In the Realm of Rubber - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 224

slavery everywhere in the nineteenth century required new modalities of labor coercion.
One of the most important of these was debt peonage which was also associated with
vast diasporas all over the globe in colonial plantations and extractive economies. Very
much under-researched as a response to the transition to waged capitalism, peonage was
associated with, for example, Indian migration into the Caribbean and to South Africa
andMadagascar,JapaneseandItalianmigrationtosouthernBrazilandtheUnitedStates,
and, of course, sertanejo resettlement in bondage in the rubber forests. 94
Debt peonage involved advancing goods and travel costs in exchange for repayment
withrubberinasystemlocallyknownas aviamento .Monopolyoflaborandofexchange
dominated Hevea areas above river rapids and in the more distant headwaters, as it did
for caucho . This system will be described in much more detail by da Cunha himself in
later chapters. 95 There was plenty of blood mixed in with the milk of all the latexes, but
slavery and peonage, the most lethal and abhorrent means, were far from being the only
ways that latexes were produced.
Free Forms of Labor and the Rubber Economy
In contrast to the “blood rubber” and peonage narrative that has come to dominate the
imagining of the Amazon basin's rubber economy, many parts of the Amazon, espe-
cially inlower reaches ofthe basin, hadconditions that borelittle relation tothose ofthe
moredistanttributaries.Extractiontherereliedtoagreaterdegreeonfamilyandkinship.
Thesetraditionalformsoflabormobilizationwererelativelybenignintheearlierphases
of the rubber boom, when the rubber economy was still largely confined to the Lower
Amazon. This is certainly the sense one has of it from early observers like von Spix and
von Martius (1812), Edwards (1842), and Mme. Agassiz (1866), who noted as she took
outingsinsmallvillagesthat“themenwereuprivercollecting”butdidnotseemtohear
any expressions of alarm from women about this, which certainly would have been the
case as the century wore on. Agassiz was more concerned about military conscription. 96
Next, the Cabanagem rebellion (1834-40) had undermined elite control in the lower
Amazon basin, quite dramatically altering local power relations over forest workers, ag-
riculturalists, and slaves, and produced highly autonomous communities of many types,
including quilombos . 97 These groups were not “prisoners of the landscape” in the way
that indebted northeastern migrants in the upper watershed might have been, nor were
they relocated native populations. The locals had kin and affines in the area, and they
wereinhabitantsof,ratherthanexilesto,Amazonia.Producerswerepartoffamiliesthat
relied on a portfolio of activities for their livelihoods, not just rubber, but participated
inthevariedactivities ofcommercial extraction, askindlyMr.Edwardsnoted. 98 Further,
while the aviamento system—advancing goods in exchange for rubber—certainly oper-
ated,thesystemwasmorecomplicatedandcomplexinLowerAmazonia,whereproxim-