The Amazon rubber cycle or boom (, ; , ) was an important part of the socioeconomic history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, contributing to the commercialization of rubber and the genocide of region's indigenous peoples.
Centered in the Amazon Basin, the boom resulted in a large expansion of colonization in the area, attracting immigrant workers and causing cultural and social transformations. Crimes against humanity were committed against local indigenous societies, including slavery, rape, torture. The thorough destruction of multiple indigenous cultures has been described as amounting to genocide.
It encouraged the growth of cities such as Manaus and Belém, capitals within the respective Brazilian states of Amazonas and Pará, among many other cities throughout the region like Itacoatiara, Rio Branco, Eirunepé, Marabá, Cruzeiro do Sul and Altamira; as well as the expansion of Iquitos in Peru, Cobija in Bolivia and Leticia in Colombia. The first rubber boom and genocides occurred largely between 1879 and 1912. There was heightened rubber production and associated activities again from 1942 to 1945 during the Second World War.
Background
Natural rubber is an elastomer, also known as tree gum, India rubber, and caoutchouc, which comes from the rubber tree in tropical regions. The South American natives first discovered rubber; sometime dating back to 1600 BC. The indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest developed ways to extract rubber from the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis), a member of the family Euphorbiaceae. Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to bring news of this odd substance back to Europe, but he was not the only one to report it. Around 1736, a French astronomer recalled how Amerindians used rubber to waterproof shoes and cloaks. He brought several samples of rubber back to France. Rubber was used as an eraser by the British scientist Joseph Priestley, with "rubber" entering English parlance as a substitute for the term "eraser".
A white liquid called latex is extracted from the stem of the rubber tree, and contains rubber particles dispersed in an aqueous serum. The rubber, which constitutes about 35% of the latex, is chemically cis-1,4-polyisoprene ((C5H8)n). Latex is practically a neutral substance, with a pH of 7.0 to 7.2 (similar to pure water). However, when it is exposed to the air for 12 — 24 hours, its pH falls and it spontaneously coagulates to form a solid mass of rubber. Rubber produced in this fashion has disadvantages. For example, exposure to air causes it to mix with various materials, which is perceptible and can cause rot, as well as a temperature-dependent stickiness.
It was not until the 1800s that practical uses of rubber were developed and the demand for rubber began. In 1803 rubber factory open in Paris, France which made rubber garters for women. However, the material still had disadvantages: at room temperature, it was sticky. At higher temperatures, the rubber became softer and stickier as well as odorous, while at lower temperatures it became hard and rigid. In 1839, Charles Goodyear discovered a process of vulcanization, and the industrial demand for rubber subsequently became greater. Goodyear's vulcanization method involved mixing rubber with sulphur at high temperatures, resulting in a product that was "radically metamorphosized and could stand extreme extremes of heat or cold without melting or cracking."
Effects on indigenous population
The rubber boom and the associated need for a large workforce had a significant negative effect on the indigenous population across Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. As rubber plantations grew, labor shortages increased. The owners of the plantations or rubber barons were rich, but those who collected the rubber made very little as a large amount of rubber was needed to be profitable. The rubber barons rounded up all the natives and forced them to tap rubber out of the trees. One plantation started with 50,000 natives but, when discovered, only 8,000 were still alive. Slavery and systematic brutality were widespread, and in some areas, 90% of the native population was wiped out. These rubber plantations were part of the Brazilian rubber market, which declined as rubber plantations in Southeast Asia became more effective.Why do they hide?, Survival International:
Rubber had catastrophic effects in parts of Upper Amazonia, but its impact should not be exaggerated nor extrapolated to the whole region. The Putumayo genocide was a particularly horrific case. Many nearby rubber regions were not ruled by physical violence, but by the voluntary compliance implicit in patron-peon relations. Some native peoples chose not to participate in the rubber business and stayed away from the main rivers. Because tappers worked in near complete isolation, they were not burdened by overseers and timetables. In Brazil (and probably elsewhere) tappers could, and did, adulterate rubber cargoes, by adding sand and flour to the rubber "balls", before sending them downriver. Flight into the thicket was a successful survival strategy and, because natives were engaged in credit relations, it was a relatively common practice to vanish and work for other patrons, leaving debts unpaid.
Peru and the Putumayo genocide
Reports of enslavement and barbaric crimes perpetrated by rubber merchants on the Ucayali and Marañón Rivers first came to the attention of the Peruvian government in 1903 and 1906: these crimes were witnessed and reported by Catholic missionaries as well as several men employed by the Peruvian government. While writing in 1907, Charles R. Enock claimed that the Peruvian Government had, for a long time, been aware of the brutal exploitation of indigenous people by rubber merchants and collectors. Several government reports and articles written on this subject, both by travelers and government officials, were published prior to 1908. Enock stated that since the beginning of rubber exploitation in the Peruvian Amazon, authorities were aware of the sale of indigenous people in Iquitos and else where, as well as the constant trafficking of indigenous women. Hildebrando Fuentes, the prefect of Loreto between 1904 and 1906, described the practice of Correrias, or slave raids in a report to his government. Fuentes noted that many of the indigenous people in Peru were being killed during these correrias and in writing he referred to these raids as "the great crime of the mountain". These raids also managed to capture many indigenous people, which were then trafficked to Iquitos or nearby rubber camps. According to Fuentes, indigenous people were being sold at Iquitos for prices ranging between £30-£50 and the majority of the indigenous population in Iquitos consisted of people captured during the correrias.
Anthropologist Søren Hvalkof stated that the correrias after native peoples were common in all areas of the Ucayali River and affected all of the indigenous groups in that area. The displacement and decimation of Conibo and Yine natives on the Ucayali and Urubamba River eventually led to the Asháninka demographic becoming the largest indigenous group in that region. Some native groups agreed to accept "advances" of supplies that rubber firms offered, in exchange these natives would extract rubber for the firms, and in this way many natives became indebted to these firms. In other cases indigenous groups were obliged through violence and or coercion to accept these "advances" of goods, therein becoming indebted. Natives along the Ucayali and Urubamba that did not agree to extract rubber were often targeted by slave raids. By 1891, most of the Piro natives along the Urubamba River were indebted to the Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald.
Slave raids into the Peruvian side of the Madre de Dios River and its tributary the Manú River began around 1894. This was largely due to the development of the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald. Hundreds of natives from the Toyeri and Araseri ethnic groups were massacred around that time because they would either not allow the rubber patrons to pass through their lands, or they would not agree to extract rubber for these patrons. Most of the Mashco-Piro demographic was slaughtered in 1894. Some of the surviving Mashco-Piro, Toyeri and Araseri natives were pressured into fleeing from their ancestral territory. An unknown number of their villages were destroyed and this region was never subjected to a systematic inquiry or investigation so the full extent of the devastation caused by the rubber boom in this area may never be known.
Anthropologist Stefano Varese noted that the Peruvian rubber patrons employed two labor systems, one of these systems was referred to as enganche [por deudas], or hooking by debt. Enganche was typically employed with Mestizo workers, Varese wrote that the debt was "an eternal debt that the worker would never be able to repay." The second system of labor was used against indigenous people and entailed "simply enslaving" a large number of young indigenous men and women and then relocating them from their homeland. One of the intentions of this forced relocation was to cultivate submission in the enslaved indigenous population. In certain areas of the Peruvian Amazon, correrías primarily captured women and children while men were eliminated. Jorge Von Hassel wrote that this was because: "they would never form as malleable a workforce as the children, who were more easily and fully assimilated". Elderly indigenous individuals were typically killed because they were unable to easily adapt to the new circumstances brought on by forced migrations and therefore they were viewed as disruptive elements. In 1905, Hassel wrote in an official report to the Peruvian government that the industry of collecting "‘black gold,’ as the rubber is termed" had produced "[m]arked changes" among the indigenous tribes of the Peruvian Amazon. "Some of them have accepted the ‘civilisation’ offered by the rubber-merchants, others have been annihilated by them. On the other hand, alcohol, rifle bullets, and smallpox have worked havoc among them in a few years."
One of the most atrocious cases of abuses during the first rubber boom, culminated in the Putumayo genocide. From the 1870s until the mid-1910s Colombians and Peruvians enslaved and exploited the indigenous population of the Putumayo River. During the rubber boom, the border of Colombia and Peru was located along the Putumayo River. Between the Andoques, Boras, and Huitoto populations over 40,000+ natives were wiped out for rubber profits. Slave raids were a common practice where many were killed or captured. Many of the natives died from starvation, which was used as a punishment against them at times. The worst perpetrators of this genocide include the rubber baron Julio César Arana and the staff of his Peruvian Amazon Company. By 1908, Arana and his staff were effectively the controllers of a significant portion of the Putumayo River basin, maintaining around 40 estates there which were dedicated to rubber extraction. The managers of these estates imposed a quota onto the natives: and failing to meet that quota could have resulted in flagellation, dismemberment, or execution on the spot.