Copyright by Jessica Carey-Webb 2018
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Copyright by Jessica Carey-Webb 2018 The Dissertation Committee for Jessica Carey-Webb Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Rubber Boom Narratives and the Development of the Amazon Committee: Lorraine Leu, Supervisor Kelly McDonough Gabriela Polit Seth Garfield Rubber Boom Narratives and the Development of the Amazon by Jessica Ann Carey-Webb Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 Dedication To my dad for his limitless advice and positivity. To Nate, for being my rock and best friend. To my mom for her kindness. Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to Dr. Lorraine Leu for her edits, patience, and invaluable guidance. Without her help and editing skills this dissertation would not exist (and also be full of the passive voice). She has been an amazing advisor, advocate, and pillar of support, and I have felt incredibly lucky to have her in my corner. I am also grateful to the rest of my committee, Dr. Kelly McDonough, Dr. Gabriela Polit, Dr. Seth Garfield for their availability, willingness to jump on board, and overall support and encouragement. I am thankful for the support of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Fath Fellowship, which generously awarded me two years of funded graduate study, as well as the Tinker foundation for funding a summer of research in the Brazilian Amazon. Finally, thank you to my colleagues and friends at the University of Texas, particularly Catalina Iannone and Sarah Nicholus, for their commissary, coffee shop work sessions, and ability to let loose. v Rubber Boom Narratives and the Development of the Amazon Jessica Ann Carey-Webb, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2018 Supervisor: Lorraine Leu This dissertation examines how race and gender inform structures of imperialism in the Amazon during a period of heightened national and international attention from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Representations of the Amazon at this crucial period both during and later depicting the rubber boom, are full of ambiguities between civilized and savage, center and periphery, nature and culture. The Amazon emerges as a distinct region, a natural paradise devoid of civilization and in need of preservation, a place of promising riches, and/or a blank screen on which to project western ideas of progress. The material I consider includes natural histories, travelogues, biography, fiction, photographs, and film. These texts represent many different genres and all aim to define, categorize, represent, or collect Amazonian territories and peoples in ways that transform territory to establish modern national societies, economies, and authorities. At the heart of this study is the project of modernization, the coming into being of modern nation states and citizens participating in global and national capitalist economies with all of the gains and losses this process implies. Modernity is built out of power and conflict and depends not only on economic and political processes, but also on ways of knowing, understanding, and being. These diverse and complex documents, the knowledge they vi created about landscapes and people, and the way that they inscribe relations of power and ideas about economic, cultural, and national development worked to establish the contemporary Amazon. I look at the layered discursive and visual languages that produce the Amazon as a space of conflict representative of anxieties about modernization. vii Table of Contents Table of Contents ................................................................................................. viii List of Figures ..........................................................................................................x Introduction: Rubber Boom Narratives and the Development of the Amazon .......1 Hierarchies of Power: Imperialism, Modernity, and Developmental Frontiers ......................................................................................10 Interpreting the Landscape: Ecocriticism and Inscriptions of Utopia .16 Violence, Race, and Visuality ..............................................................21 Overview of Chapters ..........................................................................25 Chapter One: Gendered Politics of Empire: The Female Explorateur and Natural Histories of the Amazon Basin 1899-1901 ...................................................31 Framing Imperial Practices ..................................................................38 Transition from –trice to –teur .............................................................41 Mapping Virgin Landscapes ................................................................61 Conclusion ...........................................................................................67 Chapter Two: Wandering Wildernesses: Race and Nation Building on the Rio Roosevelt .......................................................................................................70 Rubber Boom Frontiers ........................................................................74 A Wilderness Wanderer and an Accomplished Frontiersman .............79 Encountering and Staging Otherness ...................................................92 Wilderness Mapping, Development, and Masculine Environments ..105 Conclusion .........................................................................................114 Chapter Three: A Novice Traveler in a Land Without History: Race, the Environment, and Building the Brazilian Amazon .....................................116 Grandeza, Race, and Brazil ...............................................................125 The Amazon: Land without History ..................................................129 The Novice Traveler with a Camera in Hand ....................................141 Conclusion .........................................................................................158 viii Chapter Four: The Geopolitics of Plants: Posthumanism and El abrazo de la serpiente .....................................................................................................................160 Plants and Posthumanism ..................................................................165 Theodore Koch-Grunberg, Richard Evans Schultes, and a Plant-based Cosmovision .............................................................................174 Time, Knowledge, and Space ............................................................184 Biocontact Zones and Reading the Environment ...............................189 Materiality, Preservation, and the Elusive Yakruna ...........................197 Conclusion .........................................................................................208 Chapter Five: Conclusion: Towards a Popular Geographical Knowledge of the Amazon .......................................................................................................212 Bibliography ........................................................................................................224 Vita.... ...................................................................................................................242 ix List of Figures Figure 1.1: Octavie and Henri Coudreau before their expedition on the Trombetas River. .................................................................................................41 Figure 1.2: Octavie the explorateur. ......................................................................46 Figure 1.3: Pianocotô Indians. ...............................................................................52 Figure 1.4: Pianocotô man in his canoe. ................................................................53 Figure 1.5: “My guide Guillermo”. ........................................................................54 Figure 1.6: Figena, a mocambeira woman. ............................................................57 Figure 1.7: Indigenous tribes of the Trombetas Basin. ..........................................63 Figure 1.8: Map of the Rio Cuminá. ......................................................................66 Figure 2.1: Photograph from the inside cover of Through the Brazilian Wilderness. ...........................................................................................................83 Figure 2.2: 1913 photograph of Rondon with Paresi Indians by Major Thomaz. .87 Figure 2.3: Roosevelt and Rondon meeting a “party of Nhambiquaras, very friendly and sociable and very glad to see Colonel Rondon.” ........................99 Figure 2.4: “Colonel Roosevelt with his first jaguar”. .........................................106 Figure 2.5: From left to right: George Cherrie, Lieutenant Lyra, Dr. Cajazeira, Theodore Roosevelt, Cândido Rondon, Kermit Roosevelt.. ...........108 Figure 2.6: Still of map from River of Doubt. ......................................................110 Figure 3.1: Mário on board the S. Salvador. ........................................................146 Figure 3.2: Bom-Futuro bonita. ...........................................................................149 Figure 3.3: Margem do Solimões. ........................................................................152 Figure 3.4: Tapuias de Parantins – junho 1927. ...................................................154 Image 4.1: Young Karakamate as captured by Theo’s camera.