Lost city of the Amazon
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Jorge Sotirios
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In every book I ever read
Of travels on the Equator
A plague mysterious and dread
Imperils the narrator
– Hillaire Belloc
I didn't know quite what to expect of Santarem, but its waterfront emblazoned its unique history better than any book. Firestone, Goodyear and Dunlop were totem poles lining its shore. Each took turns to zap mosquitoes with a sizzling tzing. Tube upon tube of the Michelin man glowed with such energy that all the rolls of neon fat around his stomach seemed an indictment of his electrical diet.
The captain of Leao IV pointed the prow towards the blue cathedral, manoeuvring his vessel to the mouth of the harbour with the same agility he showed moving a cigarette between his teeth. Passengers aboard awoke according to their needs. The elderly sprang up to breathe fresh air; teenagers scowled at parents and refused to budge from their hammocks. The journey had taken a full day since leaving the port of Manaus. I stood at the railing that morning and rubbed sleep from my eyes.
These global brands on the shore of the middle Amazon are now soulless corporations underpinning capitalism. Yet it was not long ago that these overbearing names so prevalent in light industrial areas had very human features. Two centuries ago, Harvey Firestone, Charles Goodyear, John Dunlop and brothers Andre and Edmund Michelin were young men whose ambitions challenged nature and whose inventions changed the world.
In 1839, Charles Goodyear invented vulcanisation, the process that gave elasticity to natural rubber (to avoid deformity in warm temperatures or fragility in cold). By 1888, John Dunlop had developed the pneumatic tyre; later the Michelins created the first detachable tyre which was used successfully in the 1895 Paris to Bordeaux rally. Along with Henry Ford, these industrial pioneers transformed everyday life. Gone were the horse and buggies clip-clopping down Caballococha's streets that I imagined upriver. But who could have guessed that the tracks of the automotive industry originated in the Amazon jungle?
Rubber was extracted from the Brazilian weeping tree, hevea brasiliensis, just as Amazonian Indians had scratched the bark to ‘weep' latex into a bowl. The trees' resilience in resisting termites and other insects made this possible. When the milky white resin hardened in the sun, its durability meant rubber could not only carry vehicles over asphalt, but continue to outfit the wheels revolving on space shuttles.
Yet the neon totems on the Santarem waterfront signal victory over nature and nation as well. It was, after all, in Santarem that the first act of bio-piracy occurred. Henry Wickham arrived in 1874, a plucky twenty-eight-year-old who gained the confidence of Indian traders, then promptly stole seventy thousand seeds and hid them in banana leaves before sending them to London's Kew Gardens. Within decades, British and Dutch colonies in Malaya began to outstrip Brazil with rubber trees that grew faster, produced higher yields, and had easier access to markets. More importantly, the dreaded South American leaf blight hadn't made it to Asia.
By 1912, the value of Amazonian rubber had fallen so dramatically that rubber barons no longer served their horses French champagne chilled in buckets, let alone themselves. That wedding cake building highlighting the nexus of money to culture – the Amazon Opera House – was left to rot in Manaus, the perfect symbol of the collapse of the ‘white gold' revered by the white man. It's little wonder that Brazilian history books depict Henry Wickham as a criminal. Lord Elgin of the Amazon, no less.