Travel Reference
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called the “informal economy” and petty criminality. Revolutionary movements of the
nineteenth century regularly produced political “undesirables” who could be conveni-
ently domiciled thousands of miles away in tropical prisons. The rise of steamboats and
the end of galleys generated a large convict population that also had to be dealt with.
Stashedattheendsoftheworld,penalcoloniessanitizedthemetropoleofthesocial“de-
tritus” inherent in economic crises and transitions. In terms of “carceral cultures,” it was
not the Panopticon but the Void—of exile into invisibility that defined tropical gulags.
Social excision, isolation, and nature itself defined the axis of control.
As noted earlier, the backland populations of the Northeast, the
sertanejos
, were fa-
cing a complex of socioeconomic disasters at the fin de siècle. The decadal pulse of
El Niños unmoored the populations from their subsistence plots and petty commercial
plantingsandravagedtheirmeagerassets.Therestructuringoftheperiodliberatedthese
ex-slaves into realms of uncertainty made more uncertain by the economic contraction
of the northeast sugar, and cotton economies. The denizens of appalling refugee camps
hadlittlerecoursebesidespettycrime,migration,andbondage:doingone'stime,paying
one's debt. The transfer of “undesirables” from their concentration camp-like
currais
to
labor-starved
seringais
was an ideal solution for sociopolitical problems that states and
local societies were unable or unwilling to address. If Kafka's colonial apparatus wrote
the punishment endlessly on the body of the accused, the tapper inscribed his sentence
with his body on the landscape in its endless circuits. Here is how da Cunha explained
the meanings of his map:
29
ThoseexuberantoutpostsofrubberandBrazilnutsharborthemostvillainousorganizationoflabor
ever designed by avaricious conceit. The
estradas
are themselves a diagram of rubber society, char-
acterized by one of its most depressing attributes: obligatory dispersion. Man there is solitary. Even
in Acre, where the greater density of rubber trees permits the opening of 16 rubber trails in a square
league, this entire enormous area is easily exploited by just eight people. From these come the limit-
less latifundist holdings, where in spite of the permanence of active exploitation one notes the great
desolation of the wilderness. One estate embraces 300
estradas
, which corresponds to roughly 20
square leagues. All this anonymous province carries at the maximum a force of 150 laborers.
Fromthefirstslashofhistappingknife,the
seringueiro
istrappedwithinanunendurablecycle:the
exhausting struggles to undo a debt that constantly expands, always equaling the energy of his toils.
In the dreary round of his existence he is completely alone. In this respect, the exploitation of rub-
ber is worse than that of
caucho
: it enforces exile. Dostoyevsky's darkest narratives of Siberia could
scarcely capture the tapper's torment: a man confined to the same trail, tethered to the same trees, for
his entire life, setting off each day from the same point along the prison of his dark and narrow pas-
sage.Forhim,thetaskofSisyphusistomovenotastonebuthisownbodyalongthecrampedarcsof
the endless circuit of this wall-less dungeon. It takes but an hour to learn the task that will consume
him the rest of his life. In fact, the
seringueiro
. . . reveals this anomaly: he is a man who works to
enslave himself. . . .
Flee? He doesn't dream of it. What restrains him is crossing an unmarked distance. Seek another
station? Among patrons there is an agreement not to accept the workers of others unless their debts
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