Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Even the lamentable social system of Brazilian rubber extraction required at least the
tappers' attachment to their little hovels as they set out on daily rounds to provide the
latex demanded by industry, however degrading that toil might be. From such modest
enterprise they would give birth to the emergent national life of a great tropical republic
and a new civilization in the remote forests of the world. These would naturally thrive
even more with government's active efforts in infrastructure and telegraphs. The gentle
hand of Luso-Brazilian colonialism engages the transformative powers of mestizo ad-
aptation, not part of either the “black” or the “white” tropicality but rather a “third way”
rooted in its mixed inhabitants.
“Civilization” actually precedes the state and only awaits its harmonizing support,
as, da Cunha was at pains to note, had occurred in the United States, thus equating
Brazilwithamodern,developingimperialrepublicclamberingontotheglobalstageand
not with the unfortunate caudillismo and tropical nomadism of Peru, whose decaden-
ce reflected that of the moribund Spanish empire, incarnating a nomadism that ruptured
bondsofplace,Thosewhocouldmakebetteruseofthelands,definedinthemoralterms
of those transforming them into settled patterns of livelihood, had more right to them.
Da Cunha thus echoed the centuries of travelers with imperial ambitions.
“What I had first seen as a desperate crawl . . .”
DaCunhausesthedoubleideologiesoftropicalitytounderminethePeruvianclaimsbut
also constructs an alternative, native anti-European colonial tropicality to promote the
goals of Brazil in the Amazon Scramble. His approach, basically “we have met the 'oth-
er' and they are us,” recasts the terms of the debate. Da Cunha's version of the “white
legend” transforms the passive ahistoric harmony of the native-born to one of national
epic and vital human agency shaped by encounters with nature, disillusion, and greed, a
place of biological and “moral” selection that produces the new tropical man, regardless
of race. He sees an emergent dynamic harmony, the creation of humanized landscapes
(urban and rural). and a “tropicalized” civilization in Amazonia. These were outcomes
oftheactionsofhisadapted
seringueiros
,inaplacealsofullofotherracesandhistories,
exemplifying the multiculturalism of Luso-Brazilian tropicalism. This was an extremely
radical position, given the more general ideas of the time about tropical capacities.
In “Clima caluniado,” a masterpiece of irony, da Cunha compares the careful, “hy-
gienic” colonial occupation carried out by the French and British with the tumultuous
desperationoftheBrazilianNortheasterners.Tropicalmedicineandcolonialadministra-
tion were burgeoning fields at the time, stimulated by the emerging European empires.
Colonial agencies developed a vast array of protocols ranging from civil construction to
comes a protégé of the state, which strictly regulates his life. Da Cunha remarks, “What
Search WWH ::
Custom Search