“Events that perhaps lacked a historian” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 304

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“Events that perhaps lacked a historian”
Reflections and Supplements to the Formal Report of the Joint Survey Commis-
sion
Maps, Lying Maps, and History
Da Cunha needed to appear evenhanded as he framed the supplements that accompanied
the map and the formal survey. The travels had stimulated a great deal of research and re-
flection, and he substantiated his positions through careful study of the Itamaratí archives
and maps. His discussion of the Madre de Dios, Ucayali, and Upper Purús perhaps had
documentation from Vias Fluviales, studies of the waterways of the Upper Amazon car-
riedoutbythePeruviangovernmentintheearly1900s.Thesewereessentiallyconsultant
reports, detailed, quite rare even at the time, and probably sent to him by da Gama, who
was then based in Lima. Da Cunha makes explicit reference to these studies and the ex-
plorers who carried them out.
The writing and reflections that constitute the Brazilian supplements focus on a com-
parison of Brazilian and Peruvian enterprises in the region. Da Cunha's strategy involved
discrediting the rival national claims through the maps that were their foundational docu-
ments and then through settlement history and the extent to which Brazilians had shaped
the Peruvian enterprise, even, as he states, going so far as discovering the uses of caucho
and thus saving the Peruvian Amazon from a catastrophic decline after the end of the
quinineboom.ThesetechnicalandsocialidiomsdefinedtheBraziliansupplementstothe
Joint Commission's report.
Mythical and Real Geographies of the Purús
Da Cunha's cartographic critique began with a dramatic statement by the chronicler João
Daniel: “Between the Javarí and the Madeira is no one.” This rhetorical device was the
ironic axis on which Euclides would organize his central arguments: the lack of know-
ledge, the realm of rumor, the lying cartography that prevailed until the explorations by
WilliamChandlessandBrazilianManoelUrbano,and,ashewrote,howthislandbecame
populated. It was, he affirmed, a place of conjecture, a world of hidden travels. What was
knownwasthatthenativesweretallandhadgold,andthesailingwasquitegood—gossip
one might hear anywhere in the basin, since it was certainly generic enough. The place
was occupied:manioc,maize,cacao,peachpalm,Brazilnuts,andturtleswerethefamous
domesticates of those upper reaches. The narrow scope of explorers and the poor copies