 70
Women and children increasingly were sold in sex, servant, and slave markets as yet
another type of extractive commodity. Bates noted a brisk trade in native children and
asserted that the offspring of sixteen different tribes could be found in the commerce
in Tefé. He himself was given a little girl, of whom he was very fond. He pointed to
widespreadillness,includingmalariaandinfluenza,amongtheseyoungchattelandhow
many of them died in transport and in service because of mistreatment. His young girl
also eventually died but at least was given the consolation of a full Christian burial. 71
Raids for native slaves for latex industries were common but most characteristic of
caucho. In 1861 José Antonio Ordoñez found sixty shackled Huitoto Indians from the
upper Guaviare in Tefé, carried away by slavers for the rubber trade. His concern was
notthattheywereunfreebutthatBrazilians hadcarried off“his”Indians,ownedbyhim
through the institution of encomienda . 72 Alcot Lange, who was waiting out the rainy
seasoninRematedeMales(nowknownasBenjaminConstant)ontheJavari,notedfifty
IndiansabouttobesentupthistributarybythenotoriousCasaArana,whichoperatedon
the upper reaches of this river. Treated brutally and wracked by malaria, all but twelve
died in the space of a few days. 73 Roger Casement fumed that one of Arana's adminis-
trators failed to meet him because he was off on a correiria , an Indian slave hunt. 74
THE ONLY PRACTICAL METHOD FOR OBTAINING THE LATEX OF THE CAUCHO TREE.
Figure 14.4. Caucho extraction: note the puddles of latex below the tree.
French explorer Henri Coudreau, whom we met in the Amapá scramble, described
the system of Paulo da Silva Leite, a rubber baron based on the upper Tapajos who re-
quired tribal tribute in latex from the Apiaká Indians, which he transacted with regional
traders. 75 Within the Spanish part of the basin, de facto encomienda and mita laws were
still in effect. Corvées—labor tributes—in these areas were increasingly directed in-
to latex gathering. The Suárez brothers, who dominated the Bolivian rubber trade and
whose empire gradually spread to more than five million acres with some ten thousand
laborers, began their operations through tribute exchange from the natives on the upper
reaches of the Madeira-Mamoré River, but later used virtually every imaginable form