Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
dam projects, the government's approval in October 2010 of a Supreme Decree extending
oil exploration into both
Parque Nacional Madidi
and the
Reserva de Biosfera y Ter-
ritorio Indígena Pilón Lajas
,
suggests the indigenous struggle isn't going to end any time
soon.
The northern Amazon
Now a remote economic backwater, just over a hundred years ago Bolivia's
northern
Amazon
frontier was one of the most commercially desirable stretches of territory on earth.
The region supports some of the richest natural rubber forests in the whole of the Amazon,
and in the late nineteenth century a surge in international demand for rubber generated an
unprecedented economic boom. Great fortunes were made by the so-called “rubber barons”
who controlled production, but for the indigenous peoples of the Amazon the
rubber boom
was an unmitigated disaster. They were recruited by force to work collecting wild rubber un-
der conditions of appalling brutality, and their population declined catastrophically. Little of
the money made was reinvested, and when the boom ended in the early twentieth century
with the establishment of rubber plantations in Asia, the region - and its main towns, agree-
able
Riberalta
and Brazilian flavoured
Guayaramerín
- slipped back into the economic tor-
por which characterizes it today, with collection of wild
Brazil nuts
(known as
castañas
) the
main export industry. To the north of Guayaramerín, the small and sleepy town of
Cachuela
Esperanza
provides an atmospheric insight into the days of the rubber boom.
Riberalta
SetonabluffaboveagreatsweepoftheRíoMadredeDios,justafteritssilt-laden watersare
joined by those of the Beni,
RIBERALTA
is the second-biggest town in the Amazon low-
lands, with a population of about forty thousand, largely employed in the processing and ex-
port of Brazil nuts. Riberalta's economic fortunes never really recovered from the collapse of
the rubber boom; while its valuable rubber exports once circumnavigated the globe it is now
a net importer, and its roaring fleet of cheap Asian motorbikes now endlessly circumnavigate
the central plaza. Though there's no great reason to stop here, there's an indolent charm about
the place that makes it perhaps the most likeable of the Northern Amazon outposts.
Parque Costanera
While the optimistically named
Parque Costanera
, a couple of blocks north of the plaza,
is really just a few square metres of weeds and broken rubble, it's worth sauntering down
to its plank-less benches to witness the wholly surreal sight of a Scottish-built steamboat,
the
Tahuamanu
, mounted in concrete; the first and last such craft to navigate the Bolivian
Amazon. The park also offers a magnificent sunset view: a molten-glass ferment best accom-
panied by a cold beer, if you can find one. On weekends you might have some luck at the
