“Events that perhaps lacked a historian” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 323

Only observe that the invaders, fleeing from battle, ceded all the territories they had been allowed
tooccupyandtravelthrough,andretreatedtoSta.RosaatthemouthoftheCorinaã,thenorthernmost
extent of their settlement. Between Sobral and Sta. Rita, the lands of the neutralized zone, one can
still make out the ruins of two abandoned caucho posts, União and Fortaleza, both abandoned by the
caucheiros .
The abdication, in this case imposed by battle, would have occurred anyway, quickly and pacific-
ally, as soon as they cut down the last of the neighboring caucho trees. The hamlets of the Peruvians,
even the large ones, like Curanjá or Cocama, are mere camps.
In the entire area from Sta. Rosa to the farthest headwaters of the Purús, there is not one house
made of tile. Hovels of palm thatch constructed in ten days proclaim the unstable presence of a no-
madic society, one that despoils the land and then deserts it. One can compare it to the restlessness of
the natives, now mostly crushed. In general, there are five Peruvians, mainly Loretanos, for one hun-
dredPiros,Campas,Amahuacas,Conibos,Shipibos,Coronauás,andJaminuauáswhomonestumbles
across in various types of activity and indolence, all conquered by the shotgun, all deluded by extra-
vagant contracts, all now yoked to the most abject slavery.
Thefamilydoesn'texist—inmost,ifnotall,hamletsonecannotpointtoasinglelegalcouple—and
immanent everywhere is a sense of breeziness, the casualness of a perpetual eve of departure that in-
fuses those makeshift outposts where men plan to stay but one, two, or three years at most, to get rich
and then never go back. They erect those tambos in new clearings, and noisily animate that corner of
theforestforawhile;butthen,whenexhaustedandruined,theyvanishintothesuffocatingfoliageof
the lianas.
Curanjá had 1,000 inhabitants two years ago, today it has 150, and it will be abandoned shortly if
the caucheiros are not successful at dislodging the fierce Coronauá, who are still the masters of the
headwaters. Cataí, ahamletopenedupbyaBrazilian, oldJoãoJoaquimdeAlmeida, atthefrontierof
Cassianã, will soonbearuinifitisn'tchosenastheseat ofthejoint frontier administration. InSham-
boyaca,almostatthemouthoftheRioManoelUrbano,thebestagriculture—avastmaniocplantation
covering a small hill—belongs to a Campa Indian, the “Curaca” Chief Antônio, who established it
on a caucho post. (The Campas, thanks to their personal courage, maintain a primitive liberty unless
deluded by the intricacies of the contracts they accept.)
Cocama and Sta. Cruz today are very animated but will not last three years more: their life spans
are coupled to the last trunks of the castillas that still abound in their environs. In Tingo Leales, an
immense banana plantation and a permanent field of cotton belong still to a Campa, Chief Venâncio,
who immigrated from the Ucayali. 33 Finally, at Alerta, where the main residence is reduced to a vast
tambo of Paxiuba, there is no agriculture worthy of the name except for manioc and cane planted by
the Amahuaca women. On that estate the land is of a rare exuberance, with soft hills stretching along
the margins of the Purús and the Curiujá, offering a magnificent base for more prosperous and per-
manent activities. But this requires different passions that transcend a lust for easy wealth: those who
arrive there are prepared only to punish themselves for three years for the right and the means to an
opulent life in other climates. Nothing transcends that single-minded obsession, beyond which one
sees not a glimmer of social cohesion.
This was the devastating conclusion of da Cunha's analysis of Peruvian settlement his-
tory on the Purús.
. . .