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tical and secure system of transportation. The exceptional technical conditions were disastrous for in-
dustry, since they made it forever impossible to transport goods from the “Oriente” without excessive
freight costs, even when the opening of the Panama Canal dispenses with the long voyage around the
Horn.
ThusthepassagetotheAtlanticthroughtheAmazonanditstributarieswastheclearsolutiontothe
problem. And the new outposts, sprouting up in what is now the Department of Loreto, soon began
the intensive labor of domination, which continues to this day.
Theyopeneduptheroadsrequiredbytherichfluvialzone;theyplanned,inspiteofmanysetbacks,
many military and agricultural colonies; they mobilized the revival of the apostolic missions, the ad-
mirable traditions of the Jesuits of the Maynas; *7 they developed a vast system of land regulation;
theybuilt aportatIquitos; andtostimulate occupation, theyabolished all taxes toinduce domesticat-
ing man to inhabit that most feral land.
Meanwhile, geographical expeditions began in 1834 by P. Beltrán and Wm. Smith were followed
by those of Castelnau, Maldonado, Raimondi, and J. Tucker, and, in our day, G. Stiglich, who tena-
ciously and inexorably spread out through all the compass quadrants in the complex task of making a
type of rapid survey for a new nation.
The strident upland caudillos reviled these tranquil explorations. On the littoral, always rife with
seditionandinsurrection,thechronicincompetenceofrevolutionarygovernmentsinstitutionalized it-
self. There, distorting the noblest aspirations of the recent campaigns for liberation, the reckless brig-
ands catapulted to power and gave themselves over to a pernicious militarism, which there, as every-
where, is the festering wound of sickly nations. But meanwhile, in the desolation of the montaña ,
with oragainst the currents ofunknownrivers roiling through dizzying bends ofthe mayunas ,canoes
were bid farewell, and like arrows, they shot into the famously powerful currents of the pongos , *8
intothetumultofthefoamingrapids.Thegeographers,thebureaucrats,themissionarieshadoutlined
the contours of a revitalized state, one where the noblest traits of the Peruvian race could be purified
by the apprenticeship to danger and hardship and thus revive the weakened national character. They
gave those scarcely defined geographical coordinates a vibrant extension into History. Because the
“Problem of the Oriente,” after all, includes in its numerous unknowns the destiny of all Peru.
Even the maniacal caudillos knew this. Distracted as they were by their own recklessness and con-
stant vacillations, in the short intervals between two firing squads or one battle and the next they
agreed to consider these desirable outposts, and many of them suddenly transformed themselves in
light of the alluring and lucid revelations of the statistics.
One can cite numerous extensions of politics that restore as well as demolish, that accent the phys-
ical contrast between the recondite West with the inflexibility ofthe moral order ofPeru, whose ener-
gies were malignantly dissipated in the emotional hysteria endemic to the formal world of ministerial
proclamations, and the resplendent tropical Oriente, where reborn hopes were dawning.
Here is an example.
In 1841 the Republic was in complete havoc. D. Agustín Gamarra ruled. This tyrannical
zambo —mixedblood—exhibitedinhiscapriciousactsalltheimbalance ofhismestizotemperament,
goaded as he was by the fears and impatience of a transient prestige that he had won by luck
in guerrilla assaults. His government, which inaugurated in Peru the new legal process—the coup
d'état—that eventually unseated thevirtuousJosédelaMar, *9 wasnaturally extremely turbulent. His
restoration was imposed by Chilean weaponry and Manuel Bulnes *10 on the ruins of the ephemer-
al Peru-Bolivian confederacy. Gamarra's regime was besieged by contrary claims: the ceaseless de-
mands of disgruntled mercenaries and the threats of insurgent conspirators. Gamarra was made dizzy
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