“Events that perhaps lacked a historian” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 322

All these evils are overt and prove above all the mere fact of distance. They would disappear if the
region were incorporated into the rest of the country, and for this reason [the nation] requires now,
urgently, the development of navigation to the last inhabited point, and telegraph at least between
Manaus and Boca do Acre. Taking these measures would be extremely rewarding given the current
economic returns of the region and do not demand extraordinary outlays or efforts.
To the Headwaters
TheBrazilianascentofthePurúsnowreachestoSobral.Butastheannexedmapindicates,abovethat
hamlet are others: Sta. Rosa, Cataí, Curnaga, Sta. Cruz.
These are Peruvian posts.
Thesepostsinnowaysignifythedefinitivedominationandregularsettlement oftheland.TheRe-
port of the Joint Commission already described this, and nothing remains to be added to the limpid
precision of its descriptions of the legendary ephemerality of the caucheiros —and lines of that re-
port's have the added merit of being signed by the esteemed Peruvian comissário .
It would hardly be generous to revisit a topic where our preeminence is both comprehensive and
reproaching. We note merely a few significant circumstances.
Peruvians began to occupy the area only after 1900, occupying but three sites beyond
Sobral—Hossanah,Cruzeiro,andOrienteatthemouthoftheChandless—andinsinuatingthemselves
peacefully in lands already previously occupied by Brazilians for a long time, What permitted this
was the innate generosity of those rough sertanejo s who saw caucheiros less as strangers than as
companions in the same enterprise against the onslaughts of nature. But after two years (1903), the
intentionofpoliticallyauthorizingtheoutcomeofbenevolenttolerancewastestedwiththeattemptto
establish a Peruvian comísariá —a national military outpost and customs house—at the mouth of that
river, with all the official apparatus. It was then that the disparities of character that so distinguished
the seringueiros from the caucheiros made for an inevitable conflict, which we restrain ourselves
from describing. These are widely known, and their many episodes would only enflame the inherent
serenity of these pages.
Map 13. Joint Commission map at the point where occupation shifts from Hevea to caucho and
Brazilian occupation to Peruvian.