“Events that perhaps lacked a historian” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 325

documents robust sertanejo colonization in contrast to the pathetic subsidized German
(considered the ideal colonist race) colony that ends up in rags and religious fanaticism,
evidencefordaCunha'sargumentregardingBrazilian adaptationand“counter-colonial-
ism,”andanempiricalrebuketotheadvantagesofwhitecolonists.EvenwhenPeruvians
take over a functioning enterprise, in a few years the place is reduced to rubble, useful
mainly for firewood burned by casual travelers. This theme of Peruvians as “builders of
ruins” echoes through all da Cunha's writings on the Peruvian Amazon, culminating in
his final essay, “Among the Caucheiros ,” in the next chapter.
Da Cunha notes that a hidden Brazilian history resides between the lines of Peruvian
tropicalexpeditions“wanderingoutofourownhistoricalannals,”unifyingtheBrazilian
spirit fromthe east andfromthe west, andsomaking even the “Peruvian Amazon” at its
heart a Brazilian enterprise.
Brasilieros , or the Problem of the Oriente
Peru has two fundamentally different histories. There is the familiar one from topics, the one that is
theatrical, histrionic, theonereadilycondensedintothefarcical romancesofproclamations offreshly
minted marshals. The other is obscure and fecund. It unfolds in the wilderness. It is more moving,
more serious, more majestic. It extends to the Purús' most remote terrains the glorious traditions of
thestrugglesforindependence,andcontinuesthemwithoutpausetoourdays.Inallitsvariedaspects,
this history could summarized in a single title, one adopted by the best publicists of that Republic:
The Problem of the “Oriente”—the challenge of the eastern jungles. . . .
To Peruvians there is no need to resort to the elaborate arguments of a sociologist or the happy in-
tuitions of a statistician: one needs only the material goad of the environment. Constrained to a strip
of land set between the mountains and the sea, for three centuries Peruvians languished, deluded by
the pomp of the conquistadors and the viceroys. Peru today is the main heir of the virtues and the
vices equally notable in the Spanish nobility—and in decay since the seventeenth century. Peruvians
finally understood, through the reflexive instinct of defense, the overarching necessity of abandoning
the seclusion that had isolated them from the rest of the world.
Thus they began the Andean crossings.
Itwould betootedious torecount the pilgrimage tothe mountains, the successive assaults invested
in the five tortuous roads winding precipitously through the curving mountains, surging up slopes
thousands of meters high, and uniting the coastal ports of Mollendo and Paita 37 with the coveted
outposts of the montaña at the extreme edge of Amazonia, extending through the valley and pon-
gos —riverchutes—ofManserichetothefoamingwhirlpoolsoftheUrubamba.Aftercrossingthelast
easternmost range and arriving at the Ucayali basin, even the most oblivious pioneer would note that
it rivaled that marvelous Manseriche valley and was a place able even on its own to invigorate ex-
hausted Peruvian nationality. There is the incongruity that results from the physiography itself: the
best parts of the country, among those countries that most that identify themselves as “Pacific” na-
tions, really have but one true sea for linking long-distance trade and civilization; it is defined by the
three long, unimpeded channels: the Purús, the Juruá, and the Ucayali.
NoAndeanengineeringmiraclecansubstituteforthem.ThetrainlinetoOroyaandotherlinesthat
match this daring track, curving up the jagged scarps, threading through tunnels, drowning in clouds,
and traveling over suspension bridges perched above the innumerable chasms, cannot create a prac-