Susanna B. Hecht. The Scramble for the Amazon and the “Lost Paradise” of Euclides da Cunha

Abstract

The Amazonian region long remained a no-man's-land between the imperial ambitions of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Mapmakers and diplomats in Lisbon or Madrid might include the region in their cartographic adventures and imperial dreams, but in truth the difficulties of travel, communication, settlement, and control in the region long deterred or delayed occupation. Spanish explorers penetrated the region in the 1540s, and some gold-mining towns briefly flourished in the tropical borders of the region, but when the gold played out and indigenous resistance continued, these encampments and towns were mostly abandoned to the encroaching forest. It took the Portuguese a century before they began effective settlement of Amazonia, expelling a French colonization attempt in 1612, establishing the city of Belem at the mouth of the river in 1616, and creating the region as a separate state in 1621. The Portuguese destroyed competing French, Irish, and Dutch trade forts or settlements, but even then Portuguese colonists were few, and their control remained limited to the banks of the main stream and a few principal tributaries. The region remained remote, a backwater in which governmental control was weak and a few ruthless settlers sometimes exercised virtually unlimited power, at least until the Jesuits began to conduct an extensive missionary effort in the region. By the eighteenth century, contemporaries spoke of “Portuguese America” or “the Brazils,” because in many ways the state of Maranhão (and later Grão Pará e Maranhão) was distinct from Brazil: communication from Belem was easier with Lisbon than with Rio de Janeiro; the struggle between missionaries and colonists to control or exploit the indigenous population was chronologically a century later than in the rest of Brazil, and so too was the introduction of African slaves and the development of a plantation sector. By the late eighteenth century, the Marquis of Pombal made the region a key part of his attempts at economic reform, promoting African slavery, destroying the Jesuit missions, and emphasizing the export of cacao and various forest products. Despite these efforts, Amazonia remained in many ways a world apart, with its own chronology, its own pace of life, a heavily indigenous or caboclo (mixed race) culture, and a distinctive cuisine. Even today, restaurants in São Paulo and Rio that serve regional Pará specialties of exotic fish, fruits, and game underline the distinctive nature of Amazonia.