Everyday Forms of Empire - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 346

Figure 21.1. Muchachos : vicious child warriors of the Upper Amazon.
And indeed, half an hour later roughly one hundred Mashcos, including their recalcitrant chief, lay
murdered, stretched out on the riverbank, which to this day bears the name Playa Mashco in memory
of that bloody episode.
Thus they mastered this wild region. The caucheiros acted with feverish haste. They ransacked the
surroundings, killing or enslaving in a radius of several leagues. In a few months, at the side of the
initial hut ( tambo ) others multiplied, the little solitary shack transformed itself into an ample barracks
orrough embarcadero —thehousesbecamemoredense—theexamplesofCocamaandCuranjáatthe
margins of the Purús mirrored the mirage of surging progress at the edge of the wilderness, but one
that would develop and decline in a decade. The caucheiros would stay until the last Castilla fell.
They came, they ravaged, and they left. In general they asked nothing of the earth with the exception
of a few manioc or banana plants with which the tame Indians occupied themselves. The only regu-
lar agriculture one observes on the Upper Purús, albeit quite diminished, is that of the cotton grown
by the neighboring Campa Indians, who in this activity reveal their native independence—collecting,
carding, spinning, weaving, and painting the cushmas in which they are clad, which cover them from
shoulder to foot like a coarse toga.
Those strange white conquerors came in hurried rounds of slaughter of both men and trees, staying
just long enough to utterly extinguish both, before seeking other paths where they would unleash
the same chaos, passing like a destructive wave and leaving the wilderness yet more wild, more dis-
ordered.
Thecontrastismarked.ProceedingfromtheCampavillageofTingoLealestothePeruvianhamlet
of Shamboyaco near the source of the Manoel Urbano river, the traveler doesn't pass, as one might
expect, from the more primitive to the more advanced stage of human evolution. There is a greater
surprise. One goes from straightforward barbarism to a sort of decrepit transitory culture in which all
the vices of civilization resurge more markedly from the imprints of progress.
Approach the Peruvian caucho station: in the first hours one is enchanted by the picture of a rough
and busy existence. The main house and its outbuildings are surrounded sometimes by small hamlets
that are always situated on a well-chosen point on a river bluff. In spite of being constructed entirely
of the leaves and poles of Paxiuba palms—that providential palm of the Amazon—they are usually
composed of two stories and have an elegance of line. In the airy verandas that surround them, they
have an appearance totally at odds with the sorry aspect of the dull barracões of our tappers.
On the ample patio topping the crest of the river terrace, falling in a sharp slope to the river, there
is the pleasing bustle of activity: the powerful bearers passing in long successive lines bent under the
slabs of caucho , active administrators tearing open the doors of the ground floor and running every-
where, to the warehouses of provisions or to the sparkling shop where hammers and anvils resound,
repairing axes and machetes. Below the pier, from the fleets of swift canoes that converge where the
slim canoes harpoon the air, come the cackle and babble of the helmsmen, who slap in the water rafts
made only of caucho , forming a moving pathway: “the merchandise that transports the transporters.”
Throughout, running up the stairs that wind to the top of the bluff, the red skirts and white bodies of
the delicious cholas of Iquitos pass and cross each other in festive entanglement.
The traveler passes excited groupsand the surprises never cease. Clambering upthe stairs that lead
to the front veranda, one encounters the main living quarters. On top, the caucho baron, a jovial con-
queror, standing straight over the stiff heels of his backwoods boots, receives his guest boisterously,
throwing open for him the doors of a frank and spectacular generosity. And this completes the charm.
Onelosesallnotionoftimeandspace,forgetsthethousandsofemptykilometersofportageandchan-