HISTORY OF MADRE DE DIOS

(taken from Historia de la Region by Mario Cabregos and Where the Andes meet the Amazon by Kim Macquarrie)

Starting from the very beginning.

A surge of groups of humans entered South America and, more specifically, the Amazon at the end of the Pleistocene Age (more than 20,000 years BP). There were, in general, two types of cultures that evolved, based on the ecology of the environment. Terre firme forests are poor, relatively speaking, in natural resources (for hunting, fishing and collecting) and the soil erodes quickly, making agriculture difficult. Varzea (flooded) forests are very rich in the above mentioned resources, which are renewed by cyclical inundation. Those living in Terre firme forests, which is the bulk of the Madre de Dios area, formed small groups and were nomadic with a mainly hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Those living in Varzea forest practiced intensive agriculture and had advanced social development, living in groups of thousands of individuals.

The Incas.
The Inca Empire, at its height, was 4800km (3000 miles) long and divided into 4 sections. The Incan name of the eastern slope of the Andes, as well as the people living in the jungle (including Ese-eja), were Anti or Antis. It is thought that various Incas had origins in the jungle, and that they taught the Incas to chew coca. The Incas would descend the eastern slope of the Andes to extract gold and trade various goods with jungle tribes; such as honey, feathers, rubber, wood and live animals. Incidentally, Tambopata is a Quechua word Tambo is a supply depot. Because the Inca Empire was so large, each region was connected by roads and along these roads were tambos. Pata means a higher elevation area. The Ese-eja name for the Tambopata river is Bahuaja.

Colonial Time.
The jungles of Madre de Dios were the focus of several Spanish expeditions looking for gold. The first expedition was in 1538. Most expeditions resulted in death, either by natives or other Spanish competitors. In the 1600s, Spanish conquistadors found gold beds and coca fields of the Incas and began to exploit them. Of course, this produced hostility between the Spanish and the indigenous people.

Catholic Missionaries.
From Colonial to modern times, the number of missionaries entering the area has been innumerable. Missionaries opened up routes and established means of communication, which often included radio. They were often the first to contact tribes, learn their language, and serve as protection from other tribes of white men. They established towns, uniting nomadic Indian tribes and establishing hospitals, sanitary systems and schools. Of course, not all of their efforts were easily accepted. For example in May of 1926, a Spanish missionary, friar Manuel Garcia, was killed by Ese Eja natives a two days canoe trip up the La Torre river.

Explorers.

Explorers came to the area for various reasons. Cinchona (Cascarilla) was found in the Inambari and Tambopata river basins and extracted from these areas in the 1850s. In 1847, the French scientist Algernon Weddell visited the region and discovered an area in the southeastern edge of modern Bahuaje Sonene Park that was rich in a species of Cinchona that yielded high levels of quinine. The English government then sent Clements Markham in 1859 to the area to find these stands of Cinchona. The most famous expedition of the time, however, was that of Colonel Faustino Maldonado. In 1861, he and his crew left from Cuzco to travel all of Madre de Dios and later the Beni, until it meets the Medeira river. 200km short of their destination, Maldonado and others died. The survivors arrived to Manaus with the cascarilla that they had collected. Puerto Maldonado is named after this expeditions leader. There were also various official gold expeditions, in which the Peruvian state hoped to find the funds to pay off debts. One of the first non indigenous to explore the lower Tambopata area was Colonel Percy Fawcett in 1910. He descended the Tambopata on a balsa wood raft. He reached the Madre de Dios and later Heath River in the search for lost cities.

Rubber Boom..
Rubber had always been used by locals in the area. The seeds were eaten and the latex was used for various waterproof objects. However, it wasnt until vulcanization was discovered by Goodyear in 1839 and the growth of the auto industry grew that the demand for rubber skyrocketed. The jungles of South America were the only source of rubber in the world. There are two types of rubber that can be produced from the jungle. One, called caucho, is of less quality and comes from Castilloa elastica and C. Ulei. In order to extract this rubber, one must cut the tree. This was the first type of rubber made in the area, but was quickly replaced by Hevea brasiliensis, called Shiringa. The rubber is extracted by tapping the tree while it is still alive. The rubber tappers would have 150 to 200 trees that would be tapped every two days. There would be a central area, from which these trees could be accessed, where the tappers and managers resided. In order to get labour, a slave trade of indigenous jungle people was organized. The rubber boom on the Tambopata came later than in other areas of South America. The Inca Rubber Co., a North American company, improved and extended a road that went from the Tambopata valley to the river at Astillero, which is now the limit between the Puno and Madre de Dios departments. Therefore, from 1908 rubber from Madre de Dios could be deposited upriver at Astillero, go by road to Tirapata and from there by train to Arequipa and then be shipped to North America. This road allowed a twenty fold increase in rubber exportation out of the Madre de Dios. In 1876, Henry Wickham from Britain, managed to successfully bring the seeds of Hevea to London. Less than 3000 of the 7000 seeds germinated, and the plants were sent to a British plantation in Southeast Asia. Today, we receive 90% of the natural rubber from this area. Obviously, tapping rubber from plantations and being able to plant only strains with the highest yield, is much more profitable than the tapping in South America. By 1912 the rubber boom in South America dwindled. The only small relapse in the rubber boom came during the Second World War, when Japan stopped exportation of rubber from Asia to the West. The United States was therefore forced to import rubber again from South America.

After the rubber boom: Castana, Gold and Petroleum.

At the end of the rubber boom, this area became one of the most isolated territories of Peru. The natives that survived the rubber boom, were often hostile and distrustful. Those that stayed in the area, began to collect Brazil nuts (castanas) as a means of livelihood. Now Puerto Maldonado is an important centre of Brazil nut processing and exporting. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people are currently involved in either the collection, transportation, packaging or some other aspect of Brazil nut production in the Madre de Dios department. There are currently about 1,200 Brazil nut concessions in operation. At the same time, other resources were exploited, such as animal skins of Caiman, Giant otters, White-lipped and Collared peccaries, Ocelets and Jaguars. At the end of the 1970s, gold and petroleum became the attraction of Tambopata. The road from Cuzco to Puerto Maldonado was finished in 1965, connecting Puerto to the rest of the country and making immigration much easier. The population of Puerto Maldonado multiplied by ten in the 1970s. Also, in 1974 the first lodge in the area was built, Explorers Inn. This site, the junction of the Tambopata and the La Torre, is the same site as an old Inca Rubber Company post and the same river where a Spanish missionary had been killed.

Protected Areas and Oil Exploration.

The first protected area here was the 5,500 hectare Tambopata Reserve Zone surrounding Explorers Inn. After an incredible amount of research and conservation work, the Peruvian government was persuaded to create a larger protected area. In July of 1996, President Fujimori created the 500,000 hectare Bahuaja-Sonene National Park surrounded by the 1.1. million hectare Tambopata Candamo National Reserve. Unfortunately, shortly after the creation of the National Park and Reserve, the government issued an oil exploration concession to the U.S. oil company: Exxon-Mobil. The concession was located in a proposed area of the Park that had yet to be declared protected. This, of course, sparked an outrage from the conservationists because oil exploration opens up wild areas and has tremendous impacts on flora, fauna and local people. Finally, in September of 2000, Fujimori doubled the size of the park to include the area that had been explored for oil, and elevated the status of 200,000 hectares of National Reserve to National Park and created a 265,515 hectare buffer zone. In total, there is approximately 1.5 million hectares of land with protected status.