Ecological Visions of Development
By Liam Charles Cohen
For almost five centuries, the Brazilian Amazon’s socially constructed image has been in constant flux. In the first decade of the 20th century, Brazilian intellectuals designated the Amazon as a Green Hell – a place of exile where Nature would extinguish all foreign forms of life. Later in 1948, the government designated a land encompassing seven states across the region as Amazonia Legal. The government instituted Amazonia Legal to plan the economic development of the Amazon through a rational program. From ‘Green Hell’ to ‘Amazonia Legal,’ the constructed imaginary in the 20th century centered itself around the basin’s ecology – its organic force and productivity. In the first iteration, President Getúlio Vargas created an expansionist view of development. Varguista technocrats, as Antoine Acker puts it, began viewing the Brazilian interior – i.e. the Amazon – “as spaces to be conquered, in order to make their soil and subsoil resources economically exploitable.” This interpretation for the Amazonian conquest respawned years later during the military dictatorship. Through the auspices of the new military-regime, Castelo Branco’s government in 1966 finalized Operacão Amazona which aimed to promote national integration through the exploitation of the region’s natural potentialities. In these moments, the region’s perceived abundance enhanced the logics of national progress and development as the environment could be exploited to increase national wages and production.
Before this social meaning cemented itself into a national teleology, however, Brazilians produced earlier constructions of the Amazon. One such construction is no Paiz das Amazonas, a documentary from 1922. The silent documentary film directed by Agesilau De Araujo and Silvino Santos is one of the earliest videos of the Brazilian Amazon presenting a new world to many across the more “modern” South-east – in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. It was produced for the Rio de Janeiro international exhibition organized to celebrate the centenary of Brazil’s independence. The documentary, thus, puts on display a grand imaginary of the Amazon that Brazilians and other élites across Europe in the early 20th century would have consumed. This imaginary weaves together images and writings of the environment and primary industry showing the triumphs that exist in the “resplendent” land.
This essay will take advantage of the documentary no Paiz das Amazonas drawing attention to its narrative of both the environment and primary industry. I will attempt to illuminate how the Brazilian Amazon in the early 20th century became linked to the national development program by examining the present environment-primary production dichotomy. The argument will be broken into three parts to explicate how no Paiz das Amazonas envisions an Amazon that has the potential, through human intervention, to have limitless growth. First, I will elucidate the imagined natural abundance in the documentary to apprehend how élites might have conceptualized the region. I argue that the documentary outlines a forest that has the potential for infinite growth by emphasizing the forest’s productive power and abundance through images and texts. After explicating this social construction, secondly, I will spell out how no Paiz das Amazonas assembles a vision of Manaus as a locus of commercial and modern activities. Through this imaginary, the documentary exhibits how the nation-state has the capacity to bring civilization to the distant region. After explicating this social construction, lastly, I will analyze the documentary’s presentation of steamboats and infrastructures paying close attention to its relationship with the extractive economic system and the environment. Directing the paper’s attention to the environment and development, I will highlight how the documentary conceived development supplanting the environment by removing the spatio-temporal restraints in the immense region.
A Land of Plenitude, Onde Escassez não Existia
In the first moments of no Paiz das Amazonas, the documentary evinces a romantic vision of the Amazon. This vision characterizes the forest as a place of almost endless growth communicating to the audience that it is an “opulent forest” that holds “the precious treasures of nature.” By demarcating the forest with these proclamations, the documentary outlines two competing visions of the forest. The documentary fabricates a sharp image displaying the forest’s lushness, fecundity, and extreme biodiversity with endemic flora and fauna. On the other hand, the documentary signifies to the audience that the forest is a place full of grandeur with an unrealized source of fortune. The documentary manufactures a world that connects the natural environment to a means of wealth accumulation. With human intervention, the Amazon can generate unimaginable wealth for Brazil.
This idea of an unrealized source of fortune is reinforced moments later in No Paiz das Amazonas. In these first few moments, the documentary highlights the significance of the Amazonian ecology and geography. In fashioning an imagination of the forest, the documentary declares how the Amazon holds untapped material resources such as gold, for the forest holds “the most valuable and resplendent minerals.” The documentary, in essence, signals that the Amazon will bear future value and wealth. Through human involvement, society can unleash the forest’s economic potentialities “hidden” in the environment. Although the process of primary good extraction is inherently destructive, from a contemporary perspective, the documentary molds a romantic description of the forest and even its extraction for the forest “full of luxuriant vegetation... greet[s], in a hurried yearning, the embraces of capital that will tomorrow unveil the mysteries of the forest’s most incalculable riches.” The relationship between the forest and society in this construction spells out how the forest is docile rather than powerful. The forest expects, or rather “yearns,” for society to take advantage of its ecologies. This appears to construct a vision of the environment that humanity ought to subdue the forest - rather than the forest’s ecologies ruling over humanity. This construction is later reinforced an hour into the documentary for “the Amazon soil stimulates the audacity of businessmen.”
While the documentary does have a clear intention to connect the Amazon with development, it also glorifies the environment with all its capacities and beauty. In its glorification of nature and landscape, the documentary depicts a sublime vision of the Amazon with not only endemic flora and fauna but also the commanding river system. no Paiz das Amazonas does not fail to gloss over the turbulent river taking the viewer to the Teonônio falls, one of the four largest waterfalls of the Madeira River. While the film does produce an imaginary where the society can dominate nature, this scene accentuates the almost supreme force of the river and thereby the region. By drawing attention to the rapid currents, no Paiz das Amazonas takes a panoramic shot of the entirety of the waterfall showing the chaotic powers that nature holds. This panoramic shot has a dual function, moreover, since it also highlights the enormous size of the river that exerts its potent strength.
Although this sublime vision may function to exhibit the forest’s immensity, it also appears to introduce its natural capacity for Brazilian greatness. The documentary catalogues the diversity in the animal and vegetable kingdom to expose the unrealized economic prospects. The manatee, one of the largest animals in the region, are easily and systematically hunted to be eaten. With even the simplest of mechanisms, fishermen with “a surge of strength and agility” can capture the manatee for food. In this logic, the movie suggests it is relatively easy to take advantage of the natural world. Even with little human ingenuity, these fishermen can channel their own power over the natural environment in their favor. The logic maps onto other large macrofauna like the Tambaqui, the most sought-after fish by Amazonian fishermen. The effortlessness of harnessing nature is consequently reinforced as no Paiz das Amazonas goes so far as to say how “one does not fish without results in the lakes of the Amazon.” This shows how the documentary produces a vision of the Forest as a place with unlimited resources. That is to say, the documentary communicates that there exists no natural restraint for the Amazonian economy to flourish. Rather, the existing restraints are based on other social factors such as labor scarcity.
An Amazonian Vision of Modernist Urbanity
While No Paiz das Amazonas centers its narrative around nature to underscore its incalculable riches, the documentary also concentrates on technical capacities and infrastructures in Manaus. The documentary starts by introducing Manaus, the largest city and capital of Amazonas, as “a center of grand opportunity and progress.” To put in context, Manaus became an important regional city starting in the 1870s as the region received national attention due to the increasing price of rubber. This period prompted the region’s integration into the late 19th century nation-state building program through strong investments in technologies. By the first decade of the 20th century, for example, engineers incorporated Manaus into the national telegraph network through thousands of kilometers of sub-fluvial cable laid in the Amazon River. Manaus became a place emblematic of modernity with Brazilians being able to establish modern forms of living – civilization – in an impenetrable land.
Moreover, the documentary frames Manaus as a place of “grand opportunity” despite the collapse of international rubber prices in 1912. The documentary produces an imagined modern Manaus highlighting how the city has not only electricity, tramcars, and among other modern leisures but also has strong capacity for industry with the port. In short, Manaus radiates civilization providing a backdrop of how national élites in the Southeast might have seen the region. These large investments in the city – specifically with a freshwater port – could enhance economic potential in the region by removing the natural barriers. No Paiz das Amazonas visually demonstrates this throughout these beginning scenes, declaring how the port has been designed in consideration of the Rio Negro’s 15-meter fluctuations and primary goods can be transported to ships through a 130-meter ropeway. No Paiz das Amazonas visually communicates how Brazilian forms of modernity could be constructed in a region previously marked by having no civilization. Through new technical methods that reduce spatio-temporal dependencies, Brazilian society and economy could supplant the powers of the forest to ensure greater trade efficiency.
Chugging along the river – export growth
The economic potentialities – which depended on the perceived natural abundance – combined with technical enhancements would support Brazil on the path toward progress. These unrealized economic promises provide a backdrop in ascertaining the presentation of Manaus’ port. Manaus and the Amazon region is an export-oriented economy that relied, at the time, on the international price of rubber among other primary goods. The port and other technologies were important for the regional economy to sell their primary goods in the global market. The city port could intensify industry, expand the Amazonian economy to new frontiers extracting primary goods along the tributary system, and further embed the Amazon into the global economic system. No Paiz da Amazonas makes clear that the port of Manaus “offers direct access in any season to large transatlantic ships.” Moments later, the documentary depicts how trade is an energetic industry as the English vessel Hildebrand leaves the port with large cargo. The documentary is reinforcing how the freshwater port in Manaus can further open the Amazon for global trade reducing the spatio-temporal dimensions that inhibit growth. All primary products would be harvested across different parts of Amazonia, accumulate in Manaus, then be sent to be consumed in other parts of the globe. The port in Manaus, thus, created a linkage between the local and the global economies bringing goods and services in and out of the basin.
That is not to say that transatlantic ships were the only important water-going vessels for Manaus, the steamboat remains an important dimension in considering how the Amazonian economy could expand. The documentary takes a journey from Manaus to other parts of the underdeveloped region delineating how the insertion of new technological methods and infrastructures can both propel economic growth. Traveling outside of Manaus for the first time, no Paiz das Amazonas tacitly illuminates the benefits of using a steamboat. In taking the audience on a journey to Manacapuru on Inca, a steamboat belonging to the Amazon River Navigation company, the documentary boasts how the journey to the nearby town was only 10-hours. This emphasis on 10-hours underscores how the journey would have normally taken longer but with the steamboat the journey became an easier endeavor. Rather than a slow and arduous journey by land, the steamboat would reduce travel time, thereby improving trade efficiency. Because primary products can be transported from townships along the river in a shorter period, the forest’s impenetrability, the imagination of ‘Green Hell,’ becomes negated. The steamboats can counter the forest’s own authority against development displacing the forest’s position with humanity in the ‘natural order.’
It is worth noting, however, no Paiz das Amazonas does not make clear that these steamships among other river-faring vessels were unable to traverse West toward the Amazonian hinterland. Instead, the video only takes the viewer by boat to areas close to their original destination. As previously established in this paper, waterfalls existed across the Basin. These waterfalls would impede travel to certain tributaries. In addition, water levels would dramatically fluctuate depending on the season. Seth Garfield, a Brazilian historian, makes clear that river depths could only support large boats during the rainy season in November-December to April-May. “A 2,395-mile trip from Manaus... to the Peruvian border... of thirty days in high river might take up to three months in the dry season, as upriver captains, consigned to flat-bottom boats, motor launches, and canoes, dodged sandbars.”
Coda
This paper has attempted to show how no Paiz das Amazonas envisions a future Amazonia highlighting how the documentary emphasized the forest’s productive power through images and texts. The productive powers are not solely natural but also depend on human technological intervention. While No Paiz das Amazonas was produced in a moment of decline for the Amazonian economy, it does show how the Amazon has constantly, throughout the 20th century, been construed as a majestic place full of economic potential for the Brazilian state. Considering the movie in a contemporary light, a viewer may be able to understand the rationale behind President Bolsonaro’s decision to exploit the forest despite growing international calls for the country to conserve rather than destroy. Bolsonaro’s Minister of Environment, Ricardo Salles, aided and abetted the Forest’s destruction by allegedly allowing illegal wood exports. The exportation of primary goods in the region has been a means of development in the region that continues to be within the developmentalist imagination. Such as the case in No Paiz das Amazonas, development has been synonymous with primary extraction. This has had deleterious social and environmental consequences as the indigenous land is lost to large scale forest fires.
Works Cited
Acker, Antoine. Volkswagen in the Amazon: The Tragedy of Global Development in Modern Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Carvajal, Gaspar de, José Toribio Medina, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Bertram T. Lee, and H. C. (Harry Clifton) Heaton. The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar De Carvajal and Other Documents. New York: American Geographical Society, 1934.
Cunha, Euclides da. The Amazon: Land without History. Translated by Ronald Sousa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Garfield, Seth. In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
Phillips, Tom. Brazilian Police Raid Environment Ministry Over “Illegal” Timber Sales. The Guardian. 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/19/brazilian-police-raid-environment-ministry-timber-sales.
Rangel, Alberto, Euclides da Cunha, and Arthur Lucas. Inferno Verde: Scenas E Scenarios Do Amazonas. Genova: S.A.I. Clichês Celluloide Bacigalupi, 1908.
Liam Charles Cohen just graduated from the University of Chicago concentrating in Political Science and Latin American History. Liam recently finished his undergraduate thesis on 20th Political Economy in the Brazilian Amazon. The focus of his thesis was to uncover how intellectuals attempted to reimagine the Amazon Basin through their scientific models and analytical frameworks.
During his time in the College, Liam has grown interested in innovation as an instrument for economic growth. Through innovation, we dream up the impossible, envisioning a new reality. Liam is looking forward to taking my experience in the College with him outside of the classroom working as a management consultant in Washington D.C. for a few years before going to some form of graduate school.