“Events that perhaps lacked a historian” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 328

The Peruvians, for so long wedded to the sterile littoral, saw the New World for the first time. And
its conquest in one of its keenest phases, unfolding in all its vastness. The administration then began
a disheartening phase of brilliant but abortive projects. The planned colonies, quickly scattered over
the lost and lonely corners in a sort of phantasm of artificial progress, soon flickered out. By 1854
the government ofLoreto, anobscure little village whosename nowextends throughout those places,
informing of the status of two successive colonizations that were established in that department but
centralized in Caballo-Cocha near the frontier with Brazil, indicated that they were completely ex-
tinct. The same mishaps were generalized throughout the entire region.
This was natural. The limits of human occupation in those outposts were not so simply defined.
The first stages were characterized by the instability imposed by life itself, acquired in the movement
ofthemarch.Areconnaissanceoftheirnewhabitatfocusedonthefruitsofimmediaterichesandhow
these would provide for recent arrivals in the wandering life of collectors, of gold miners, of herders.
These would precede the steadiness of agriculture, before a place was chosen to alight and to root.
This is the eternal social function of nomadism, but in Peru, the devastating turmoil of the cas-
carilheiros —the collectors of quinine bark—was already unfolding, unveiling the obscure backlands
stretching from the hills of Carabaya to the most distant scarps of the Beni. This incentive was,
however, unraveling.
During that time a tenacious explorer, Clements Markham, commissioned by the English govern-
ment, traveled in the regions of Quina calysaia and quickly managed to transplant to India that key
element of Peruvian fortune. By 1862 more than four million trees in Darjeeling were producing an
extraordinary 370 tons of quinine, and thus was initiated the triumphant assault on the monopoly of
quinine. The anxiously coveted Peruvian backlands were soon shorn, at least for the new inhabitants,
of these resources that everywhere had been so purposefully, so lyrically depicted that one could not
deflate the always exaggerated hopes of those who immigrated. The bombanajes , collectors of palm
fibers destined to the gracious industry of “panama” hats woven by the women of Moyobamba, and
the gold-bearing gravels of the slopes of the Pastaza, guarded by the bellicose Humbizas, were not
enough for a regional economy.
All the acts, magnificent decrees, lucid regulations, generous land concessions of the last govern-
ment of Castilla would have dissolved in the most abject failure in the final part of his presidency,
the year (1862) when the cultivation of quinine in India snatched from the wilderness its greatest al-
lurement, had not an anonymous, humble immortal, invisible to our history but eclipsing in one blow
the most imposing administrative thrusts, offered the Peruvians the energetic reagent that encouraged
them forward on the route to Amazonia.
A Brazilian discovered caucho , or at least began its industry of extraction.
In reconstructing this chapter of our history, which if developed later by another historian would
merit the title “The Brazilian Expansion in Amazonia,” we are hardly alone. A reliable narrator re-
ports:
Before the year 1862, the incalculable riches of latexes had yet to be explored. . . . After the en-
tranceofsomeBraziliansintothedepartment[ofLoreto],especiallythehardworkingJoséJoaquim
Ribeiro, this valuable product began to figure in the list of exports to Brazil. The first lot expor-
ted was 2,088 kg, the result of some experiments of that Brazilian, who would have contributed
so much to the development of that industry had he not, at the beginning, encountered difficulties
born of the greed and envy of some petty officials who opposed him at every step. 38
We will not comment on the antagonism of Peruvian authorities. It was of long standing. Since
1811, don Manuel Ijurra had accused Brazilians in these terms: