In Amazonia (36 page)

11
. Mary Poovey,
A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 9. Also, Lorraine Daston, “Baconian Facts, Academic Civility, and the Prehistory of Objectivity,”
Annals of Scholarship
8, nos. 3–4 (1991): 337–64.

12
. Daston and Park,
Wonders
, 159.

13
. Benjamin,
The Arcades Project
, 205.

14
. Ibid., 206.

15
. Walter Benjamin,
Illuminations
, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Fontana, 1973), 60.

16
. “The fundamental level of ideology … is not of an illusion masking the real state of things, but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuring our social reality itself.” Slavoj Žižek,
The Sublime Object of Ideology
(London: Verso, 1989), 33. For helpful and concrete discussion, see Bill Maurer, “Uncanny Exchanges: The Possibilities and Failures of ‘Making Change' with Alternative
Monetary Forms,”
Environment and Planning ‘D': Society and Space
, forthcoming.

C
HAPTER
2

1
. Mao Zedong, “Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?” in
Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung
(Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1971), 502–4, 502. Mao's use of the term “correct” may perhaps best be placed “under erasure”—that is, recognized here, to adapt Stuart Hall's gloss on Derrida, as “an idea which cannot be thought in the old way, but without which certain key questions cannot be thought at all.” Stuart Hall, “Introduction: Who Needs Identity?” in
Questions of Identity
, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996), 1–17, 2.

2
. Alfred Russel Wallace,
A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley
(London: Reeve, 1853). Page references are from the pocket reprint edition of 1911 published in London by Ward Lock.

3
. Darwin to Bates, December 3, 1861, in Robert M. Stecher, “The Darwin–Bates Letters: Correspondence Between Two Nineteenth-Century Travellers and Naturalists,”
Annals of Science
25, no. 1 (1969): 1–47, and 25, no. 2 (1969): 95–125: [letter 14], 20. Under economic and career advancement pressures to travel again, Wallace finally made his name in Southeast Asia, returning to England to write his great
The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan, and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1869).

4
. All Wallace's and Darwin's biographers discuss the muted rivalry over the theory of natural selection. Wallace, it seems clear, was unwilling to force a confrontation over the issue. This is generally explained by reference to his unassuming personality. But it is also apparent that Wallace was a man cursed with the gift of plain speaking and was quite willing to court controversy where principles he considered important were at stake—as, for instance, in his highly public wager with John Hampden over the flatness of the earth in 1870 and his testimony as a defense witness at the celebrated London trial of the North American spirit medium Henry Slade in 1876. Neither of these episodes improved his stock with scientific luminaries like Joseph Hooker. With regard to natural selection, it seems likely that personal diffidence was bolstered by a realistic appraisal of his chances of emerging unscathed from a confrontation with Darwin and his powerful sponsors, as well as by an assessment of the damage that such a dispute would inflict on the difficult project of popularizing heretical ideas on evolution. Nevertheless, Wallace's irregular views on spiritism and vaccination, his outspoken socialist politics, and his prickly inability to negotiate the social quagmire of scientific patronage all contributed to a chronic inability to land a scientific post. There is as yet no major biography of Wallace. For useful material, see Amabel Williams-Ellis,
Darwin's Moon: A Biography of
Alfred Russel Wallace
(London: Blackie, 1966); Harry Clements,
Alfred Russel Wallace: Biologist and Social Reformer
(London: Hutchinson, 1983); and Wilma George,
Biologist Philosopher: A Study of the Life and Writings of Alfred Russel Wallace
(London: Abelard-Schuman, 1964). Consistently interesting is Wallace's detailed and readable
My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions
, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1905).

5
. See Ralph Colp Jr., “‘I Will Gladly Do My Best.' How Charles Darwin Obtained a Civil List Pension for Alfred Russel Wallace,”
Isis
83 (1992): 3–26; Wallace,
My Life
, II, 394–95; and Stecher, “The Darwin-Bates Letters,” [letters 97–99], 123–24.

6
. Wallace,
Travels
, 37.

7
. Henry Walter Bates,
The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel
, unabridged ed. (London: John Murray, 1892), 58.

8
. Ignácio Baptista de Moura,
De Belém a São João do Araguaia, Vale do Rio Tocantins
(Belém: Fundação Cultural do Pará Tancredo Neves/Secretaria de Estado da Cultura, 1989 [1910]). As I discuss in
Chapter 5
, Bates and Wallace were also drawn to egalitarian politics. However, in Brazil, their radicalism was undercut by colonial allegiances.

9
. Eladio Lobato,
Caminho de canoa pequena: História do município de Igarapé-Miri
, 2nd ed. (Belém: Imprensa Oficial, 1985), 64–70. Moura,
De Belém a São João do Araguaia
, 41, also draws attention to the lack of wage labor in the Amazon as a contributory factor in this decline.

10
. Manoel Buarque,
Tocantins e Araguaya
(Belém: Imprensa Oficial do Estado do Pará, 1919).

11
. Ibid., 4.
Negro
, which I have translated as “nigger,” was also a standard synonym for “slave.”

12
. See S. D. Anderson, “Engenhos na várzea: uma analise do declinio de uma sistema de produção tradicional na Amazônia,” in
Amazônia: A fronteira agrícola 20 anos depois
, org. Philippe Lenna and Adelia Engracia de Oliveira (Belém: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi/ORSTOM, 1991), 114–26.

13
. Buarque,
Tocantins e Araguaya
, 4.

14
. I take this phrase from Líbero Luxardo,
Marajó: Terra anfíbia
(Belém: Grafisa, 1977).

15
. Márcio Souza,
Mad Maria
, trans. Thomas Colchie (New York: Avon Books, 1985); Henry M. Tomlinson,
The Sea and the Jungle
(London: Duckworth, 1912); Werner Herzog,
Fitzcarraldo
(1982); Les Blank,
Burden of Dreams
(1982).

16
. Buarque,
Tocantins e Araguaya
, 4.

17
. Lobato,
Caminho de canoa pequena
, 132–33.

18
. Leopold H. Myers,
The Clio
(London: Robin Clark, 1990), 93.

19
. Ibid., 133.

20
. Ibid., 126–27.

21
. Others went to the towns of Sant'Ana do Mutuacá (which became Vila Nova de Mazagão), Sant'Ana do Cajary, and the now-extinct Vila Vistosa de
Madre de Deus, all in today's Amapá. See João da Palma Muniz, “Limites municipais do estado do Pará,”
Annaes da bibliotheca e archivo publico do Pará
, tomo IX (Belém: Imprensa de Alfredo Augusto Silva, 1916), 383–515; Maria de Fátima P. da Silva,
Assunto: Vila de Mazagão Velho
, mimeograph (Macapá: Universidade Federal do Amapá, 1992); and Roberta Marx Delson,
New Towns for Colonial Brazil
(Ann Arbor: UMI, 1979).

22
. For a more detailed discussion of aviamento, see
Chapter 7
below. For descriptions of aviamento during the rubber period, see,
inter alia
, Arthur Cézar Ferreira Reis,
O seringal e o seringueiro
, documentário da vida rural, no. 5 (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Agricultura, 1953); Roberto Santos,
História Econômica da Amazônia (1800–1920)
(São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz, 1980); Barbara Weinstein,
The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850–1920
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983).

23
. Lobato,
Caminho de canoa pequena
, 127.

24
. Ibid., 133.

25
. Ibid., 126–27.

26
. D. G. McGrath, F. de Castro, C. Futemma, B. D. do Amaral, and J. Calabria, “Fisheries and the Evolution of Resource Management on the Lower Amazon Floodplain,”
Human Ecology
21, no. 2 (1993): 167–95; Janete Gentil, “A juta na agricultura de várzea na área de Santarém-Médio Amazonas,”
Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi: Série Antropologia
4, no. 2 (1988): 118–99.

27
. João Murça Pires and Ghillean T. Prance, “The Vegetation Types of the Brazilian Amazon,” in
Key Environments: Amazonia
, ed. Ghillean T. Prance and Thomas E. Lovejoy (London: Pergamon, 1985), 109–45. These authors closely follow the earlier definitive typology of Prance, “Notes on the Typology of Amazonia III. The Terminology of Amazonian Forest Types Subject to Inundation,”
Brittonia
31, no. 1 (1979): 26–38. For a discussion of the confusion surrounding floodplain classification, see Janet M. Chernela, “Managing Rivers of Hunger: The Tukano of Brazil,” in
Resource Management in Amazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies
, ed. Darrell A. Posey and William Balée (New York: New York Botanical Garden, 1989), 238–48.

28
. Harald Sioli, “Tropical Rivers as Expressions of Their Terrestrial Environments,” in
Tropical Ecological Systems: Trends in Terrestrial and Aquatic Research
, ed. Frank B. Golley and Ernesto Medina (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1975), 275–88.

29
. Harald Sioli, “The Amazon and Its Main Affluents: Hydrography, Morphology of the River Courses, and River Types,” in
The Amazon: Limnology and Landscape Ecology of a Mighty Tropical River and Its Basin
, ed. Harald Sioli (Dordrecht: Dr. W. Junk, 1984), 127–65; Wolfgang J. Junk and Karin Furch, “The Physical and Chemical Properties of Amazonian Waters,” in Prance and Lovejoy,
Key Environments
, 3–17.

30
. Junk and Furch, “Physical and Chemical Properties,” 15. Other authors have pointed out that lower fluvial productivity is not absolute and is subject to increase through management. See Chernela, “Managing Rivers of Hunger”; Oliver T. Coomes, “Blackwater Rivers, Adaptation, and Environmental
Heterogeneity in Amazonia,”
American Anthropologist
94, no. 3 (1992): 698–701.

31
. Curt Nimuendajú, “Os Tapajo,”
Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi
10 (1949): 93–106.

32
. See Joseph M. McCann, “‘Extinct' Cultures and Persistent Landscapes of the Lower Tapajos Region, Brazilian Amazonia,” paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Association of American Geographers, New York, February 27–March 3, 2000. For comments on modern uses of
terra preta
, see Nigel J. H. Smith, “Anthrosols and Human Carrying Capacity in the Amazon,”
Annals of the American Association of Geographers
70 (1980): 553–66; William I. Woods and Joseph M. McCann, “The Anthropogenic Origin and Persistence of Amazonian Dark Earths,”
Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers Yearbook
25 (1999): 7–14.

33
. Bates,
Naturalist
, 254.

34
. Sioli, “Tropical Rivers,” 278.

35
. Another common term is
varação
.

36
. Vicente Chermont de Miranda,
Glossário Paraense ou coleção de vocábulos peculiares á Amazônia e especialmente á Ilha do Marajó
(Belém: Universidade Federal do Pará, 1968).

37
. William Henry Hudson,
Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest
(New York: Random House, 1944), 33–34.

38
. Chermont de Miranda,
Glossário Paraense
, 74–75.

39
. Paulo Jacob's
Dicionário da língua popular da Amazônia
(Rio de Janeiro: Liv. Ed. Cátedra, 1985) is a valuable recent work that covers similar ground.

40
. V. N. Vološinov,
Marxism and the Philosophy of Language
, trans. Ladislav Matejka and Irwin R. Titunik (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 79–80.

41
. Ibid., 80.

42
. See Arun Agrawal, “Dismantling the Divide Between Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge,”
Development and Change
26, no. 3 (1995): 413–39.

43
.
Varadouro
is a word widely used for terrestrial trails in the western Amazon. See Susanna Hecht's excellent translation of the great Brazilian essayist, Euclides da Cunha (from his collection
Um paraíso perdido: Ensaios, estudos e pronunciamentos sobre a Amazônia
, ed. Leandro Tocantins, 2nd ed. [Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1994]). Da Cunha writes: “The
varadouro
, a legacy of the heroic Paulista, is today shared by the people in Amazonas, Bolivia, Peru. It is the path, the short cut which goes from one fluvial slope to the next. At first tortuous and short, suffocating, down in the forest thickness, the
varadouro
reflected the indecisive steps of an emerging vacillating society which abandoned the comforting laps of the rivers, and chose instead to walk for itself…. Taking to the trails, man in fact is not submissive. He is an insurgent against affectionate and treacherous nature which enriches and kills him” (in Susanna B. Hecht and Alexander Cockburn,
The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon
[London: Penguin, 1989], 303–4).