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The principal source of rubber (liquid
latex) is the 'Hevea brasiliensis', a tree that
grew wild in the Amazon basin. Before the plantation system
developed, rubber was tapped by indigenous people from
wild trees in the jungle.
As rubber became more valuable at the beginning of the
20th century, due to industrialisation and motorisation,
the demand increased.
In Colombia, Peru and Brazil, unscrupulous traders used
violence and slavery to extract the
"white gold" from their plantations and the forests.
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La vorágine (The Vortex) by José Eustasio
Rivera
''Why
does the entire jungle not roar and squash us like
reptiles, as punishment for the vile exploitation…I
have been a rubber tapper, I am a rubber tapper!
And what my hand has done against trees it can do
against men.''
La vorágine by José
Eustasio Rivera |
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"La
vorágine is a novel of 1924, it uses old-fashioned
language, by our standards nowadays. It is the story of
a man who leaves Bogotá and goes into the jungle and learns
about the way rubber is exploited, and, of course, Indians,
and the people who work there - the way they are exploited
by the rubber companies."
Professor
Erna von der Walde, New York University
The violence of the rubber trade
is recreated in La vorágine. One of its characters,
Ramiro Estevánez, tells of the atrocities committed by
one ruthless speculator, Colonel Funes, who orchestrated
the death of over 600 Indians in what was later remembered
as the Massacre of San Fernando de Atabapo.
"All
those rivers witnessed the death of the rubber tappers,
that Funes killed on the 8th of May of 1913…
And don't think that when I say 'Funes' I am naming
a single person. Funes is a system, a state of the
soul, it is the thirst for gold, it is sordid envy.
Many are Funes, although only one man bears the
fateful name."
La
vorágine by José Eustasio Rivera
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"Although
there is a strain of Zola-esque writing, ''je denonce'',
I denounce the social evils, in this literature these
authors are also writing novels.
"La vorágine is a great example of a poet
who runs away from the city, with a woman who gets pregnant,
and slowly, in this appalling relationship he has with
this woman, he starts discovering his own country. Not
simply discovering what is happening in the Heart of Darkness
- in the Conradian sense - but 'what is my country'.
When he's in the jungle he finds the lawlessness very
shocking, (yet) he wants to take part in it. Has an affair
with one of the great Cacique women of the jungle. It
still has a different function to the equivalent novels
in Europe; that is to alert people to raise their consciousness."
Professor Jason Wilson, University
College London |
BBC
Mundo |
BBC
Brasil |
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