Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
point. It was these travelers who, for da Cunha, truly claimed Amazonia, and whom he
thoughtknewbetterthananyoneitsfecund,treacherouspossibilities.Itisusefultothink
of this “march to the West” as an unfolding of tiers of travelers: a handful of elite inter-
nationals, fairly anonymous (at least today) but essential sets of surveyors and adminis-
trators, then tourists, and finally the huge labor diaspora.
Elite Endeavors: Sagas of the Sages
By far the best known of Amazonian travelers in the modern day were the northern
European and American naturalists whose descriptions inform the modern canons of
tropical science exploration and nature writing. These travelers were a mere handful
among the million-plus who were sucked into the latex vortex of South America. Da
Cunha read their science but was dubious about their “explorations.” These prominent
travelers were the best positioned with patronage and connections to the great institu-
tionsoftheday;theydominatedtheunderstandingoftheregionthoughastheystood,as
da Cunha put it, at “only the threshold of the great Hylea.”
Da Cunha was compelled by social history, and the Peruvian-Brazil negotiations re-
quired a focus on explorations by South American nationals and local populations to
construct territorial claims, so his attention, unlike that of most writers of the Amazon
exploration, was focused less on the marvels of the Amazonian biota and more on the
more or less “invisibles” toiling on distant tributaries. His approach supported the polit-
ical purposes of his travels and provided a counterbalance to the Euro-American fram-
ing of the Amazon as a place of wild nature and barely civilized locals. After all, da
Cunha was entering a place producing more than half the world's latex, linked to glob-
al financial and commodity circuits—a place that was the heart of a highly conflictive
geopolitics that engaged several hemispheric and European actors. Da Cunha's writings
are awash in the names of Latin American and Iberian Amazonian colonial explorers,
names that survive in the modern day mostly as toponyms like Maldonado, Urbano, Or-
ton, Heath, Chandless. His attention (and access) to the vast gray literature produced by
ecclesiastics, surveyors, administrators marks da Cunha as among the most thorough of
Amazonian scholars of any time.
AnglophoneandEuropeanscientistsandcollectorswerefundamentaltothewritingof
Amazonia asanarchiveofbiological historyratherthanaplaceofhumanendeavor,and
to configuring the great forests as an enduring “Natural” world counterposed to “Cultur-
idiomofthetime,outcomesofthehierarchiesofnatureasexpressedinclass.Whenloc-
al people appear in these works, it is as gracious hosts, earnest bearers, slaves, helpers,
orrowersandwatermenofvaryingdegreesofreliabilityandquirkiness—usefulexotica,
butoverall,inneedofbettermanagement.ThiswastheruralsociologyofmanyAmazo-
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