Koolasuchus

In the decades around 1900 the Amazon region in south America saw one of the worst exploitations and genocides of indigenous peoples since the time of initial conquest. It was caused by the rubber boom, the commercial extraction and selling of the sap from rubber trees which was done in many places by using indigenous slave labour. The natives where caught, sold and forced to work in the most unhuman conditions. Also the women and children were raped, molested, sold to brothels and tortured in bestialic ways. Many times the families of workers (slaves) who ran away and hide were tortured to try to get them to reveal where their husbands and fathers where.

Some researchers have tried to estimate the loss of indigneous lives in connection with the grisly enterprise. One such number is 250 000 for Peru and Brazil together (according to R.J. Rummel).

In Lars Persson "The Doomed Indians" some figures are given about losses during and after the rubber boom: the Huitoto people in Peru decreased from 50 000 to 7000 between 1900 and 1912. Round 1940 they were 3600 and 1938 the number of huitoto speaking people was around 1500.

The Bora were 15 000 in 1910, but 500 round 1940. In a list of Native languages (made by Castelvi) many from these regions are marked by a cross meaning exctinct, exterminated by Casa Arana y CIA (the Arana brothers was among the worst of the so called "rubber barons").

In Bolivia the brothers Suarez were among the leading in the rubber business. Their enterprise may have cost 70% of the natives, in the areas affected by their influnce, their lives, among them nearly the entire Karipuna people.

For those who want to read about some of the horrors during this period there is this account: Hardenberg, W. E. 1912: Putumayo, The Devils Paradise. It documents some of the atrocities during the rubber boom. Hardenburg actually whitnessed some of these with his own eyes.

Unfortunately many others, local officials, missionaries and others also saw what happened but did never voice any protests, perhaps out of fear for the mighty rubber barons.

One can notice that there were rubber booms in both the Amazon region in South America and in Kongo at roughly the same time. In Kongo the worst atrocities were done during the days of Belgian king Leopold II:s Kongo freestate, 1886 -1908. The estimated death toll because of these atrocities against the kongolesians is around 8 - 10 million people.

In both these cases one man wrote reports that made visible the cruelties to the populations. It was Roger Casement (1864-1916), who wrote his reports on Kongo in 1904 and on Peruvian Amazon in 1911. The report about Peru is also included in Hardenbergs book about Putumayo.

After the air went out of the rubber boom after the first world war, other products have become more and more sought after, whos extraction are being a threat to the indigenous peoples. Today logging, mining after gold and other metals and minerals, land use for farming and ranching, and the exploitation of oil resources are threatening indigenous peoples in the Amazon region.

Edenite

Sadly, this is a trend seen throughout most of the colonial era, and pre-ww2.

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In fact, corporations took over the role causing horrid exploitations, especially in Africa. This is however performed by the locals, recieving great profits in the black markets through the use of intermediaries. A simple, but telling example can be noted in the film "Blood Diamond".

Richard Stanbery

And if my intermittant memory serves me, I seem to remember that this "rubber craze" led certain governments in that region to start calculating the $$$ that was going to magically come in. And so, some silly spending ensued.

Perhaps some of the silliest items to mind is the purchase of two battleships for these nations that were totally unwarranted as anything but expensive flag poles. One being the battleship Minas Gerais, and the other being the Sao Paulo.

These pre-WWI era battleships were laid down and sold by the Vickers company, if I remember. But the use of these ships, and lack of maintenece led them to early dissrepair. I think the only times that thier guns were fired in anger was probably against thier own people, during one of the many coups.

Overall, those monies would have been better spent on helping build infastructures and orphanages.

Silly spending craze on meglomanic tendancies.