“Events that perhaps lacked a historian” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 330

In the anticipation of the evils of this form of exploitation, which, however, had completely de-
termined the development of its dominion over the region, the Peruvian government never renounced
its earlier ambitions for intensive colonization. And at the same time to guarantee the use of the best
route to Amazonia via the Ucayali, which travels from the Oroya terminus to the principal tributaries
of the Pachitea, it established in 1857, at the margins of the Pozo River, a German colony and mono-
polized its care and uninterrupted solicitude.
The site itself was admirable. Halfway to Iquitos, near the navigable affluents of the Ucayali, on
fertile soil, the settlement was in military and administrative terms the most solid, strategic point in
that struggle with the wilderness, justifying the efforts and extraordinary expenses that were invested
for rapid development, which the best natural conditions would favor. But things did not work out
as planned. As happened in Loreto, the new colonists, even the most persistent, found their efforts
fruitless. The colony was paralyzed, immobilized amid the splendors of the forest. It was reduced to
subsistence production that hardly satisfied its own needs. The demographic increase was almost im-
perceptible: the offspring of the tough Prussian stock regressed to the constrained capacities of the
Quechua. Visiting in 1870, the prefect of Huánuco, Colonel Vizcarra, was left stunned and sorrowed
by the colonists, who appeared to him in rags and starving. The romantic don Manuel Pinzás de-
scribed the trip and the “heartrending scene” in lengthy, lachrymose sentences. Five years later, Dr.
SantiagoTavarausedthesamedispiritingtonesashedescribedAdmiralJohnRandolphTucker'sfirst
travels. 41 After thirty years, Colonel Pedro Portillo, *13 in his Ucayali jaunt, received reliable news
of that settlement: it was a miserable shambles. The settlers and their degenerate brood had become
victims of an irredeemable fanaticism, lost in painful necessities of penances, endless praying, con-
tinuous rosaries, litanies, and lamentations that vied shamefully with the wails of howler monkeys.
Making the disappointment even more painful, our intrepid traveler, who today is one of the most
lucidPeruvianpoliticians,hadpassedjustafewdaysbeforethroughPuertoVictoriaattheconfluence
of the Pichis-Palcazu, affluents of the Pachitea, and witnessed a completely different scene. Puerto
Victoria had developed into one of the most animated and opulent settlements of the region, without
the government's being the least bit aware of its emergence.
It had never even thought to colonize that area.
It was thought to be ill favored. It was surrounded by the most hostile and wildest of native South
Americans, the Campas of the Pajonal to the south, and to the north, the indomitable Cashibos, who
had at Chonta Isla (island of the peach palms) brutally murdered the naval officers Tavara and West.
The prefect, Benito Arana (father of the more famous king of caucho , César Arana), who had passed
there that same year, mounted a full-fledged military operation with two launches and an artillery
vessel to revenge that bloody affront. They entered the forest, engaged in skirmishes and shootouts,
and returned in a singular “triumph” with the savages at their heels in a hail of arrows; they sailed
off “victoriously” firing their cannons furiously at the riverbanks, and leaving the name “Playa del
Castigo” *14 as a novelistic remembrance of that embarrassing episode.
For the next three decades the menacing region remained in the most complete isolation as a result
of the terror the episode had inspired. Until, one day, coming from the west, there appeared some
fearless adventurers, paddling their light canoes, the ubás , up the powerful currents of the Pachitea,
passing from one difficulty to the next to the next until they arrived at the confluence of the Pichis.
They were tough caboclos with dark mestizo coloring and sere, powerful bodies. They were not
caucheiros . Their language did not vibrate with noisy fanfare. Instead of a “tambo” they put up a “te-
jupar.”Insteadof“cuchillas,”theycarried,thrustintheirbelts,the“facas,”machetes,longasswords.