Answer to Question #172834 in Mechanical Engineering for Srinjoy Bhattacharyya

Question

Brazil is rapidly developing into one of the world’s most dynamic economies. As a country it is blessed with great mineral resources, abundant unused farmland, and network of free flowing rivers. But, to achieve its potential, it will need a much-expanded transportation network and considerably expanded electric generation capacity. Much of this expansion will occur in the undeveloped center of the country including the Amazon region. Define the major obstacles to large-scale development and suggest the best technologies to achieve it.

Answer 1

The amazon is “the land of the future,” a French scientist and explorer, Charles de la Condamine, wrote in 1743. Precisely the same words were uttered in 1966 by Arthur Cezar Reis, governor of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. In the intervening two centuries the great Amazon basin, covering around three million square miles, underwent little or no development aside from the rubber boom of 1890–1910. Given this record, some observers believe that the Amazon always will be a sparsely populated land of the future. Others feel that settlement and development of the Amazon Valley is not only feasible but also imperative if South America ever is to become more than an underdeveloped continent.

Lippmann “Heartland” Articles and Aftermath

A prominent supporter of the latter view is Walter Lippmann. After a journey to South America in 1965, Lippmann wrote a series of articles on the continent's “heartland” that awakened this country's interest in the Amazon region. In a syndicated newspaper column of Dec. 14, 1965, he observed that. “While on the maps South America is a continent, in fact it is not merely an underdeveloped but an undeveloped and unopened continent.”

The member countries of Latin America are a string of islands surrounded on one side by the oceans and [on] the other by an un-penetrated wilderness. It is easier and cheaper for these islands to trade with Europe or North America than to trade with one another. …The situation today is as if on this [North American] continent there were two strips of settled life, one along the Pacific West of the Rocky Mountains and the other along the Atlantic East of the Alleghenies—with the whole land between, the great river system of the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio unusable, without roads, railroads, canals, electric power and telecommunication. If in the United States there were mere wilderness between the Rockies and the Alleghenies, there would be no affluent society, there would be no political union, there would be no great industrial system, there would be no base for political stability.

The undeveloped heartland of the South American continent and the fragmentation of the peripheral nations is… the paramount deficiency. Until this central difficulty is made up, the financial and technical aid provided by the Alliance for Progress and the valiant reforms of the governments are …no more than palliatives for the pains of what are in fact sick societies.1

In a subsequent article, Lippmann asserted that “Although the central wilderness is formidable, the technology needed to open it up is well known. It is one in which the United States is especially efficient. The know-how and the machinery and the medicines which are required are far more highly developed than those which were available in the 19th century, when the North American wilderness was conquered.”2

The Lippmann articles attracted special attention in U. S. governmental circles. The late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D N. Y.), after a tour of South America in late 1965, delivered a two-part speech on the Senate floor in May 1966 that echoed Lippmann in part. Kennedy said that South American “capital cities, which may hold one-third or even one-half of their countries' populations, often sit like islands in mid-ocean, cut off by a hostile nature from contact with each other or with the world outside.” The senator emphasized the point by adding: “Between Chile and Argentina rises the great cordillera of the Andes; between the cities of Brazil and those of Venezuela or Peru are the unexplored jungles of the Amazon. …Peru, for example, is a seacoast nation, with an advancing export economy based on maritime products. It is also a mountain nation, a place of scattered inaccessible villages where peasants have never heard of the United States—where even the word ‘Peru’ has no meaning. And it is a nation of Amazon jungle beyond the mountains, a jungle which is no closer to the thoughts of Lima than to the thoughts of Washington or Indianapolis.”

The Lippmann articles (and perhaps the Kennedy speech as well) led the Johnson administration to commission a study on development of the Amazon basin. Although some progress was made on the study, the results and recommendations were not made public. In last autumn's presidential election campaign, Richard M. Nixon said that “If we would assist Latin America with a half a billion dollars and concentrate on building the great highways down the center of that continent to open up the heartland, this would do more in the next 10 years to raise the standard of living in Latin America, than all of the so-called handouts to raise their standard of living would otherwise do.”

Proposal to Build Road on Rim of the Jungle

Construction of one such great highway had been proposed several years earlier by Fernando Belaúnde Terry, a noted architect who was then President of Peru. Belaúnde envisioned a continuous highway running for 3,470 miles along the lower eastern slope of the Andes in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Interconnecting east-west roads would link the Andean highlands to the Amazon forests. The objective of the highway project was to facilitate development and settlement of the forest and to relieve the pressure of expanding population.

A joint commission of the four countries that would be affected by the highway project (called La Carretera [highway] Marginal de la Selva [forest]) hired Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton, a New York City engineering and architectural concern, to prepare a feasibility study. The study was submitted early in 1965. In an accompanying letter, dated Feb. 28, 1965, the concern stated that, “Of the approximately [3,470 miles] of the Carretera between the Colombia-Venezuela border and Santa Cruz in Bolivia, [1,105 miles] of road are either existing or scheduled for early construction, while [1,496 miles] are considered economically feasible at this time.” The remaining 869 miles of Carretera were expected “to gain in feasibility as adjoining areas develop [ed].”

The report itself stated that “The Carretera region will be able to export tropical agricultural products, some processed, to Venezuela and Argentina and, through the ports of these countries, to Europe and North America.”

In turn, the regions served by the Carretera can eventually provide a market for the industries of Venezuela and Argentina. Transportation costs from Venezuela along the relatively level Carretera may well compete as far south as northern Ecuador with transportation costs across the Andes. Similarly, the area of Bolivia's Carretera will develop into a market for Argentina and possibly Brazil. Lumber and other processing industries along the Carretera will use the navigable tributaries of the Amazon System for inexpensive transportation. Eventually, highway extensions of the Carretera will be constructed to supplement the present rail connections from Santa Cruz east to Brazil and south to Argentina. A highway connection to the Trans-Chaco Highway in Paraguay will provide access to the Rio Paraná System. …Eventually, several east-west transcontinental roads will cross the Carretera.

The third, and probably most important, long-range effect of the Carretera will be to provide the means for settling one of the last land reserves in the world, and to promote the continental integration of South America. From this geo-political stand point, the Carretera will be a first major step toward settling the interior of the continent from the west. A closer contact will result among new generations of South Americans whose ancestors have lived only on the periphery of the continent, and who have always been more remote from one another than from Europe. When future progress in agricultural technology makes possible the settlement of the Selva Baja [lower forest or jungle], the economic unity of the continent will be advanced, establishment of an internal and intercontinental market and transportation system will be under way, and a start will have been made on the settlement of the heartland of the continent.3

It was estimated that the 1,496 miles of Carretera considered economically justified would have “a zone of immediate influence” of almost 12.4 million acres, and would accommodate a new population of 1.2 million persons. Increased agricultural production, assuming full development, might aggregate $68 million a year. The cost of constructing the 1,496 miles of road was estimated at $216 million, and the initial cost of settlement and of feeder roads at $106 million.

The 869 miles considered least feasible to develop would provide a zone of influence of 2.9 million acres, supporting a population of 345,000. Agricultural production in this zone might come to $14 million a year, while highway construction costs would approximate $135 million for the Carretera sections and $37 million for settlement and for feeder roads.

Little has been done to implement the Carretera project. Certain segments of the highway and of the interconnecting roads have been built since 1965. But in each case construction has come in response to immediate local need or gain, not in accordance with the broad vision of Belaunde. The Amazon has been relentlessly tearing away the banks on which the Peruvian jungle town of Iquitos stands. A national commission recently completed a geological study that may lead to construction of a new dike to hold back the great brown river.

“Great Lakes” Project: Pro and Con Arguments

The 869 miles considered least feasible to develop would provide a zone of influence of 2.9 million acres, supporting a 695 population of 345,000. Agricultural production in this zone might come to $14 million a year, while highway construction costs would approximate $135 million for the Carretera sections and $37 million for settlement and for feeder roads.

A project even more ambitious than La Carretera was proposed by Robert B. Panero, director of economic development studies at the Hudson Institute, in a report issued early in 1967. “It appears from a series of admittedly preliminary and incomplete studies and exploratory trips….” Panero wrote, “that it should be possible to create a number of artificial ‘Great Lakes’ in the interior of South America through construction of a series of ‘low’ dams (10 to 30 meters above mean river elevation) flooding portions of existing river basins and that such a program might be realized at a practical cost.”4

The massive undertaking envisioned by Panero would involve creation of lakes in six different areas: (1) two dams would create two lakes along the lower Atrato and lower San Juan rivers in northwestern Colombia and thereby provide water passage between the Caribbean and the Pacific; (2) a dam across the Caquetá River at La Araracuara in southern Colombia would provide “electricity, access to ‘new’ lands, a controlled fishing industry, timber products, and a waterway much shorter and more usable than the current river” (3) a dam on the Orinoco and one on the Negro (an Amazon tributary) would create a lake/canal linking the two great river systems; (4) a dam on the Ucayali at Orellana, Peru, would create a north-south waterway and “complement the Carretera Marginal de la Selva project”; (5) a dam connecting the Guapore and Paraguay river systems would create a Buenos Aires-Belém (Brazil) water route through landlocked Bolivia; (6) a dam across the mainstream of the Amazon at Monte Alegre would create the largest lake of all, extending westward for more than 500 miles to the town of Tefe.

Because of the great volume of water carried by the Amazon—around 14 times that carried by the Mississippi—building a dam across the river would be a formidable engineering feat. Assuming it could be done, the cost might run as high as $2 billion to $3 billion, or roughly equal to the cost of building Egypt's Aswan Dam. The benefits, as enumerated by Panero, would be correspondingly great. The electrical power-generating potential “would be enormous,” highlands cut off by swamps and rapids would become accessible, the value of this land “may well more than replace the values of the lands flooded and the known, currently inaccessible riches of the area may be more readily exploited to the benefit of Brazilian society than by any other development alternative.”5

Panero's assumptions have been challenged by natural resource experts familiar with the Amazon basin. The lands flooded by an Amazon dam, they say, would include virtually all of the arable land in the projected great lakes area—the “natural levees” formed by silt from the river, and the rich but poorly drained bottomlands adjacent to the levees. The forest highlands that would become accessible, it is pointed out, consist of leached soils of little or no agricultural value. Moreover, the Amazon dam would, by trapping silt behind it, “starve” the downriver levee and bottomlands. And the timber native to the areas that would be flooded is believed to be much superior in quality to that of the currently inaccessible highlands.

The effect of a great dam on the Amazon's complex ecology—a consideration not mentioned by Panero—could be disastrous. Tom Alexander, an associate editor of Fortune, has listed some of the possibilities:

The new Amazon Sea might, for example, so change the heat-moisture balance at the equator that the world's weather would be markedly influenced. There would certainly be some effect upon the ecology of the Amazon-Paraguay-Orinoco Basin—an area larger than the U. S. Stopping the turbid Amazon's discharge of nutrients to the sea might wipe out the shellfish industry as far north as the U. S. east coast. And one French engineer speculates that the weight of all this additional water at the equator could slow down the rotation of the earth and add three seconds or so to the length of the year.6

Above all, it has been suggested that the Panero plan errs in assuming that improved transportation is the primary need of the Amazon basin. Actually, the Amazon and its major tributaries are navigable for much of their length. Ocean-going vessels can travel as far as Iquitos, Peru, about 2,300 miles from the Atlantic. The Brazilian Amazon's sparse population of five million persons, around one-fifth of whom live in the river towns of Belém, Manaus and Santarém, has no pressing need for better water transportation facilities than those now available. By the same token, power supplies, the fishing industry, and agricultural production generally are adequate for the current population. Improved water transport, it is asserted, will be needed only after agricultural and forestry development result in increased settlement of the region.

Current Incentives to Invest in Amazon Region

The Brazilian government, meanwhile, is attempting to encourage the type of growth in Amazonia that might make the Panero plan more attractive than it is at present. The federal government in 1947 established the Credit Bank of Amazonia with the primary aim of encouraging rubber production. Six years later, it set up the Superintendency of the Plan for Economic Development of Amazonia (S.P.V.E.A.) with a view to fostering economic development of the region through integrated planning.

S.P.V.E.A. suffered from lack of sufficient financial support until the revolution of 1964. In that year the new government of President Humberto Castelo Branco replaced S.P.V.E.A. with the Superintendency for the Development of Amazonia (Sudam), the principal objective of which was to attract new industry to the region.7 To this end, the Brazilian federal government offers generous tax incentives to individuals and businesses electing to invest in the Amazon region. For example, a Brazilian citizen can choose to have up to 50 per cent of his income taxes deposited in the Credit Bank of Amazonia. This money may be used to start a new industry in the region, to be reinvested in an Amazonian industry, or to buy shares in an existing Amazonian business. In addition, businessmen with interests elsewhere in Brazil can obtain tax exemptions on profits from those enterprises if they invest the exempted portion in Amazon projects. By mid-1968, Sudam reported, 135 projects had been approved, most of them in agriculture, lumber, textiles and fibers, food products, minerals, beverages, and vegetable oils. Few of the projects are large, but they represent a total investment of around $196 million.

Additional fiscal incentives apply to the western part of Brazilian Amazonia, which is more remote and less populated than the remainder of the region. Under a decree law of Feb. 28, 1967, a Free Zone of Manaus was established. The Free Zone comprises an area of almost 4,000 square miles, including the city of Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas. Imports and exports in the zone are to be duty-free for 30 years,8 and industrial and agricultural production are to be tax-exempt. Furthermore, profits or dividends derived from shares of enterprises in the western Amazon region are to be exempt from income tax until the end of fiscal year 1992. But such profits or dividends must be invested in or loaned to approved projects in the region. Tax exemptions are granted also to workers, technicians and entrepreneurs in “enterprises considered by Sudam as of interest for the development of the area.”9

A major factor in development of eastern Amazonia is the 1,370-mile-long Belém-to-Brasilia highway, which roughly parallels the Tocantins, a major Amazon tributary. The highway was begun in 1948 and is scheduled to be completely paved by the end of 1969. The Brazilian government estimates that around one million people have settled on lands adjacent to the highway, which is used to transport tropical agricultural products to the south and industrial goods and temperate agricultural products to the north. More than 6 000 additional miles of road are planned for Amazonia, including highways leading north, west and south from Manaus. The western artery would join a portion of La Carretera Marginal de la Selva in Peru.

Known Resources of the Amazon Valley

Discovery and Early Exploration of Amazonia

Discovery of the Amazon is credited to Francisco de Orellana, a Spaniard who fought with Francisco Pizarro during the conquest of Peru. In 1540–41 Orellana accompanied Pizarro on an expedition from Quito to Napo, presumably in search of the mythical golden kingdom of El Dorado. Sent ahead of the main party to obtain provisions, Orellana deserted his charge and continued down the Rio Napo to the Amazon Valley. He reached the Atlantic coast in August 1541. It is widely accepted that the name Amazonas was given to the river by Orellana after a battle with Tapuyas Indians in which he believed that the women of the tribe fought alongside the men.

Orellana's account of his adventures touched off a wave of speculation and adventurism in Europe. New expeditions were mounted to search for El Dorado and for the supposed gold, spices and precious stones of the lower Amazon. Missionaries bent on converting the Indians to Christianity soon followed. By the 18th century, however, it was obvious that the Amazon basin contained no great mineral wealth; at least, none had been discovered. Thus, from that time until the present, exploration of Amazonia has been aimed primarily at learning more about its geographical, geological, zoological and botanical features. These studies prompted interest in the economic possibilities of such natural products as hardwoods, rubber and fruits. With the single exception of rubber, however, none of the Amazon's products has proved commercially exploitable to date on a large scale.

Fantastic Variety of Amazon Flora and Fauna

The vastness of the Amazon basin has always inspired awe, while the profusion of its vegetation and of its animal and aquatic life has fostered the notion that Amazonia contained untapped mineral wealth and unlimited agricultural possibilities. The Amazon is by far the greatest river in the world in terms of volume of water carried. At its mouth, it discharges 3.4 million gallons of water a minute into the Atlantic, or five times the rate of discharge of the Congo and 14 times that of the Mississippi. The volume of water expelled by the Amazon in a single day would cover the entire state of Texas to a depth of more than one inch, the state of New York to a depth of almost six inches, or New Jersey to a depth of three feet. Stated another way, a day's discharge from the Amazon is equivalent to New York City's water consumption for nine years.

Although most of the Amazon River system lies in Brazil, the headwaters are in the Peruvian Andes. The headwaters of various tributaries are situated in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. The gigantic network of waterways comprising the Amazon system includes 18 major rivers and at least 200 important tributaries, not counting thousands of brooks. Seventeen rivers in the system are more than 1.000 miles long and one, the Madeira, flows a distance of 3 000 miles, collecting the outflow of 90 tributaries of its own before joining the mainstream of the Amazon. Altogether, the Amazon system contains 31,000 miles of navigable waters, four-fifths of which are in Brazil.

The Amazon and its tributaries teem with a bewildering variety of aquatic life. Around 1,800 different species of fish have been identified; foremost among the edible varieties are the small delicately flavored tucunaré and the giant pirarucu, which is so large that it is captured by harpoon. Perhaps the best-known fish of the Amazon is the flesh-eating piranha, a school of which can reduce the body of a man or an animal to a skeleton in a matter of minutes. But natives of the region are at least as wary of the candiru, a tiny white catfish that is attracted by the scent of urine and will burrow itself into any opening of the human body.

The variety of land-based life in Amazonia is even greater than that in its waters. Of the more than 22,800 species of plants known in the world, at least 16,619 are found in the Amazon basin. Zoologists estimate that around 1,500 species of birds and 14,712 species of animals are native to the region. Unlike the African plains where the lion is king, the Amazonian jungles contain no dominant or distinctive animal species. The biggest land mammal is the tapir. which at maturity is about the size of a hog. One of the more unusual animals is the capybara; three feet long and weighing around 100 pounds, it is the world's largest rodent.

The trees of Amazonia yield a multitude of commercially valuable products. The cedar group alone numbers at least 125 different species, the best known of which are the yellow, rose, red and aromatic types. Other prized hardwoods in elude the so-called Brazilian teak, satinwood, rosewood, jacaranda, various mahoganies and steelwood. “There are trees whose wood is almost as black as ebony and others red as blood, purple as violets, yellow as gold and white as chalk.”10

Palms and certain other types of trees are a source of vegetable oil, fruits and nuts. The giant Brazil nut tree produces large, meaty nuts encased in coconut-like pods. The fruit of the babassu palm yields a non-drying fatty oil used in making margarine and other edible fat compounds. There are, in addition, trees that give waxes for manufacturing dozens of household and industrial items. Certain Amazonian barks are employed in the tanning of animal skins, the making of phonograph records, artificial flavors, paints, varnishes, inks, shoe dyes, linoleum, soaps and cosmetics. Space satellites often employ oils and resins from the Amazonian forests.

Exploitation of the Amazonian forests is difficult, however, “for almost without exception the various [tree] species, valuable as they are individually, grow in scattered stands.”11 Around 90 per cent of the hardwood species, moreover, are “sinkers”—their wood is so dense that it will not float. Thus, hardwood logs must be attached to palm trunks and towed to the sawmill.

Despite these obstacles, several large lumbering operations have been established in Brazilian Amazonia in recent years. The biggest operator at present is the Companhia Amazonas, a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Statesbased Georgia-Pacific Corp. Georgia-Pacific owns 600,000 acres of Brazilian forest land and produces from it around 235 million square feet of wood veneer a year.

It is estimated that Amazonia will lose between 12 million and 20 million acres of forest to commercial exploitation in the next few years. By law, every tree cut must be replaced by four saplings, but the law is ignored because Brazil has no forestry service to enforce it. As a result, there is some concern that great stretches of the forest may be destroyed forever, with untold effects on the region's ecology. “Practically, the rain forests of the Amazon are not renewable. …Like deposits of coal and oil, these forests are the product of many, many ages. Once they are gone, man will not see their like again. The governments [of the Amazon basin countries] should follow policies that conform to that fact.”12

Relative Infertility of Soils in Amazon Region

It is estimated that Amazonia will lose between 12 million and 20 million acres of forest to commercial exploitation in the next few years. By law, every tree cut must be replaced by four saplings, but the law is ignored because Brazil has no forestry service to enforce it. As a result, there is some concern that great stretches of the forest may be destroyed forever, with untold effects on the region's ecology. “Practically, the rain forests of the Amazon are not renewable. …Like deposits of coal and oil, these forests are the product of many, many ages. Once they are gone, man will not see their 702 like again. The governments [of the Amazon basin countries] should follow policies that conform to that fact.”12

The variety and profusion of vegetation in Amazonia led to the early assumption that the supporting soil was extremely rich. “However, once it was realized that such growth is based largely on a closed nutrient cycle on top of the soil, and in view of the failure of agricultural settlements in the region, this opinion was completely reversed. Indeed, the great majority of the Amazon soils are ‘poor’ in the chemical sense.”13

The primary reason why Amazon soils are low in fertility is that the heavy rainfall in the region has, over thousands of years, leached out virtually all readily soluble minerals. As a result, Amazon waters are among the world's purest. In some places the water has a chemical purity nearly equivalent to that of distilled water and greater than that of tap water in the United States. The trees in the Amazon forests “keep alive merely from the sun, from the excessive rainfall and from their self-made compost piles of leaves, which guard the soil's attenuated supply of nutrients.” If the trees are cleared away, “no useful crop will grow for more than a couple of years on the quickly exhausted soil.”14

Amazon soils, like those in other parts of the world, can be made richer through application of fertilizer. But the high cost of transporting fertilizer over great distances usually more than offsets the gain in crop productivity. Agriculture in Amazonia would be difficult even if the soils were highly fertile.

To establish a clearing in the forest and to maintain it, to raise even a subsistence crop of corn and beans on a small patch of land, requires the full effort of a man. For there is ever the watchful forest at the margins of the field, waiting to smother the alien plant newcomers in leaf and tendril and root, waiting silently but indomitably to erase the tiny ugly scar that man has made, so soon as the chance shall come. In the forest, too, the fungi wait, sources of leaf diseases and bark rot and root mold, sources of witchbroom for cacao and tissue disease for rubber, tiny invisible bodies whose spread can neither be understood nor controlled by a pioneer without a mycological laboratory in his knapsack and a knowledge of techniques that would do credit to a specialist.15

When crops are harvested, there remains the task of taking them to market. This can be a hazardous and time-consuming undertaking, depending on river conditions. Moreover, the price paid for agricultural produce may make the journey less than worthwhile.

Achievements of Japanese Farmers in Amazonia

A bright spot in the generally dim picture of Amazonian agriculture has been provided by the Japanese farmers who have emigrated to Brazil over the past four decades. The first large group of Japanese colonists arrived in Brazil in September 1929 and settled on a 1.2 million-acre concession on the Acará River, 16 hours by boat from Belém. By the following year the colonists were able to bring a crop of tomatoes, radishes and cabbages to the Belém market. The produce, being unfamiliar to natives of the area, rotted on the stands. Even today, Japanese farmers in Amazonia sometimes are called nabo—the Portuguese word for turnip.

Analyzing their failure, the Japanese determined that they should cultivate a crop of little volume, high price, and high demand on the international market. Their first choice was cacao, but it did not thrive. Next they planted black pepper, and the “black diamond” flourished. Despite the high price pepper commands—as much as $600 a ton for black pepper, $850 a ton for white pepper—cultivation is expensive also. Costly chemical fertilizers must be imported from Europe, the United States and Japan. And a fungus usually attacks the pepper vines after around seven years, especially on soils of high acidity. Once infected, the land cannot be planted to pepper again.

Another crop introduced in Amazonia by Japanese colonists is jute, which now accounts for more than one-third of the trade credits of the state of Amazonas. Jute is grown on the alluvial plains of the Amazon and its tributaries and, like pepper, it is a labor-intensive, highly seasonal crop. The trouble is that jute fiber today must compete with plastic fiber, which is more durable. Plastic fiber produced in Brazil remains more expensive than jute fiber, but the cost gap is expected to close within five years.

Hardships and Hazards of Life in Amazon Basin

Amazonia, so conducive to plant, animal and aquatic life, is generally inhospitable to man. The climate is hot and humid the year round and, since most of Amazonia is close to the equator, the days and nights are of almost equal length. The only break in the routine is the coming of the rainy season, which brings more precipitation than the misnamed “dry” season. On the other hand, the climate of Amazonia is no more enervating than the summer climate of many areas of the United States.

A more serious impediment to human settlement of Amazonia is the prevalence of “tropical” diseases.

The fact that hot and moist zones contain not only most of the ailments common to temperate zones but also a series of local diseases is seen as an impossible obstacle to overcome. Leishmaniasis, a tropical ulcer; filariasis, which leads to the monstrous condition known as elephantiasis; onchoerciasis, caused by a larva which burrows into the skin of the scalp; trypanosomiasis, caused by a minute parasite which enters the bloodstream and even the tissues; and fogo selvagem, a ringworm infection which quickly covers the entire body, are certainly horrible enough. Such exotic diseases, however, have limited distributions, and only rarely …do they have an incidence high enough to form a serious barrier to the health of a total population. The most widespread and deadly of the “tropical diseases” is malaria, although its distribution is not strictly tropical.16

Malaria is spread by the anopheles mosquito, which abounds in certain areas of Amazonia. It and other insects—of which more than 15,000 varieties, ranging from tiny aphids to giant butterflies, have been identified—have been called “the real ‘owners’ of the Amazon.”17 In many ways, ants and termites constitute the primary insect problem in Amazonia. Most of the 5,000 species of predatory ants in the world may be found there.

The most destructive ant of the Amazon region is the large, black saiiva, millions of which join to form a single colony. Salivas can and will devastate gardens, strip trees of their leaves and bark, and destroy clothes by eating the starch. Another feared variety of ant is the saca-saia, which also lives in large colonies. From time to time, saca-saia colonies emigrate. They then march through the jungle by the billions, eating everything in their path. The noise of their approach can be heard days in advance. People and animals along the route of march have no choice but to move elsewhere.

Still another problem associated with living in the tropics is dietary in nature. High temperatures seem to call for greater Vitamin-B requirements, especially thiamin, panto-thenic acid, and pyridone. But foods which are important sources of these substances, such as lean pork, have been found to contain only half as much Vitamin B in the tropics as in temperate zones. Thus the difficulty seems to be twofold: more Vitamin B is needed and foods contain less of it in the tropics than elsewhere. These physiological difficulties appear to result in a retardation of growth and in slower sexual maturity.

Bleak Outlook for Amazon Development

Failure to develop the Amazon Valley, despite sporadic efforts to do so, has not dimmed the enthusiasm of Brazilians or of other peoples about the area. On the contrary, the fact that the region constitutes perhaps the last habitable frontier in the world has only served to whet the interest of explorers and would-be entrepreneurs. Whether the region can be exploited for the benefit of mankind without destroying its delicate ecological balance is a question yet to be answered.

Rise and Collapse of Amazon Rubber Culture

Still another problem associated with living in the tropics is dietary in nature. High temperatures seem to call for 705 greater Vitamin-B requirements, especially thiamin, panto-thenic acid, and pyridone. But foods which are important sources of these substances, such as lean pork, have been found to contain only half as much Vitamin B in the tropics as in temperate zones. Thus the difficulty seems to be twofold: more Vitamin B is needed and foods contain less of it in the tropics than elsewhere. These physiological difficulties appear to result in a retardation of growth and in slower sexual maturity.

Hevea Brasiliensis, the Brazilian rubber tree, was responsible for the one great economic boom that the Amazon region has known up to the present time. Until Charles Good-year's discovery in 1839 that rubber could be made useful by vulcanization,18 the sticky substance derived from the latex of Hevea Brasiliensis had been largely a curiosity. The Indians of the Amazon had long been familiar with it and used it for waterproofing and to make primitive playthings (they still do). Vulcanization created a demand for rubber shoes, boots, raincoats and hot-water bottles. And since rubber trees then grew only in Amazonia, Brazil had a monopoly on production of the raw material.

The trouble was—and still is—that rubber trees in the Amazon, like other varieties of trees in the region, did not grow in unmixed stands. They are scattered through the forest, so that a great number of tappers or seringueiros must be employed to extract the latex. The seringueiro has to clear a path from one tree to another, and tending the hundred or so trees on the route is an all-day job. Collection of rubber in Amazonia thus has always been time-consuming and wasteful of labor.

The first rubber tappers employed by the patrãos were Indians. But the Indian was not sturdy enough to withstand the monotony of regular employment, the physical hardships of rubber gathering, or the brutality of what amounted to forced labor. Schemes to import labor from Europe, Japan and the United States failed. Then, in 1879, an exceptionally severe drought struck the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceara. Faced with starvation, thousands of Cearenses emigrated to the Amazon and became rubber workers.

Rubber production had been increasing steadily since 1850, but the great boom did not begin until the bicycle craze swept Europe and the United States around 1890.19 Orders began to pour into Brazil for rubber to make bicycle tires. In the following two decades, production of rubber and the price of rubber soared. The sleepy jungle village of Manaus, center of the boom, became a prosperous city. The famous Manaus opera house and the city's custom house, imported stone by stone from Europe, were built during this period.

Even at its height, however, the Amazonian rubber boom was fated to collapse. An Englishman, Henry Wickham, had smuggled 70 000 Hevea Brasiliens is seeds out of Brazil in 1876 and delivered them to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, London. Two thousand of the resulting seedlings were transported to Ceylon; others were shipped to Singapore. The trees thrived in their new environment, even when set out in great plantations. A single Ceylonese tapper could attend to 2,000 trees on a four-day rotation basis. In contrast, an Amazonian tapper ordinarily could attend to no more than 400 in the same period. The cost of producing a ton of rubber in Asia was 50 per cent less than in Amazonia.

In 1910, the Amazon produced 38,177 tons of rubber while all of Asia produced only 8,200 tons. The Brazilians asked—and got—$102.20 a ton. The Asians asked only $79. The next year, 1911, proved to be the best and last year of the Amazon boom. Brazil sold 44,296 tons of rubber. But the Asians also increased their production and kept on doing so. By 1914 Asia was selling 71,000 tons of rubber and the Brazilians only 37,000. Even in the World War I year of 1918, when demand for rubber was high, Amazonia produced only 30,700 tons as compared with 256,000 tons for Asia.

The lower production costs made possible by the plantation system priced Amazonian rubber out of the world market. Henry Ford therefore decided in the mid-1920s to start a rubber plantation in Brazil. He selected 2.5 million acres of land on the Tapajós River, downstream from Santarem, and built the town of Fordlandia. In 1934, nearly 1.4 million young rubber trees were selected from Philippine plantations and transported to Fordlandia. The trees were descended from the seeds smuggled by Wickham, but vastly improved by selective breeding. But the trees died, would not grow, or matured slowly. The primary reason for their poor showing was a leaf disease peculiar to Amazonia. It spread quickly because the trees were planted close together.

Ford built a second plantation, called Belterra, and the trees planted there did better than those at Fordl$aCndia. The Ford plantations proved a timely, though not extensive, source of rubber for the United States when supplies were extremely short during World War II.20 But the development of synthetic rubber, and the lower-priced plantation rubber from Asia, prevented any resumption of the Amazon boom. In 1946, the Ford Motor Co. sold its plantations to Brazil for $250,000, around $15 million less than they had cost to develop.

Sporadic American Interest in Amazon Valley

Henry Ford was not the first American to become intrigued by the possibilities of the Amazon. In 1867, some 60 years before the building of Fordlandia, a group of 70 Confederate veterans of the Civil War emigrated to Brazilian Amazonia rather than face life under Reconstruction. They were eagerly welcomed by Emperor Dom Pedro II, who believed that North American ingenuity would facilitate development of the Amazon.

The Americans, however, found life difficult. Such familiar vegetables as corn, sweet potatoes and black-eyed peas refused to grow in the leached tropical soil. The newcomers did not know Portuguese, and they often were repelled by local customs. In the end, many returned to the United States. But some remained, and today such names as Riker, Vaughn and Mendenhall may be found in Santarém.

Brazilians now are much less receptive to American offers to help develop the Amazon. The Panero “Great Lakes” plan, which received little attention in the United States, aroused a storm of criticism in Brazil. Stories circulated that the United States planned to take over the Amazon Valley and ship Negro militants there; that it planned to colonize the region in the event of nuclear war; that it envisioned the Amazon, after flooding, as a submarine base; and that American planes were already smuggling uranium from the area. Such speculation is indicative in some degree of anti-Americanism; but” it also reflects Brazilian awareness of the potential value of the Amazon and a determination to develop it under Brazilian auspices.

Decline of Region's Indigenous Indian Population

Even the relatively small amount of development that has taken place in the Amazon region so far has had a disastrous effect on the indigenous Indian population. Early explorers and adventurers, including Orellana and his party, killed numerous Indians. Many more Indians died from diseases introduced by Europeans, such as measles and influenza. In 1884, it was estimated that the remnants of Indian tribes in Brazilian Amazonia numbered 3,000 persons. Today fewer than a thousand survive; some tribes, such as the Yawalapiti and Trumai, number fewer than 30.

In a belated effort to keep the Indian tribes from dying out altogether, the Brazilian government has set aside the 8,500-square-mile Xingú National Park as a refuge for indigenous people. Although the various tribes living in the park seem to get along well together, their future well-being is by no means assured. Indians living in the jungle are nomadic, moving to new village sites when their agricultural land is exhausted. The Indian population of Amazonia is believed to have been rather small even before the white man came to South America. Thus, the relative crowding of even so large an area as an 8,500-square-mile park may prove deleterious. And the fact that the Indian tribes have remained small and scattered over thousands of years may mean that Amazonia is basically hostile to human habitation.

Footnotes

[1] Walter Lippmann, “Today and Tomorrow,” Dec. 14, 1965.

[2] Walter Lippmann, “Today and Tomorrow,” Dec. 16, 1965. A third Lippmann article appeared in Newsweek, Jan. 3, 1966.

[3] Comisión Conjunta de Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador y Peru, La Carretera Marginal de la Selva (estudio preliminar), 1965, pp. 27–28.

[4] Robert B. Panero, A South American ‘Great Lakes’ System, March 27, 1967, pp. 3–4.

[5] Ibid., pp. 23, 25.

[6] Tom Alexander, “A Wild Plan for South America's Wilds,” Fortune, December 1967, p. 149.

[7] Amazonia consists of the states of Aere, Amazonas and Pará; the northern parts of the states of Goiás and Mato Grosso; and the territories of Amapá, Rondônia and Roraima.

[8] The does not apply, however, to arms and ammunition, perfumes, tobacco, alcoholic beverages and passenger cars.

[9] Brazilian Embassy (Washington, D. C), The Amazon Region, November 1968, p. 9.

[10] David St. Clair, The Mighty, Mighty Amazon (1968), p. 8.

[11] Caryl P. Haskins, The Amazon (1943), p. 121.

[12] Henry S. Kernan, “Forest or Field in the Amazon Basin,” Yale Review, Summer 1968, p. 572.

[13] W. G. Sombroek, Amazon Soils (1966), p. 7.

[14] William and Paul Paddock, Hungry Nations (1964), p. 37.

[15] Caryl P. Haskins, op. cit., p. 107.

[16] Charles Wagley, Amazon Town (1953), pp. 11–12.

[17] David St. Clair, op. cit., p. 14.

[18] In January 1839, Goodyear cooked a mixture of rubber, white lead and sulphur on his kitchen stove and discovered that the resulting product remained pliable. Untreated rubber softens in warm weather and stiffens in cold weather

[19] A Scotsman, John Boyd Dunlop, invented the pneumatic tire in 1888

[20] See “Rubber Supplies and Replacements,” E.R.R., 1942 Vol. II, pp. 87–88.