Travel Reference
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ThoseBrazilianswholiveclosesttoPeruhavethebarbarouscustomofarmingmilitaryexpeditions
Or describing us like this:
Absolute monopolizers of the commerce of imports and exports.
Fiveyearslaterinanalarmingnotice,thesubprefectoftheMaynasurgentlyrequestedwhatactions
he should take “that that the Brazilian inhabitants of Caballo-Cocha should depart this province, if
notpeacefullythenbyforce,”anddescribedthem,stainingthemwiththemostdisgracefullibels.Fin-
ally the governor general of the missions (1849) decided to demand that Brazilians who entered that
country carry passports, stammering in his clumsy Spanish, “We experience no benefit whatsoever
from these Brazilian traders, nor are there bayonets enough to restrain them: they do what they want,
entering rivers, extracting sarsaparilla, turtle oil, salt, and other goods.”
We desist. But one can see from these lines, of which many more could be included, a formidable
invasion that stretched out, dominating the regions in the west, challenging the hatred against the for-
eigner: installing itself through the valley of the great river through Loreto, Caballo-Cocha, More-
mote,Pernante,Iquitos,andallthewaytothemouthoftheUcayaliandupthatriverpastthePachitea,
and leaving signs in the most varied points, in the numerous little farms, the sinuous forest trails, and
even the customs that persist to this day, the indelible traces of its passing.
If we were writing this history, we would counterpose the crescendo of invective of petty bureau-
crats, ever more stridently derogatory, to the mute invasion that swelled over Peruvian soil, with the
alist encountered on the margins of the Itaya River, master of the region's best farms, materialized an
irrefutable answer. He was not hindered by such trivialities. After 1871, rubber emerged as the most
important export of Loreto. And bands of extractors without any government support, spontaneous
migrants from everywhere, taking on the remotest parts of the wilderness, surpassed in a short time
almost a century of efforts so fraught with reversals.
The Oriente was unveiled.
But this picture is not perfect.
The exploitation of
caucho
as it is practiced by Peruvians, by cutting down trees and moving al-
ways at random to new, still unclaimed
manchals
[groves] in an endless professional nomadism,
brought out in these men all types of brutality in their inevitable encounters with the nat-
ives—bringing a systematic disorganization of society. The
caucheiro
, the eternal hunter of new ter-
ritory, never attaches to the land. In this primitive activity, he perfects only the attributes of slyness,
agility, and violence. In the end, it is a barbarous individualism. There is a lamentable involution in
a man forever exiled from settlements, wandering from river to river, from forest to forest, always
looking for some virgin forest where he hides or takes refuge like a fugitive from civilization.
His passage was devastating. At the end of 30 years of populating the banks of the Ucayali,
formerly so ennobled by the self-abnegating works of the missionaries of Sarayaco, today their de-
graded little villages exhibit an indescribable decadence. Colonel Pedro Portillo, the current mayor of
Loreto, who passed through there in 1899, raged: “There is no law there. . . . The strongest, who has
the most rifles, is the master of justice . . .” He then denounced the scandalous traffic in slaves. In a
similar tone, other travelers without number, a list of whom would be far too tedious to cite, detailed
in expressive narratives the regime of manhunts that have become usual in those lands, following the
spoor of men traveling these forests, whose sole effect is to barbarize the barbarians.
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