To the children of this land
thou art a gentle mother,
beloved homeland,
Brazil!
-- Brazilian national anthem
The reporter was in Sena Madureira looking for material about the Seringal Oriental, a rubber tree laden forest in the upper Purus River region, that played a very important role in the second great Amazonian rubber-boom and was suddenly abandoned in the 1970s.
That morning, went to a large supply store in the city. He was talking about his project with the gerente (manager) when he interrupted him, pointing to a lady who had just entered: “Look Sir, you’re lucky! Dona Áurea (Lady Áurea) lives there. She can help you.” He introduced himself, but the woman did seem interested. She appeared more distrustful than timid – as if wondering why he would be so interested in her.
Standing in front of the reporter was a thin woman with a strong body and few words, appearing about 70 years of age (later, he found that she was 65), and a menino (young child) of hers about 12 years old. She was dressed in a worn but clean dress and flipflops. The child’s bare feet appeared strong (accustomed to much walking), as did its arms and torso.
The two’s discomfort for “the big city” was evident. The experienced reporter, however, did not give up. He patiently watched Dona Áurea do her shopping and when she finished, he tried again: “So, Dona Áurea, you live in the Seringal Oriental?”
“Oh no, I don’t live there. I used to live there, at the time before it was leveled by a derrubada monstra (lit. a monstrous clear-cut). They said that they had authorization to cut down more than 100,000 hectacres. So I left. Now I live at the colocação (settlement) called Santa Teresa in the Seringal (rubber-tree laden forest) of Santa Helena.
“And how was the derrubada that you saw?” added the reporter.
Dona Áurea did not look at him. Her eyes seemed focused on some point far beyond him. She said nothing for a while, and then continued, ignoring the question. “At Santa Helena where I live, there are a lot of onças (jaguars). I also like to pray a lot.”
This was not the time to push the matter. So the reporter changed the subject for a moment. “Would you like to live here?”
“Ave Maria, I prefer to stay in the mata (forest). I say the same thing to my relatives who live in Sena, deixa de ser besta (don’t be stupid, lit. don't be a beast), it’s better to live in the mata than here. I come here, only once a year to pick up my aposentadoria (pension) and to buy supplies and that is all.
She comes to the city, rarely “because in the summer the river is very low and there are many pau (logs) in the river, so it’s very hard to travel by canoe.” She also explained that she buys batteries for the whole year (Dona Áurea does not go without a radio. It’s her contact with the world).
She begins to leave. She tells the reporter that she has a hen, six or seven pigs almost all of them belonging to her neto (grandson) Atos – the menino who’s with her – six head of gado (cattle), two cows, six sheep and nine or ten goats. “My macaquinho (monkey) disappeared. There are a lot of onças (jaguars) and gatos maracajás (smaller Amazonian wild cats). The onças come bem pertinho (very close); there’s plenty of fish and game. Every night I say my prayers.”
That was the second time that she mentioned her faith. So the reporter asked, “what’s religion for you, senhora?”
“I think that religion is a good thing for us. Jesus is a someone who’s very good for us. Everything that people ask him for, he gives us. When people come and don’t have something God always dá um jeito (makes it happen). Nothing’s difficult for God.” (For people who come to visit, what’s missing is generally food to offer them).
“Dona Áurea, are you happy?” risks the reporter.
“I consider myself happy, and I’m healthy. So I’m happy, and I’m happy because I’m not lacking in anything.”
“And what is your greatest wish?”
Her answer is firm: “That God give me good health, and to see my children healthy, to see my whole family healthy. There at the cabeceira (headwaters) of the river, it’s filled with fish. All one needs to do is to put out a malhadeira (net) to catch them. People do so from their canoes and catch a lot of fish. There no one prays much – I don’t want to exalt myself or to brag – I just want to say that I like to pray there. Over there, there’s only one other believer, but when he goes to Mass, he fica de cabeça baixa (keeps his head low).
Dona Áurea’s religiosity is surprising.
“Sehnora, you’re buying the pilhas (batteries) for the radio? At night, when there’s no light, you listen to the radio. Is that it?” the reporter wanted to know. “Oh no, the people light an oil lantern and tell stories before going to bed.”
Dona Áurea Leopoldo Cabral, a widow, has six children. She lives with a son, two daughters and six grandchildren. The colocação (settlement) where this senior lives is close to the border with Peru in the upper part of the Caeté River a tributary of the Iaco River, which in turn flows into the Purus. There are more than 300 rubber trees there. “One walks for four hours, tapping the seingueira (rubber trees) and then for another four collecting seringa (the rubber latex which flows out of the trees). One then has to let the trees rest for tw days. However, the price of rubber is very low, and it almost doesn’t pay to work. People also collect castanha (chestnuts).
Once again, her eyes get lost in memories, as she talks about herself, “From Santa Helena and above there is no priest, only mata ... one time I came to Sena Madureira de canoa remando (by canoe, paddling). I spent seven days going from home to here. By batelão (a typical Amazonian river-boat) it’s only three days to return.”
She stopped for a moment, pensive. Brusquely, she lowered her tone and in closing, said: “Listen sir, excuse me, but I have to go.”
“Some more about the Seringal Oriental...?”, asks the reporter.
“I don’t talk about that. Lembrança ruim (bad memories).”
The reporter accompanies Dona Áurea and her grandson to the door in silence, impressed with the woman’s physical and spiritual strength. He waits for the batelão to leave and then stays on the cais (wharf) fascinated, eyes glued to the boat until it disappeared behind a curve in the river.
He headed back to the hotel, content. He now had a story about the Seringal Oriental and more.
Rubber and the Rubber Tappers
The seringueira (rubber-tree, hevea brasiliensis) is native to Amazonia, where the extraction of its rubber had two great booms. The first took place during the period between 1880 and 1915. It was a golden, storied time with ties to many large European companies. At that time, Manaus rivaled Rio de Janeiro in both culture and elegance. (The reader should note here that at roughly the same time, rich North American mining towns like Central City, Colorado; Tombstone, Arizona; and Carson City, Nevada competed with New York City for opera singers!) The second boom, both shorter and more painful, took place during the Second World War in the 1940s. During both these periods, the forest was fed by thousands upon thousands of nordestinos (people from northeastern part of Brazil) in the first case by refugees fleeing the great drought that struck the region around Ceará in 1877, and in the second by people pressed into service to make rubber for the war effort.
At war’s end in 1945, the rubber business returned to stagnation. In the 1970s, under the slogan “integrar para não entregar” (“integrate so as not to lose”), the federal government encouraged a new kind of occupation of the Amazon through great mining, logging, agribusiness projects supported by international financing and tax incentives. That was when the invasion by the “paulistas” (financiers from São Paulo) occurred, who were attracted by the economic boom predicted for the region and did not hesitate invest in it with their capital. Arriving with them came an innumerable number of grileiros (robber barons) and speculators, doing what they do best: saquear e devastar (pillage and destroy).
The result could not be different, the historian Marcus Vinícius Neves reported, “With the conversion of the Banco da Borracha (The Rubber Bank) to the Banco da Amazônia (The Bank of the Amazon) and the courting of new sources of financing, many rubber businesses failed and were sold for very low prices. Their lands were converted for agropecuária (agribusiness) ... This whole change in the Brazilian amazonian economy took place over the backs of the weakest people living in the region: the traditional populations of the forest. Repeatedly, índios (indians, native amazonians), seringueiros (rubber tappers), ribeirinhos (river dwellers), and other colonos (settlers) saw their lands invaded and devastated in the name of a new kind of progress that transformed the forest into wasteland.”
As we write, Brazil’s Justiça (judiciary / Justice Department) gives the donos (proprietors) of the Seringal Oriental Forest the dubious right to cut 50,000 hectacres of trees in a “sustainable manner.”
In their struggle, the amazônidas (amazonian residents) don’t ask for favors, only for understanding.
Both the Indians and the colonos (settlers) need our help in the larger conflict. The forest is being destroyed – the mata is being cleared, rains are diminishing, the rivers are drying, the ecosystem is being altered, the fish and game are disappearing and its inhabitants are being expelled from land where they’ve always lived and which was once their country, and those of their grandparents and great grandparents as far as memory can go.
In this fight, they need all the help that they can get, because it’s an unequal fight, against forces that don’t consider the consecuences of their cupidez (greed). These forces are armed. They intimidate, they attack, they subordinate.
And they kill.
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