“Events that perhaps lacked a historian” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 327

by the vertiginous heights he ascended after he unfettered himself from his cholo constituency and
then allied himself to the aristocratic sensibilities of elites, who more than all others [in Latin Amer-
ica] inherited the traditional superciliousness of Spain. In the many desperate political situations in
which he found himself, he depended on luck and not infrequently on the accomplishments of a wo-
man,hisownwife.Thiskindlyandheroicamazonwouldoftenstraponaswordandleapfullyspurred
on horseback to the reviewing field or into the most heated battles, where she galvanized the aston-
ishedcommandersandthewaveringtroopswithhercharmingpresence.Onereallycouldnotdemand
of such a president, whose life was in so many ways perturbing and romantic, to focus his attention
on tedious administrative tasks.
Butletusfollowhimforpurelyartisticreasons,asonemighttracetheunfoldingplotofanimagin-
ative novel rife with alarming and dramatic episodes, until we come to the final denouement of our
protagonist in a glorious and useless sacrifice, as he succumbed before the furious charge of Bolivian
lancers on the plains of Viacho. *11
But returning to these pages, this, surprisingly leaps out at us:
The citizen Augustín Gamarra, the Grand Marshal, Restorer of Peru, the Heroic, the Excellent, etc.
etc. etc.
Considering that to provide steam navigation on the Amazon River and its tributaries, it is neces-
sary to provide facilities and incentives to stimulate the impresarios . . .
Decree1:WeconcedetotheBraziliancitizenAntonioMarcelinoRibeirotheexclusiveprivilegeto
provide navigation on the Amazon River in the part that corresponds to Peru and its affluents . . .
The relevant bits of this decree burnish this hapless caudillo with all the vain elegance of his nu-
merous titles and reveal him as the first ruler who traced for his countrymen the revitalizing march to
the east, to the Oriente. But we do not repeat this point to illustrate the contradictory aspects of Per-
uvian history but rather to emphasize the figure of a Brazilian , which would be irrelevant if it did not
constitute the first of a series of our unknown compatriots wandering out of our own historical annals
and electing themselves, by memorable acts, as the best servants of a neighboring nation.
In fact, insofar as the traces of Peruvian expansion to the east is revealed in the swamp of regula-
tions, degrees, circulars, official letters (these, alas, are the supreme military, political, and adminis-
trative obsessions ofPeru), one can discern in them the obligatory and incisive presence ofBrazilians
in yet another unsung but vigorous advance that met with Brazil's own energetic forays toward the
west. One could refurbish an entire chapter of our own history, one lost or disjointed, one invisible to
the benumbed gaze of the chroniclers, now resurgent in sparse but surprising fragments in between
the lines of the history of another people.
And this is revealed in other unrenowned cases. We reveal a few glimpses of them:
In the period embraced by the austere Marshal Ramón Castilla, *12 the Amazon explorations con-
tinued. De Castelnau descended from the headwaters of the Urubamba to the banks of the Amazon.
FaustinoMaldonadowasimmortalized bydiscovering,inanextremely daringexcursion,anewroute
to the Atlantic linked to an as yet unmeasured channel of the Madre de Dios. Raimondi disclosed the
“treasures of Mesopotamia” in the 16,000 square leagues of exuberant lands crossed by the water-
courses of the Huallaga and the Ucayali. Finally, Montferrier rigorously calculated the riches of that
vast Canaan: 50,000,000 ha worth at least half a billion pesos. The arithmetic was lyrical.
Thegovernmentalmeasuresofthegreatmarshalsoonhadtheencouragementofthemostenergetic
patriotic stimuli, equaled only by the greed of the most unprincipled adventurers.