Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Amazon boundary treaties with Venezuela (1905), the Netherlands (1906), and Colom-
bia (1907) were speedily resolved.
. . .
The competition over Amazonia was out of control by the 1890s. The rubber economy
was exploding, and there were enormous gold strikes in the Guianas. Armies trudged
from one swamp to another. The western zones were ruled by the great rubber barons,
the Fitzcarraldo brothers on the Ucayali and Madre de Dios, the Casa Arana on the Pu-
tumayo, and the Suarez brothers on the upper Madeira. Guyana goldfields were full of
escaped slaves, Caribbean miners, and adventurers of all stripes. Utopias and independ-
ent republics were being proclaimed from Acre to Amapá. Entrepreneurs, speculators,
financiers, and developers swarmed. The river traffic burgeoned. The African Scramble
and US expansion in North America (to the west and the south) and its Caribbean and
CentralAmericanfilibusters(includingNicaraguaand,justnorthofAmazonia,Panama)
provided templates for what might unfold if no attention was paid to Brazil's northern
frontiers. All Amazon “borders” were fluid and very loosely specified at the end of the
nineteenth century.
There were numerous territorial disputes in play in the Amazon, involving as actors
and adjudicators Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Paraguay, Surinam, British
Guyana,FrenchGuiana,Argentina,theUnitedStates,Italy,France,GreatBritain,Belgi-
um, the Netherlands, Russia, and Switzerland. 35 In this context, it is obvious why Baron
Rio Branco took frontier demarcation as his central charge. 36
The Misiones experience served as a suitable apprenticeship for his entrance into the
Amazon Scramble, where the stakes, the terrain, and the adversaries would be far great-
er.Havingtriumphedinthesouth,RioBrancohadtotakeonthelandofCaboNorte,the
areanowknownasthestateofAmapá,aplacethathadbeeninconflictforfourhundred
years, with the last fifty having been more or less a territorial free-for-all. His adversary
in this case would be among the most powerful countries in the world, France.
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