In Search of the Amazon. Brazil, the United States and the Nature of a Region - by Garfield, Seth

Abstract

Garfield, Seth (2013) In Search of the Amazon. Brazil, the United States and the Nature of a Region, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), xi + 368 pp. £71.00 hbk, £17.99 pbk. During the Estado Novo (1937–1945) the Brazilian authorities discovered the Amazon as a region that could, and maybe should, be incorporated in Brazilian development. This required a concerted effort to change its image from a ‘tropical inferno’ into a world of opportunities. To this end the government used the new media, from literature to radio and movies. Under the Vargas government the Amazon became a metonym of Brazil's natural treasures, ‘a region teeming with untold economic potential’. After the War started, this new imagery came to be connected to the need for primary resources of the allied powers, and especially the US need for a secure supply of rubber. When the Japanese forces invaded the Malayan peninsula in May 1942, the USA lost access to more than 90 percent of its rubber supply. The Amazon seemed to be the obvious region to replace this production region and between the two governments a concerted effort developed to increase Amazon rubber production. Due to the gathering methods of the seringueiros this was not an easy task and the conclusion that we can draw from Garfield's book is that this effort failed miserably. This is, however, not the core theme of his book. Rather Garfield sets out to understand how different perceptions of nature and society in the Amazon came about and changed due to these different (geo)political projects. The book starts with two chapters describing first the origins of the ‘estado novo’ project and then the changing US perceptions under the influence of their rubber dependency. These are rich texts that show how strongly the search of the Amazon was taken place in the context of, and determined by global transformations. Then the attention shifts to the issue of labour, which was indispensable for the development of the Amazon rubber production. The chapter delves into the social history of rubber tapping nicely showing how traditional practices were confronted by the new modernist ambitions of policy makers. The latter were convinced that the traditional, ‘inert’ rubber tapper had to be replaced by a modern and reliable worker who would be able to provide a steady amount of rubber. These ideas connected to the Vargas-regime's insistence on formalising labour (trabalhismo). The new rubber tapper should be soldiers, soldados da borracha [rubber soldiers], in the fight for Amazon development and war against Nazism. Part of the solution for finding this new working force was migration. The Brazilian government actively stimulated inhabitants from the dry and crisis-infested Northeastern provinces, especially Ceará, to migrate to the rubber producing areas in the Amazon. Ceará experienced a terrible drought in 1941 and 1942 and the desperate population was offered a solution in the rubber sector. This migration is the topic of Chapter 4, which may well be the most interesting one of the book, because it shows the contradictory effects of international pressures and national policies geared towards both more efficient production and the construction of a national identity. These goals were mixed with clear ambitions to ‘civilise’ the working poor. Garfield points at the repressive and authoritarian dynamics of these ambitions, but also emphasises that this migration was a genuine effort to implement social policies by the Vargas government. At the same time he stresses that, especially for the adolescents, migration also offered a way out of misery and paternalist control. The last chapter explicitly looks at US involvement in the Amazon and the contradictory images created in the process. The rubber soldiers were never really capable of providing enough rubber for the USA and with the end of the War they were left behind without any more support or attention. The book ends with an epilogue that analyses the imagery around the Amazon in the remainder of the twentieth century when environmental themes like deforestation and global warming took pride of place and replaced the focus on social and cultural improvement of the workers. It connects to the book's focus on imageries of the Amazon but for the rest does not connect very clearly to the previous chapters. This is an extremely rich and well-researched historical study that will be a benchmark for Amazon history for a long time. The focus on the international events playing out in a region that has often be portrayed as isolated is illuminating. A drawback may be that the last chapters show less coherence and seem to be more determined by the sources than the focus on the competing imageries of the region. This lack of focus is also reflected in the title which in many ways does not do justice to the rewarding historical analysis of the book.