The rubber boom and its legacy in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia

The invention of vulcanized rubber (1839), followed by the popularization of bicycles (1870s) and the invention of the automobile (1886), led to exponential growth in the demand for rubber, which was manufactured from latex produced by several species of trees endemic to the Amazon forest. The supply of rubber was a component of the trade in the drogas de sertão, which included latex collected from multiple species of two genera, Hevea and Castilla. The most valuable species were members of the genus Hevea, because their latex could be tapped rather than harvested from a felled tree, as was the case for Castilla. This difference soon led to the development of a Hevea supply chain anchored in remote outposts permanently manned by individuals who would collect the latex, process it into rubber using artisanal technologies and sell it to a trader for transport downriver to an export agency in Belem, Manaus or Iquitos.

At the outset, most rubber was collected by Indigenous communities residing in mission villages or Ribeirinhos who supplemented their subsistence livelihoods with trade in forest products. Strong annual growth in the demand for rubber quickly exceeded the ability of the resident population to provide a steady supply, however, stimulating the flow of migrants into the region.

During the last half of the nineteenth century, mass migration was facilitated by new technologies. Telegraph systems and newspapers alerted individuals to new opportunities, while trains and steamships would transport them across oceans and continents. Social mobility catalyzed by industrialization and democratic revolutions contributed to sudden migratory events symbolized by the gold rushes of California, the Yukon and South Africa. The Amazon became a global destination for adventurers seeking to strike it rich by joining a new global commodity boom.

Brazil

Most of these international migrants were poorly suited to the task, however, and the most successful rubber merchants were native-born entrepreneurs. These men were adept at leveraging local knowledge with political influence and the use of violence to dominate the wilderness landscapes they claimed as their fiefdoms. Known throughout the world as ‘rubber barons’, in Brazil they were called seringalistas. They were successful because they acquired monopoly control over a specific tributary, which allowed them to ruthlessly exploit their workers, who were known as seringueiros.

The seringalistas would advance the novice seringueiros supplies at inflated prices, establishing a debt so large that the worker could never fully repay it – a condition for his departure from a remote rubber post. Known as aviamento, this form of debt slavery was particularly effective for entrapping migrants who were not skilled at living off forest resources and who lacked a support system of Indigenous or Ribeirinha communities that might have offered them an escape route.

Among the most consequential of Brazilian rubber barons was João Gabriel de Carvalho e Melo, an explorer and entrepreneur who was among the first individuals to discover the rich stands of Hevea trees on the upper Purus River in the late 1850s. This occurred at the dawn of the rubber boom, and the demand for seringueiros had already surpassed the capacity of the Ribeirinha communities to provide the requisite labour. João Gabriel returned to his hometown of Uruburetama, Ceará, where he recruited a cadre of friends and relatives who would return with him in 1874 to establish a series of rubber posts on Acre and Purus rivers.

Their migration coincided with a series of calamitous events in Northeast Brazil, including the collapse of the international cotton market (1865–1870) and a multi-year drought (1877–1880) that destroyed the regional economy. Famine forced more than 200,000 Nordestinos, almost all Caboclos, to emigrate. Approximately half headed for the Amazon, where the seringalistas were ready to loan them money and locate them on remote forest tracts as contract employees. Approximately 30,000 Nordestinos moved into the upper reaches of the Purus and Juruá rivers.

This inflow of Brazilian citizens further consolidated Brazil’s hold on its Amazonian territories and set the stage for one final expansion of its dominion, despite the 1867 Treaty of Ayacucho, which had adjudicated the territory of Acre to Bolivia. Acre was a roadless forest wilderness, and Bolivia had yet to effectively occupy the territory, which was populated entirely by Indigenous tribes. The region could be easily accessed by river from Manaus, however. Once it became obvious that the region was a treasure trove of natural rubber, the Bolivian government moved to occupy the province and enlisted influential foreign investors to finance the region’s development. They acted too late.

Tens of thousands of Brazilians poured into Acre in the 1890s. Although Bolivian troops staged campaigns and counterattacks, they had to traverse dense forest landscapes from their military outposts on the Río Madre de Dios. Known in Brazil as the Revolução do Acre, it was fought by an army of immigrant filibusters who created a short-lived independent republic (1899–1903). Although they acted autonomously, they enjoyed the support of authorities in Manaus, Belem and Rio de Janeiro. Brazil formally annexed the territory after the two countries signed the Treaty of Persépolis in 1903. By 1910, Acre had a population of approximately 50,000 and was producing about 60% of the rubber in the Brazilian Amazon.

Although Bolivia had little choice but to cede control of the province, the two countries negotiated a compensation agreement that included the construction of a railway that would circumvent the rapids on the Río Madeira. The new railroad, which would be built in what is now the Brazilian state of Rondônia, would provide Bolivia with an expedited commercial route for its Amazonian territories. This was the era of railroad investment mania, and investors in London and New York poured capital into the scheme, a formidable engineering undertaking because of the region’s remoteness and the threat of tropical diseases. A previous effort in the 1870s ended in litigation and bankruptcy. The Brazilian government made it a national priority, however, and it was built between 1907 and 1912.

The Estrada de Ferro Madeira-Mamoré (EFMM) was a massive project that employed between 2,000 to 3,000 men during the height of construction. It suffered enormous labour turnover, however, due to severe working conditions and endemic disease. By some estimates, as many as 30,000 men and women were employed over the life of the project, with a loss of life that exceeded 6,000 individuals. Many were foreigners who were ill-prepared for the tropical climate, but there was another infusion of Caboclos from Northeast Brazil. Ironically, the rail line was completed just as the Amazonian rubber industry collapsed because of competition from plantations in Malaysia.

The first national census of Brazil in 1872 enumerated 323,000 residents in the states of Pará, up from around 85,000 after the Cabanagem massacres. This was before the onset of the rubber boom (~1890), when the influx of Nordestinos surpassed 20,000 per year. Between 300,000 and 500,000 eventually would migrate into the basin, radically transforming the demographic profile of the Brazilian Amazon. By 1910, the non-Indigenous population in Pará, Amazonas and Acre exceeded 1.2 million, while estimates of Indigenous people had fallen to below 100,000.

Bolivia

The Bolivian rubber boom was markedly different from its Brazilian counterpart because it was dominated by pioneers from Santa Cruz who had established cattle ranches in the Beni during the nineteenth century. These experienced frontiersmen were well positioned to occupy the forests along the Madre de Dios, Mamore and Iténez (Guaporé) rivers. The most successful of these entrepreneurs, Nicolás Suárez Callaú, established a trading post at Cachuela Esperanza near the junction of the Madre de Dios and Mamore rivers, where rapids obligated traders to portage their merchandise through his installations. Although nowhere near the size of Manaus or Iquitos, Cachuela Esperanza was the centre of the Bolivian rubber trade, with a radiotelegraph, cinema, state-of-the-art hospital, machine shops and, of course, warehouses to store rubber, which in Bolivia is called goma. Suárez also owned steamships, which he used to transport his merchandise and people both above and below the rapids that characterise this section of the Rio Madeira.

By 1912, the Casa Suárez controlled about 60% of Bolivian rubber production and had opened offices in London and other cities. Including his family’s cattle ranches in the Beni, the enterprise extended over 180,000 square kilometres. Suárez was also a patriotic Bolivian who financed a large portion of the country’s armed forces in the Acre War. Self-interest no doubt drove his determination to protect his monopoly, but, without his intervention, Bolivia probably would have lost most of the present day Department of Pando.

Most of the gomeros employed by the Casa Suárez were internal migrants from the lowland provinces of Bolivia, including Mestizos from the city of Santa Cruz, but also native Moxeños and Chiquitanos drafted from the mission villages established in the previous century. Nicolás Suárez and his brothers used a form of debt slavery similar to the Brazilian system, but the gomeros were part of a subservient patrón-peón system that prevailed in the rural landscapes of Chiquitania and Beni. Since they were part of an established serf-like system, they were also more likely to be accompanied by women, which undoubtedly contributed to their reputation for docility.

Less acculturated natives also were recruited, particularly the Tacana, who were skilled forest guides capable of locating populations of rubber trees. Unsurprisingly, the incursion of outsiders accelerated the decline of Indigenous peoples, especially the Araona, who were estimated to have a population of more than 20,000 in 1900, but today number fewer than a hundred. The Tacana have fared better, although their cultural legacy was changed through intermarriage with migrant workers from the south. Their descendants pursue subsistence livelihoods, but many live in the towns of Riberalta, Rurrenabaque and Guayaramerím. Some work as wildcat miners on dredges exploiting placer gold deposits along the Beni and Madre de Dios rivers.

Peru and Colombia

The Jesuits and their successors were successful in keeping the Brazilian bandeirantes from encroaching into the Maynas province, but the onset of the rubber boom required more forceful action. In 1877, the Peruvian government sent three steamboats to establish a military base at Iquitos and reaffirmed that nation’s control over Maynas, whose territorial sovereignty was disputed by both Ecuador and Colombia. The village evolved into a small city and became a major centre for the trade of caucho, the Peruvian term for natural rubber. Like Manaus, Iquitos boasted opulent hotels and luxury items imported directly from Europe, which catered to Peru’s barones del caucho.

The production of caucho was based on the exploitation of Castilla species rather than Hevea; consequently, it was a much more destructive process, which developed a particularly cruel and exploitive slave-labor system. Because the whole tree was harvested, it produced a larger volume of rubber, which generated phenomenal revenue flows over the short term. The caucheros had no incentive to develop long-term rubber tapping stations. Rather, they sought out populations of Castilla that tended to occur in clumps of several hundred trees. Unsurprisingly, they would exterminate one local population and move on to the next.

The extractive nature of the system also influenced their need for labour. Instead of a docile peon who could be manipulated over years of drudgery, they relied on experienced woodsmen who could identify the Castilla groves and enslaved peons to fell trees and collect the latex. They would migrate with the former and conscript the latter from local Indigenous communities, typically by force, as they needed them. Historians have termed this terrorist slavery, because the caucheros were extraordinarily cruel and treated their peons as an expendable commodity that could be replaced as they expanded into new territories.

The most infamous of the Peruvian rubber barons was Julio César Arana del Águila, known as the Rey del Caucho because he organised a monopoly cartel extending from the Huallaga River to the Putumayo. Arana was ambitious, sophisticated and audacious, as exemplified by his decision to capitalise his enterprise on the London stock exchange as the ‘Peruvian Amazon Company’. Because travel to Iquitos from Lima could take weeks, Maynas was essentially an autonomous region, now known as Loreto, and the central government depended on Arana to project Peruvian sovereignty on frontier lands then disputed by Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador.

As in Brazil, the Ribereña population was unable to supply enough labour to meet the demand for rubber tappers. Arana initially imported labour from Brazil and the Caribbean, but soon elected to prey on the Indigenous nations of the Putumayo, particularly the Huitoto, Ocaina and Bora tribes, which were known for their peaceful (non-warlike) culture. His lieutenants were extraordinarily cruel and committed heinous crimes that today would be considered genocidal, including murder, kidnapping, rape, torture and enslavement. They were accused of exterminating entire villages during alcohol-driven bouts of sadistic entertainment.

Their actions were eventually revealed by an American who had travelled to the Amazon in search of wealth and adventure. Walter Hardenburg fell prey to the machinations of the Peruvian Amazon Company, but managed to escape and publish an exposé in a progressive London newspaper.

The resulting scandal motivated the British government to commission an enquiry under the direction of Roger Casement, a diplomat and civil rights advocate then serving as Consul General in Rio de Janeiro. His report, published in 1911, was corroborated by two Peruvian judges and a French journalist, which forced the House of Commons to investigate the atrocities. Julio César Arana testified in person and denied the allegations – or at least knowledge of the crimes. His employees avoided prosecution by disappearing, while Arana went on to represent Iquitos in the Peruvian Senate.

Like most rubber companies of the epoch, the Peruvian Amazon Company filed for bankruptcy in 1913, but during its two decades of operation it exported over 4,000 tons of rubber valued at about 1.5 million British pounds – an amount that, adjusted for inflation, would equal about US$ 300 million in 2022. Although the Peruvian Amazon experienced an inflow of migrants, the Indigenous inhabitants on the Putumayo were devastated, falling from about 50,000 in 1890 to only 6,000 in 1920, when Colombia and Peru enumerated the inhabitants as they demarcated the boundary between their countries.

The other major Rey del Caucho was Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald López, the son of an Irish immigrant who exploited Castilla populations on the Ucayali and the Madre de Dios rivers. He is famous because he built a railroad across an eleven-kilometer isthmus separating the two watersheds. His goal was to create an export route from the Madre de Dios that avoided the interference of the Bolivians and Brazilians. He drowned at age 35, when one his steamboats capsized while trying to navigate rapids on the upper Urubamba River.

Fitzcarrald exploited Indigenous labor by deploying detribalized Indigenous crews in wilderness areas in the upper Ucayali and Madre de Dios watersheds, where he would entice uncontacted Indigenous groups into clearings and capture them for his slave-fueled enterprise. He enjoyed the collaboration of certain predatory Indigenous chiefs who would raid unsuspecting tribes; those that resisted were massacred. Fitzcarrald’s actions eventually led to the division of the Piro ethnic nation into two tribes: those who were coerced into servitude are now known as the Yine, while those who retreated into the wilderness are the Mashco.

Fitzcarrald’s death opened the Madre de Dios to a Spanish immigrant, Máximo Rodríguez Gonzales, who established a network that bordered, and blocked, the advance of the Bolivian rubber tappers employed by the Casa Suárez. Simultaneously, the Peruvians and Brazilians adjudicated their boundary areas on the upper Purus River, largely to Brazil’s benefit, because long stretches of the river had been occupied by seringueiros tapping the extensive Hevea groves that contributed to Acre’s preeminence in the Amazonian rubber industry.

Banner image: A clan of the so-called “Free Indians of the Ucayali River”, probably Shipibo-Conibo. Credit: Hardeman, 2012.

“A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” is a book by Timothy Killeen and contains the author’s viewpoints and analysis. The second edition was published by The White Horse in 2021, under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).

To read earlier chapters of the book, find Chapter One here, Chapter Two here, Chapter Three here, Chapter Four here and Chapter Five here.