Marcia Caetano Da Silva

Caetano Langfeldt

Marcia Caetano Langfeldt

Arthur Cezar

Amazonian Ferreira Reis

Casa

Part One: Osvaldo Cruz

Osvaldo Cruz was born on August 5, 1872 in São Luiz do Paraitinga, a small town in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, where his father, Bento Gonçalvez Cruz, worked as a general practitioner. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when he was five years old. In 1892, at the age of twenty, he received his medical degree with a thesis entitled "Microbial Transmission in Water" (Veiculação Microbiana pelas Águas), focusing on a field in its infancy: microbiology. The same year, Cruz lost his father and he married Emilia da Fonseca in the following year.

There is little information about Emilia Fonseca. On the "Memory Project"website, a project by the Banco do Brasil, we can read that "she was an intelligent and lively, advanced for her time, enjoyed nice clothes and to bet on horses at the Jockey Club in Rio de Janeiro, where she used to go by herself in an open twohorse carriage".

In 1896 Osvaldo Cruz moved to Paris to pursue his studies in microbiology at the Pasteur Institute where he stayed for two years. When he returned to Rio de Janeiro, he was comissioned to stop an epidemic of bubonic plague at the Harbor of Santos, in São Paulo.

To fight the epidemic the Brazilian government created in 1900 a serotherapy institute in Rio de Janeiro, under his direction. Six months after the institute's creation, the first vaccines were delivered and the epidemic of bubonic plague controlled.

In 1902, Osvaldo Cruz was appointed to be the country's director of public health by President Rodrigues Alves, focusing on fighting yellow fever, smallpox, and bubonic plague. Against a law mandating the obligatory smallpox vaccination, the population of Rio de Janeiro began a riot, in November 11, 1904. This episode is know as the "vaccine riot". It was in this context that he Osvaldo Cruz travelled to supervise the ports of Brazil going from the south to the north of the country, arriving in the Amazon at the end of 1905. It was the first time he travelled to the region, whose economy was growing very fast (Benchimol, 2005, p.83).

Parte 2: Brazil's Amazon and the rubber boom

Since the vulcanization method was developed by American chemist Charles Goodyear (1800-1860) in 1844 rubber began to be used in many industrialized products, which catapulted the latex prices in the following decades. But the trees that produced the "white gold" were concentrated in the Amazon.

Between 1898 and 1900, rubber was responsible for 25.7% of Brazil's total exports, ranking as the second most exported product (coffee was the first, with 52.7% of exports). The rubber extraction industry generated wealth and promoted the development of the cities of Manaus, Belém, and Porto Velho (Daou, 2000, pp.18-23).

From 1840 to 1910 the price of rubber increased more than 1,000%, which attracted a population of half a million immigrants into the Brazilian Amazon, in special immigrants from the northeastern part of Brazil who fled the drought.

However, these immigrants had to pay for the trip and the tools needed to work. To feed themselves and their families, they had to buy food from the rubber farm owners, which put them in a eternal dependent position (Cunha, 1995, pp. 278-279 andFurtado, 1987, pp.133-134).

Part Three: Osvaldo Cruz's Trips to the Amazon 1905 -The first trip

As we have seen, Osvaldo Cruz first travelled to the Amazon in the middle of the rubber boom, when the ports of Manaus and Belém received hundreds of immigrants each week. At the International Conference of Paris in 1903, Brazil's government signed an agreement with other countries to promote the control of cholera, bubonic plague, and yellow fever. In view of this mandate, Osvaldo Cruz travelled to these areas to supervise the sanitation conditions of the main ports of the country (Lima, Mar-Jun 1997, p.161 e Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, 1972, Introdução, s.p.).

There is no report from this expedition at Fiocruz archives. However, there is a set of letters in the Personal Correspondence dossier, with 29 items, produced between September 29, 1905 and February 4, 1906 which comprises this trip. Unfortunately, the set is incomplete, as there is no letters sent from the Amazon, though Osvaldo Cruz reached Manaus in this occasion. For this reason, the personal correspondence of this set is not contemplated in this paper.

Accompanied by his secretary João Pedroso, he travelled on the tugboat República all along the Atlantic coast of Brazil, entering the Amazon River. Cruz and his assistant visited 24 harbors during 68 days, from September 27 to December 6, 1905.

-The second trip

In the second part of the nineteenth century, Brazilian rubber tappers went up the Purus River, occupying an area that belonged to Bolivia, in search of new places for latex extraction This massive influx generated a series of armed conflicts between the two countries that ended with the Treaty of Petrópolis signed on November 11, 1903. The treaty determined that Brazil would have the territory of Acre (today a Brazilian state), equivalent to 191,000 km 2 , in exchange for 3,000 km 2 of Brazilian territory, as well as a monetary payment of two million British pounds. In addition, Brazil had to build a railway between Bolivia and Brazil to transport products from Bolivia.

After two failed initiatives to build the railroad, the contract was awarded to the American enterpreneur Percival Farquhar in 1907. Since the beginning, the area's sanitary conditions posed the main obstacle to the project. In the medical team of Madeira-Mamoré Railway Co. there were five physicians who had also worked on the Panama Canal that was being built at the time (Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, 1972, Introdução, s.p.). To work with the medical team of the railway the company engaged Osvaldo Cruz.

He left Rio de Janeiro on June 16 with his assistant Belisário Pena. They inspected 133 km of the railroad and stayed there until August 7. When they were back to Rio de Janeiro, they wrote a report named "Madeira-Mamoré Railway Company -General considerations about the sanitary conditions of Madeira River" delivered to the company's representative in Brazil on September 6, 1910. In this report Osvaldo Cruz exposed his indignation in view of the poor sanitary conditions of the area, writing that "the attempts to build this railway have been marked by real hectacombes" (Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, 1972, p.6). He was not exaggerating, only in the third phase of the railway building, from 1907 to 1912, the official death rate was 1,593 (Hardman, 1988, p. 105). However, it is possible to estimate a higher rate, considering that it was in the third phase that the area was sanitated. In view of that, Madeira-Mamoré was named the "Devil's Railway", and it was said that each railroad tie costed a life.

In this report, Osvaldo Cruz listed the main diseases he found: malaria, yellow fever, tuberculosis, beriberi, dysentery, hookworm infection, pneumonia, measles and alcoholism. However, among all diseases, malaria was the great terror of the region. According to the bacteriologist, malaria infection was so common that "to people (of that area) the condition of being sick was normal". (Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, p.32). It is important to note that it was only in the end of the nineteenth century, in 1897, that the British medical doctor Ronald Ross realized that malaria was transmitted by a mosquito. And it was only in 1900 that the Cuban Carlos Finlay proved the same transmission method for the yellow fever. Thanks to the work of these two researchers the chief of the medical team of Panama Canal, American William Gorgas reduced the death rate in the region, in 1904. In the first phase of the Canal's building, called the French period (1879-1889), approximately 25,000 people died, while in the American phase (1904)(1905)(1906)(1907)(1908)(1909)(1910)(1911)(1912)(1913)(1914)) the official number is 5,000 deaths (McCullough, 1977, p.206). However, when Osvaldo Cruz visited the region of Madeira-Mamoré works, in 1910, there was a established profylaxis for malaria and yellow fever in the world. In his report, he observed that there was no preventive action against malaria. Besides, the population's access to treatment was expensive and difficult, as there were some traders that delievered a mixture of starch and baking soda in place of quinine, used in the disease's prevention (Ibidem, p.12).

At the end of the report, Osvaldo Cruz established a series of twenty measures that had to be executed in order to improve the sanitation of the area. The measures were as effective as they were coercive. For instance: the company should designate a quinine distributor to every 50 employees. This quinine distributor would deliver a signed ticket after checking that the employee ingested the substance.

Employees would not receive payments for the days, which they could not present a signed ticket. The company should build camps protected with mosquito screens to accommodate 100 employees each. At the evening, everyone should be confined there. The measures also aimed other disease's prevention, with the distribution of drinking water, shoes and the prohibition of selling alcoholic beverages. Thanks to this systematic plan, the railroad could be finished and opened on August 1, 1912 (Ibidem, p.42-44).

The last trips -the sanitation of Belém

On the occasion of the Madeira-Mamoré trip, when Osvaldo Cruz arrived in Belém, capital of Pará, the governor João Coelho commissioned him to improve Belém's sanitary conditions. The city suffered from a yellow fever epidemic, among other diseases. In a letter to his wife Emilia da Fonseca dated June 28, 1910, Osvaldo Cruz comments on this commission: "I decided a matter today that will make our lives easier. The governor of Pará asked me to direct the campaign against yellow fever here, which I have accepted to do. When I will be back from the Madeira (river), I will go to Rio, gather the best of my people1 and I will return here again, where I will stay for 15 days, in order to implement the sanitation service under the direction of someone close to me. I will return two or three times more. I don't know anything about the conditions that will be offered to me yet. The governor, very embarrassed, sent someone to ask me how much I wanted. I answered that I will leave this matter of value under his consideration. But judging by the enthusiasm of the man, our advantage seems to be large. To me, the thing will be very easy and I count on obtaining good results, thus providing a huge service to the country. I was told that more than two hundred people were killed by yellow fever last month." Extract of a letter from Osvaldo Cruz to his wife Emilia da Fonseca Cruz, Casa Oswaldo Cruz (COC) Archives (Manuscripts).

"Resolvi hoje aqui uma questão que nos vai tornar a vida mais suave. O Governador do Pará me pediu para assumir a direção da campanha contra a febre amarela aqui, o que aceitei. De volta do Madeira, irei até o Rio buscar a flor da minha gente2 e de novo voltarei até aqui, onde passarei uns 15 dias para pôr o serviço em andamento, sob a direção de pessoa de minha confiança. Voltarei ainda no decurso de mais umas duas ou três vezes. Ainda não sei das condições que me serão oferecidas. O Governador, com grande acanhamento mandou me perguntar quanto eu desejava. Mandei-lhe dizer que deixava ao alvitre dele os valores. Mas, a julgar pelo entusiasmo em que está o homem, as nossas vantagens parecem (que) serão bem grandes. Para mim, a coisa será muito mansa e conto obter resultados seguros, prestando assim um colossal serviço ao país. Segundo me informam, só no mês passado morreram duzentas e tantas pessoas de febre amarela." Trecho de carta de Osvaldo Cruz para sua esposa, Emilia da Fonseca Cruz, Arquivo Fiocruz. Sure enough, when he returned to Rio he put together a sanitation team to fight yellow fever in Belém.

The team was composed of 87 people including physicians, assistants, guards, and a manager, to which seven local physicians were added.

Osvaldo Cruz accompanied them to Pará to implement the services in November 1910 and the last reported case of a person infected with yellow fever in Belém was on May 1911. That month, the bacteriologist went to Dresden, in Germany, where he represented Brazil at the Hygiene International Exhibition, having his daughter Elisa with him. But at the end of the month, he went back to Pará, still in the company of his daughter, who he made sleep without a mosquito curtain, to prove that he had full trust in the work of the group he had left in Belém. On May 9, he wrote to Emilia: "We arrived here yesterday. We were unexpected because the ship arrived one day earlier. We were received by our local colleagues, who were surprised at lunchtime by the vessel's arrival. We have settled at the Laje da Palavra house. The eldest daughter of Belisário3 is also there and she is a splendid company to Liseta." Extract of a letter from Osvaldo Cruz to his wife Emilia da Fonseca Cruz, Casa Oswaldo Cruz (COC) Archives (Manuscripts).

"Aqui chegamos desde ontem. Chegamos sem ser esperados porque o navio antecipou de um dia sua viagem. Recebidos pelos colegas daqui que foram surpreendidos à hora do almoço com a entrada do navio, nos instalamos na casa da comunidade da Laje da Palavra. Lá está também a filha mais velha do Belisário4 , que está fazendo esplêndida companhia à Liseta 5 ." Trecho de carta de Osvaldo Cruz para sua esposa, Emilia da Fonseca Cruz, Arquivo Fiocruz.

The report about the yellow fever campaign sent to the governor of Pará has not been found. The only documents we have from the campaign are these correspondences and the article published in the newspaper of the time. On September 7 1910, the governor João Antunes Luís Coelho wrote in the annual report published for the Congressmen of Pará:

"Pará had the chance to host for the second time the distinguished Brazilian bacteriologist Dr.Osvaldo Cruz, on his way to the Amazon, where he went to make scientific investigations at the working sites of Madeira-Mamoré Company. He arrived in Belém on June 26.

[…] His arrival coincided with my resolution to start the fight against yellow fever, which you know is my intention since the beginning of my government". "Yellow fever was a misterious evil that every year since 1840, its third and definitive appearance among us (since it had failed to establish itself here), decimated our population with more or less extensive 'poussées' (outbreaks).

Annual Report of

[…] The yellow fever prophylaxis measures were a complete success in Cuba. The measures were applied in Rio, and the yellow fever disappeared. Now the focus is on Pará, and following is the transcript of a telegram received from the capital of the state yesterday: 'At the end of March only one case of yellow fever was recorded'. […] We believe that in view of such evidences there will be no more doubts about the great services our eminent Dr.Osvaldo Cruz is providing to Brazil." "Yellow fever is finished in Pará On November 12, the commission against yellow fever in the state of Pará presented a graphic report to the government. The report analizes the campaign's development since its inception, whose results were a complet success, the terrible morbus (disease) is extinguished.

Gazeta
[…] Such splendid results are due to the joined efforts of the governor and scientist Osvaldo Cruz, an outstanding achievement for the state's reputation and credit, which will also benefit the country. This result is very gratifying, specially at this moment when there is a great need of capital and laborers to cast the terrible (finacial) crisis that weighs Pará. Dr.Osvaldo Cruz will soon arrive here, and an adequated reception will be prepared for him, as he is the hero of the campaign that ensured the success in due term." From these press articles, it is possible to note that after these successful sanitation campaigns in Rio de Janeiro and Belém, Osvaldo Cruz's name was definitively associated with the sanitation progress that the country needed. The arrival of "capital and laborers" mentioned by the newspaper leaves no doubt: after sanitation, the country's development was just a matter o time. However, the last sanitation campaing conducted by Osvaldo Cruz would reveal it would be more challenging than expected.

Correio

The sanitation of the Amazon Basin

In 1910, the Asian rubber from British colonies entered in the international market, ending the Amazonian rubber boom. A few years earlier, in 1876, the British explorer Henry Wickham was responsible for taking 70,000 seeds from the rubber tree, the Hevea-brasiliensis, and bringing them to the Royal Botanic Gardens in London where they were selected to be more resistant against diseases and pests (Gradin, p.307). In its natural habitat in the Amazon, there are few rubber trees per hectare, which keeps insects and pests at a distance. But when the trees are planted too close one to another, it increases the number of pests afflicting them. In Asia and Africa these predators do not exist, so the plantations were successful. In comparision, rubber farms in Malaysia and Sumatra were producing 8,500 tons of rubber a year, against 38,000 from the Amazon region in 1912. Only two years later, Asia and Africa combined exported 71,000 tons and three years later 370,000 tons (Gradin, 2009, p.40-46), approximately ten times more than the Amazonian production.

In 1912, the Brazilian government tried to revert the market loss of the rubber trade in the region by creating the Superintendence of Rubber Defense. The superintendence commissioned Osvaldo Cruz to organize the sanitation efforts in the Amazon. The area covered by the commission was the state of Amazonas and the territories of Acre and Roraima (now states). This commission was composed of the physicians Carlos Chagas, João Pedroso de Albuquerque, and Pacheco Leão. They travelled to Amazonas between October 1912 and March 1913. On September 11, 1913, Osvaldo Cruz presented a report about the sanitary conditions in Amazonas to the Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce Pedro de Toledo, entlited "Sanitation conditions of the Amazon Valley". Although he had not traveled to Amazonas at this time, Osvaldo Cruz coordinated the work of the medical team from a distance and signed the first and the fourth parts of the report. In this report, Osvaldo Cruz presents similar conclusions to the previous report of 1910, drawing attention to the need of fighting malaria. As sanitary measures, the Brazilian government would install quinine stations for rubber tappers. In order to promote compliance with taking the medication, the government would pay the laborers a stipend at the end of one year, for those who were not infected with the disease.

Furthermore, there would bem ambulance-boats along each river. At the end, the physician says:

"Following the sanitation plan mentioned above, I can assure you that the main obstacle to the rapid progress of the valley of the largest river in the world will disappear, and it will thus be brought to civilization one of the richest, if not the richest area in Brazil. This achievement is in the hands of the government."

"Realizado o plano de campanha sanitária constante das linhas acima, posso afirmar com segurança que desaparecerá o obstáculo capital que retém o progresso vertiginoso a que está destinado o vale do maior rio do mundo e ficará assim entregue à civilização uma das mais ricas, se não a mais rica zona do Brasil. Está nas mãos do governo realizar esse feito". Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, 1972, p.155.

However, with the market growth of the rubber from British colonies, the Rubber Defense Superintendence was extinguished in less than two years.

The Amazon: where Science meets literature

In 1913 three important Brazilian writers had already put on paper their view about the Amazon they knew: José Veríssimo (1857-1916), Alberto Rangel (1871Rangel ( -1945) ) and Euclides da Cunha (1876Cunha ( -1909)).

They had not invalidate the speech of previous foreign travelers, but they inevitably magnified small details or focused on other issues. This is the case of the Amazonian texts of José Veríssimo in the shortstories book Scenes of Amazonian life (Cenas da vida amazônica, 1889), of Alberto Rangel, with the short stories collection Green Hell (Inferno Verde, 1908) and of Euclides da Cunha, with a collection of essays about the region written when he travelled to the Amazon while working for the Brazilian government.

The book In the margin of History (À margem da história, 1909) was published after his death.

Despite strong diferences these texts have a similar perspective: an adherence to the integrity of the country. A common aspect in them is the urgency to incorporate this region and its inhabitants to the national project of the country, either through literature, politics or economy. Thus Osvaldo Cruz reports would contribute in this discussion yet on another bias.

In fact, scientific discourse had tremendous relevance at the time. In an article where he analyses the hybrid text between literature and scientific essay of Os Sertões from Euclides da Cunha, Leopoldo Bernucci observes that the author purposely "insisted upon blurring the line between science and art and on erasing the borders defined by positivist influence, thus preferring to enrich the concept after manipulating it and returning it to us in all its complexity, strength and operational uniqueness" (Bernucci, 2008, p.24). The same can be apllied to the Amazonian essays of Euclides. That is, the author's strategy was to make use of the scientific prerogatives to stand at another level that would be neither pure art nor simple scientific essay. Or, in the words of Leopoldo Bernucci, "in this intermediary area in the borders as a place that favors both empirical and quantitave models and the idealizations motivated by the flames of controlled imagination" (Bernucci, Ibidem, p.23).

With regard to the "empirical and quantitative" models, Osvaldo Cruz report brought to light the terrible health conditions to which the Amazon workers were submitted, as well as the fact that the wealth, modernity and progress generated by the rubber economy were based on the misery of thousands of Brazilians who "workerd to be enslaved", in the words of Euclides da Cunha (Cunha, 1995, p.278).

Comparing Osvald Cruz correspondence with his reports it is possible to note that the bacteriologist purposely excluded halftones to describe the facts he saw. In the 1910 report, when he was working for Madeira-Mamoré Railway Company, Osvaldo Cruz wrote about Santo Antônio do Madeira village, the place where the company's workers were settled. The village is now the city of Porto Velho, capital of Rondônia state and it was founded by the railroad building company.

"The village has no sewage, no running water system, nor lighting of any kind. Garbage and all vegetative life products are thrown onto the streets, if those narrow, undulating alleys that cross this unfortunate village deserve the name. There are hills of trash against the walls of the houses. Large holes in the center of the village receive rainwater and water from the flood and become dangerous swamps from which clouds of anophelines 6 arise, spreading death throughout the village. There is no slaughterhouse. Cattle is slaughtered in the middle of the street, by gunshot, and the undesired parts, like the head, viscera, leather, shells, etc, are abandoned at the same spot of the sacrifice, lying in a lake of blood. Everything is rotting near the houses and the fetid smell it has is indescribable. On the organisms living in such an environment the malaria executes the greatest devastation. There is no child population and the few children that can be seen have a very short life. There are no native people known among the inhabitants of Santo Antônio: they all die." "A vila não tem esgotos, nem água canalizada, nem iluminação de qualquer natureza. O lixo e todos os produtos da vida vegetativa são atirados às ruas, se merecem este nome vielas esburacadas que cortam a infeliz povoação. Encontram-se colinas de lixo apoiadas às paredes de habitações. Grandes buracos no centro do povoado recebem as águas das chuvas e da cheia do rio e transformam-se em pântanos perigosos, donde se levantam aluviões de anofelinas que espalham a morte por todo o povoado. Não há matadouro. O gado é abatido em plena rua, à carabina, e as porções não aproveitadas: cabeça, vísceras, couro, cascos etc., são abandonados no próprio local em que foi a rês sacrificada, jazendo num lago de sangue. Tudo apodrece junto às habitações e o fétido que se desprende é indescritível. Sobre os organismos que vivem em tal meio o impaludismo faz as maiores devastações que se conhecem. A população infantil não existe e as poucas crianças que se vêem têm vida por tempo muito curto. Não se conhecem entre os habitantes de Santo Antônio pessoas nascidas no local: essas morrem todas."

In a letter dated July 11, 1910, he wrote about the same village to Emilia da Fonseca Cruz:

We visited yesterday the city of Santo Antônio. You cannot imagine what it is. Any description, even the worst one, would be very far from reality. Suffice it to tell you that there is not even one native inhabitant in this place. All children born here infallibly die and the few alive that are born here will inevitably die very soon. The foulness is immense. Just to give you a pale idea of what that means, I will tell you that they slaughter the cattle in the streets, leaving the viscera, head, etc rotting in the middle of the street. The smell is so bad that one can be suffocated. I am horrified with all this filth! "Visitamos ontem a cidade de Santo Antônio. Não podes imaginar o que seja. Qualquer descrição, por mais pessimista, ficaria aquém da realidade. Basta que te diga que, na cidade, não há um só habitante filho do lugar. Todas as crianças que ali nascem, morrem infalivelmente e as poucas ali nascidas estão de tal modo doentes que fatalmente morrerão (em) breve. A imundície é incrível. Para dar uma idea pálida do que é ela, basta que te diga que matam os bois nas ruas e aí abandonam as vísceras, cabeça etc., que deixam apodrecer em plena rua. O mau cheiro é de tal ordem que pode-se ficar sufocado. Estou horrorizado com tanta porcaria!" Trecho de carta de Osvaldo Cruz para sua esposa, Emilia da Fonseca Cruz, Arquivo Fiocruz.

What is noteworthy in these two texts is the similarity between the report's remarks and those in his letter to his wife, which he wrote just one day after visiting the village of Santo Antônio. He was so marked by what he saw that he wrote in the same bruising way in the report, weeks later. However, he spared Emilia 6 Malaria mosquitos.

some of the place's morbid details, like these observations he included in the report about the "cruelty" of nature in the Amazon. In this case, the terrible ants:

"The ants voraciously attack corpses, which I had the occasion to verify, and their action is really intense, as it can be noticed through this observation made by Dr. Walcott 7 , the company's physician. An engineer was coming back from the working area with a dead worker in a hammock and he couldn't cross the water stream, which was suddenly filled after a rain.

He set his hammock at the stream bank to spend the night and left the corpse in another hammock. In the morning, he found the body almost reduced to a skeleton, covered by thousands of ants." To Emilia, he makes bucolic comments about the natural environment, as in this letter dated June 28, 1910, the day of her birthday, when he wrote from Pará:

"Here in the Amazon valley there is a little bird called 'uirapuru' by the Indians, which means 'enchanted bird.' This little animal, small as a cambaxirra 8 , is very rare. It sings hidden on the top of chestnut and louro-rosa 9 trees. It sings so beautifully that all birds in the surrounding area accompany him, as well as the beasts, that stay in rapture, listening to the melodious song of the blessed bird, all united to help him avoid the attack of vultures and other enemies.

It is the king of the Amazon singers and the carrier of eternal happiness. According to the beliefs of shamanism, a person who has an uirapuru's feather shall enjoy eternal happiness and will always live with health, virtue, love and well-being. All look to own the charm of eternal happiness, but few succeed, because the divine bird is very rare. I know people that have looked in vain for a feather of this holy bird their entire lives. Luckily, I became acquainted with a young man, a medical student, whose mother in the midst of farewell tears, entrusted her beloved son with a family relic, an embalmed uirapuru in carajurú10 , kept in a purçanga 11 .

14

This boy gave me the uirapuru feathers that I send you enclosed here and that are the messengers of the most fervent wishes that God will transform in reality the pagan's superstition."

"Há aqui no vale do Amazonas um pequeno pássaro que os índios denominam "uirapuru", que significa "pássaro encantado". Este animalzinho, pequeno como uma cabaxirra, é raríssimo. Vive cantando escondido nos frondes das castanheiras e de louro-rosa. O cantar desse passarinho é tão melodioso que todas as aves das circunvizinhanças acompanham-no, assim como as feras da região, que ficam todos em êxtase, ouvindo o mavioso canto da ave da fortuna e todos unidos porfiam em evitar-lhes o ataque dos abutres e outros inimigos.

É o rei dos cantores das florestas amazônicas e o portador da eterna felicidade. Segundo os assertos da pajelança, quem possuir uma pena do uirapuru gozará da eterna felicidade e será sempre acompanhado da saúde, da virtude, do amor e do bem-estar. Todos porfiam em possuir o amuleto portador da felicidade eterna, mas raros conseguem, porque o passarinho divino é raríssimo. Conheço pessoas aqui que passaram em vão a vida à procura duma pena da avezinha sagrada. Quis a sorte que travasse eu relações com um rapaz, estudante de Medicina, a quem a Mãe, no meio das lágrimas de despedida, confiara ao filho querido, como relíquia de família, um uirapuru embalsamado em carajurú e conservado numa purçanga (pequena bolsa de couro).

Este rapaz deu-me as penas do uirapuru, que junto te envio e que são as mensageiras dos mais ardentes votos que faça para que Deus transforme em realidade a crendice do gentio."

Trecho de carta de Osvaldo Cruz para sua esposa, Emilia da Fonseca Cruz, Arquivo Fiocruz.

In the letters to Emilia there are also observations that he didn't include in his official reports, such as these remarks written on July 2 about the kind of people he met on his trips:

"You can't imagine the terrible company we have on the (boat) trip: (rubber) tappers and adventurers of all kinds, without any civil manners, and a wave of mulatto women from Ceará12 of easy virtue, that keep formidably rattling aboard."

« Não imaginas que péssimas companhias de viagem temos : seringueiros e aventureiros de toda a espécie, sem a mínima educação e uma leva de mulatas cearenses de vida aerada e que levam fazendo uma formidável algazarra à bordo."

Trecho de carta de Osvaldo Cruz para sua esposa, Emilia da Fonseca Cruz, Arquivo Fiocruz.

In another letter from Pará dated June 28, 1910 he wrote about the repercussion of his engagement by the governor of Pará:

"I have been retained here longer than I wanted, because there was a strike on the ship that will take me to Manaus, from where I will leave on a special ship. Today the governor (of Pará) visited me. And tonight I was visited by the daughter of the hotel's owner, an accomplished pianist, graduated from the Conservatory of Leipzig, who came to play piano for me. She is a true artist. You can't imagine the 'pilgrimage' of visits I have received. They have raised to the highest level my irritation. Especially now that they suspect that I will direct the yellow fever campaign, it is an unlimited flattering."

«Tenho estado preso aqui mais tempo do que o desejava, porque houve uma greve à bordo do navio do Lloyd que me terá de levar a Manaus, donde partirei em navio especial. Hoje o governador me veio visitar. E agora à noite, fui visitado pela filha da dona do hotel, uma exímia pianista, formada no Conservatório de Leipzig e que veio tocar piano para eu ouvir. É uma verdadeira artista. Não imaginas a romaria de visitas que tenho recebido e que me tem elevado ao auge a minha irritação de nervos. Sobretudo agora que desconfiam que vou tomar a direção da companha contra a febre amarela, o chaleirismo está incomensurável."

Trecho de carta de Osvaldo Cruz para sua esposa, Emilia da Fonseca Cruz, Arquivo Fiocruz.

This is an example that can be found in other letters also, in which there is important information about the political system of the "Old Republic" (1889-1930) in Brazil, also valid in this remote region. In this case, the traditional habit of visiting someone who received a political nomination, in order to get some privilege or position. Osvaldo Cruz is clearly against this tradition and preferred to choose his assistants among qualified people.

After reading the letters Osvaldo Cruz wrote to his wife Emilia when he was travelling in the Amazon, it is possible to have a broader view about the motivations of his trips and about the places he visited. We can infer the real situation of the position of women, for instance, comparing the young pianist that studied in Leipzig and the "mulatto" ladies that were on his boat while he travelled. Despite their very different lives, the pianist and the women on the boat were there for men's entertainment.

Osvaldo Cruz dedicated his life to his work and he involved his family in his mission: to prove that science could really make a better world. Finally, these letters together with the reports give us an opportunity to better understand his view and the impact he had when he first met two different realities.

In one hand the elites of the two richest cities in the region, Manaus and Belém, who lived in huge opulence, in contrast to the degrading situation of those who were at the base of the rubber economy. This research is still in progress, with several aspects to be developed. But it is possible to say that the content of the scientific reports of Osvaldo Cruz reinforces and amplifies the implications of the Amazonian texts from some Brazilian writers, such as José Veríssimo, Alberto Rangel and Euclides da Cunha, establishing thus a fertile dialogue to apprehend the problems of the Amazon.

  Pará State, September 7, 1910, Pará, pp. 6-7. National Lybrary Archives (BNDigital, Hemeroteca). O Pará teve a fortuna de hospedar, pela segunda vez, o distinto bacteriologista brasileiro Dr. Osvaldo Cruz, em trânsito para o Amazonas, onde foi proceder a estudos científicos na sede dos trabalhos da Companhia Madeira-Mamoré. Aportou ele a Belém em 26 de junho último. [...]Coincidiu com a sua chegada a minha resolução de encetar o combate à febre amarela, o que, como sabeis, é minha cogitação desde os primeiros dias de governo." Relatório Anual do Estado do Pará, 7 de setembro de 1910, Pará, pp. 6-7. Arquivo da Biblioteca Nacional. (BNDigital, Hemeroteca).

	On April 3, 1911, Gazeta de Notícias newspaper published a long article about yellow fever, focusing on
	Osvaldo Cruz's work in Pará:

  da Manhã, June 4, 1911, Rio de Janeiro, p.4. National Library Archives. (BNDigital, Hemeroteca). "A febre amarela está extinta no Pará A comissão da profilaxia contra a febre amarela apresentou ao governo do Estado um trabalho gráfico dos seus serviços desde o início da campanha, em 12 de novembro do ano passado, e cujo resultado foi o mais brilhante, estando extinto o terrível morbus. [...]Aos esforços conjuntados do governador e do cientista dr. Osvaldo Cruz se deve tão esplêndido resultado, de pleno êxito para o renome e o crédito do Estado, os quais subirão muito, repercutindo em todo o Brasil. Esse resultado é tão mais satisfatório, porquanto no momento atual há grande necessidade da vinda de capitais e braços estrangeiros para conjurar a crise horrível que pesa sobre o Pará.

Brevemente, chegará a esta capital o dr. Osvaldo Cruz, a quem será preparada condigna recepção, sendo como é, o herói da campanha de que garantiu o êxito no prazo fatal."

Correio da Manhã, 4 de junho de 1911, Rio de Janeiro, p.4. Arquivo da Biblioteca Nacional.

(BNDigital, Hemeroteca).

  Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, 1972, p.14."As formigas atacam vorazmente os cadáveres, o que tive ocasião de verificar e a ação delas é tão intensa como se pode avaliar pela seguinte observação feita pelo Dr. Walcott, médico da empresa: tendo um engenheiro voltado da zona em exploração com cadáver dum trabalhador numa rede não logrou atravessar um igarapé, que encheu bruscamente após grande chuva.Armou a rede à margem do córrego e aí passou a noite, tendo deixado no chão o cadáver envolvido em outra rede. Pela manhã encontrou o corpo quase reduzido a esqueleto e coberto por milhares de formigas." On land, except the Parintintins Indians that live on the right bank of Madeira River, close to Machado River, who are indomitable and attack all white people that are near them and are considered cannibals, there is nothing to fear regarding dangerous animals. In the region of waterfalls the red jaguar (Felis concolor) can be easily found, but he flees humans and represents almost no danger." Em terra, não falando dos índios Parintintins que vivem na região da margem direita do Madeira, para baixo do rio Machado e que, indomáveis, atacam todos os brancos que lhes passam ao alcance e que na região são considerados como antropófagos, não há nada a temer de animais que ataquem o homem. Na região das cachoeiras, encontra-se comumente a onça vermelha (Felis concolor), que foge do homem e, praticamente, não constituti perigo." Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, Ibidem, p.14.Cruel nature, devouring living and dead people, this excerpt of the report approaches the short stories of Green Hell from Alberto Rangel. As we can see in this excerpt: "Catolé concept", in which the main character João Catolé has the daughter kidnapped and found dead in the forest a week later."After one week half hundred crows abandoning themselves over a certain point of the forest aroused a morbid assumption. Some locals took the way where the omnious and butcher horde hung in the air. There they found indeed the bodies of Pedro and Malvina laying side by side, the skeletons falling off the nauseating pope. A rifle on the ground, in the midst of these filthy remains". "Ao fim de uma semana, meio cento de corvos, abandonando-se por cima de certo ponto da floresta, despertou uma fúnebre suposição. Alguns colonos tomaram um rumo em que o bando sinistro e carniceiro pairava nos ares. Lá deram, efetivamente, com os cadáveres de Pedro e de Malvina deitados lado a lado, os esqueletos desprendendo-se na papa nauseabunda. Um rifle no chão, em meio a esses restos imundos".

	Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, 1972, p.14.
	Rangel, 2008, p.56.
	Or about crocodiles, piranhas, and dangerous Indians:
	"In the Madeira River, the alligator represents a danger to those who fall in the river; but much more
	fearful are certain fish: […] the piranhas, which attack people and animals in huge shoals, and when
	there is blood, devours them with unspeakable greed.
	Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, Ibidem, p.12.
	Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, Ibidem, p.14.
	"No rio Madeira, o jacaré constitui um perigo àqueles que caem no rio; muito mais temerosos porém
	são certos peixes: […] as piranhas, que em cardumes colossais atacam as pessoas e animais na água e,
	desde que aparece sangue, com voracidade indescritível devoram-nos."
	Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, Ibidem, p.12.

"7 Member of the Railway Company medical team.

"

Author's emphasis.

Grifo do autor

Belisário Pena, physician that accompanied Osvaldo Cruz in the mission against yellow fever.

Belisário Pena, médico que acompanhou Osvaldo Cruz na campanha contra febre amarela.

Elisa Cruz, filha de Osvaldo Cruz.

Small bird from Brazil and Bolivia.

Brazilian tree, scientific name: Nectandra-rubra.

Brazilian plant used for embalming.

State in Brazil.


Marcia Caetano Langfeldt

de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

In the early twentieth century Brazilian government sponsored several scientific trips to the country's interior. At that time, the main interest was to incorporate these areas into the larger national project begun during the Brazilian Empire and that continued when Brazil became a republic in 1889. It was in this context that the Brazilian bacteriologist Osvaldo Cruz (1872Cruz ( -1917) ) visited the Amazon on four occasions between 1905 and 1911. In the following year, in 1912, he coordinated from a distance the medical team that went to the region to evaluate the public health policy in areas where rubber extraction was highly concentrated. Two reports were published related to these expeditions. The first was delivered in 1910 to the Madeira-Mamoré Railway Company, responsible for building the railroad in the region. The second report was submitted to the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce in 1913.

In the same period of these expeditions, another Brazilian visited the region commissioned by the government. In 1905, the writer Euclides da Cunha (1866Cunha ( -1909) ) headed the Brazilian Boundary Commission of Upper Purus River. After this mission, the author of Rebellion in the backlands (1902) intended to write another epic book. A project he never finished, as he was killed in August 15, 1909. The book À margem da história (At the margins of History) with Euclide's Amazonian essays was published posthumously at the same year. Beside the texts of this book, the author also left a vast material about the Amazon: the reports he did for the Purus River Commission, many newspaper articles, interviews, speeches and letters. This paper proposes a comparative approach between the reports of bacteriologist Osvaldo Cruz and the texts produced by the writer Euclides da Cunha, investigating in what extent these two Brazilians contributed to draw a more accurate overview of the Amazon of the early twentieth century. It is a first approach of the research I develop at the Research Center of Lusophone Countries (CREPAL) at Paris 3 University (Sorbonne Nouvelle) whose title is "The Amazon and the civilization limits: a critical reading of travel texts from the early twentieth century" in which I will investigate texts of Brazilians travelers to the region in the period. The reports's version used here was edited by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, in Rio de Janeiro, and published in Manaus, Amazonas, in 1972. The edition's foreword was written by Arthur Cezar Ferreira Reis, Amazonian historian and former governor. The introduction was written by the Amazonian physician and writer Djalma Batista.

Before reading the bacteriologist texts, I would like to present a short biography of Osvaldo Cruz and to describe the circumstances of the missions he conducted in the Amazon.

Who was Osvaldo Cruz

In the last pages of the biographic novel about Osvaldo Cruz Sonhos tropicais (Tropical Dreams) the Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar (1937Scliar ( -2011) ) quotes extracts of the physician's will, highlighting theater-related words, as if he was abandoning life in the same way an actor leaves the stage. So, in the first phrase Osvaldo Cruz says (in Scliar's quotation). "I deeply wish that my death will not be presented with the usual formalities that society have arranged the last act of our lives". 1 This will was written some days before the bacteriologist's death, in February 1917. By coincidence, this was the same month and year that it was recorded the first samba song for Carnival celebrations in Brazil. The song "On the telephone" was a great success and its authorship was reinvindicated by Ernesto dos Santos, known as "Donga". 2 During Carnival celebrations of that year, the famous bacteriologist looked around him and wrote in another extract of the will: "I would like that my family would be spared of the ceremony of dressing the body, as it can very well be covered with a simple blanket. No invitations nor announcements for the burial shall be made, as well as any mess of the celebration of the first week of my death. 3 Neither mourning habits. We keep this in our hearts, not on our clothes. I genuinely demand to my people to not make longer the natural feeling that my death will raise. I urge them to go out and have fun and to help time in its useful capacity of making forget. There is no advantage to fill out with bitterness and prolonged tears the short days of our existence. Therefore, they shall not wear black mourning clothes, because they are above all anti hygienic to our clime (climate¿). They shall look for distractions, theater, parties and travels in order to dissolve this little cloud that came to disturb the regular order of every day life. We need to accept Nature's law." 4"Desejaria que se poupasse aos meus a cena de vestimenta do corpo que bem pode ser envolvido em simples lençol. Nada de convites ou comunicações para enterro, nem missa de sétimo dia. Nem luto tão pouco. Este traz-se no coração e não nas roupas. Peço encarecidamente aos meus que não prolonguem o natural sentimento que trará a minha morte. Que se divirtam, que passeiem, que ajudem o tempo na bemfazeja obra de fazer esquecer. Não há vantagem alguma de amargurar com lágrimas prolongadas os tão curtos dias de nossa existência. Portanto, que não usem roupas negras que, além de tudo, são anti-higiênicas em nosso clima; que procurem diversões, teatros, festas, viagens, a fim de que desfaçam essa pequena nuvem que veio empanar a normalidade do viver de todos os dias. É preciso que nos conformemos com os ditames da Natureza." 5After these two extracts, we can notice some aspects of Osvaldo Cruz's personality.

He was a scientist of his time, a practicle man, able to understand and manipulate the theatrical elements of our society. Someone who puts science above conventions ("my death will not be presented with the usual formalities", "they shall not wear black mourning clothes, because they are above all anti hygienic to our clime", "We keep (the mourning) in our hearts, not in our clothes" etc. But beyond the image of the impartial scientist, we can notice that he was also conscious of his gestures, as it is required by a politician of any time, here in his last effort to impose upon others his power of persuasion.

Osvaldo Cruz was born on August 5, 1872 in São Luiz do Paraitinga, a small town in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. At 20 years old, he received his medical degree at Rio de Janeiro, with a specialization on a field in its infancy: microbiology. The following year he married Emilia da Fonseca. In 1896 Osvaldo Cruz moved to Paris to pursue his studies in microbiology at the Pasteur Institute where he stayed for two years. When he returned to Brazil, President Rodrigues Alves appointed him the country's Director of Public Health (the similar today of a Health Minister). It was in this context that Osvaldo Cruz travelled for the first time to the Amazon, in a long trip he did to supervise the ports of Brazil going from the South to the North of the country.

Trips to the Amazon

At this time, the Amazon region was in the middle of the rubber boom, when the ports of Manaus and Belém received hundreds of immigrants each week. Since the American chemist Charles Goodyear developed the vulcanization method in 1839, rubber began to be a high-valued commodity. From 1840 to 1910, the price of rubber increased more than 1,000%, attracting a population of half a million immigrants into the Brazilian Amazon. The great part of these immigrants were people from the Northeastern part of Brazil who fled the drought. The rubber extraction industry generated wealth and promoted the development of the cities of Manaus, Belém, and Porto Velho (Daou, 2000, pp.18-23).

Osvaldo Cruz travelled accompanied by his secretary João Pedroso. They visited 24 harbors during 68 days, from September 27 to December 6, 1905 (Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, 1972, Introduction, w.p.). There is no report from this expedition at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation archives.

In 1910, Osvaldo Cruz did another trip to the Amazon, together with his assistant Belisário Penna. The mission had the purpose to investigate the health conditions of the workers that were building the Madeira-Mamoré Railway. This railroad was an important clause of the treaty signed between Brazil and Bolivia on November 11, 1903, as a compensation for the irregular occupation by Brazilian rubber tappers of a Bolivian territory at upper Purus river margins.

After two failed initiatives to build the railroad, the contract was awarded to the American entrepreneur Percival Farquhar in 1907. Since the beginning, the area's sanitary conditions posed the main obstacle to the project. In the medical team of Madeira-Mamoré Railway Co. there were five physicians who had also worked on the Panama Canal that was being built at the time (Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, 1972, Introdução, s.p.). To work with the medical team of the railway the company engaged Osvaldo Cruz.

In this mission's report Osvaldo Cruz exposed his indignation in view of the poor sanitary conditions of the area, writing that "the attempts to build this railway have been marked by real hectacombs" (Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, 1972, p.6). He was not exaggerating, only in the third phase of the railway building, from 1907 to 1912, the official death rate was 1,593 (Hardman, 1988, p. 105). However, it is possible to estimate a higher rate, considering that it was in the third phase that the it was made the sanitation of the region. In view of that, Madeira-Mamoré was named the "Devil's Railway", and it was said that each railroad tie costed a life.

Osvaldo Cruz listed the main diseases he found: malaria, yellow fever, tuberculosis, beriberi , dysentery, hookworm infection, pneumonia, measles and alcoholism. However, among all diseases, malaria was the great terror of the region. According to the bacteriologist, malaria infection was so common that "to people (of that area) the condition of being sick was normal".

(Cruz, Chagas e Peixoto, p.32). He observed that there was no preventive action against malaria.

Besides, the population's access to treatment was expensive and difficult, as there were some traders that delivered a mixture of starch and baking soda in place of quinine, used in the disease's prevention (Ibidem, p.12).

At the end of the report, Osvaldo Cruz established a series of twenty measures that had to be executed in order to improve the sanitation of the area. Thanks to this systematic plan, the railroad could be finished and opened on August 1, 1912 (Ibidem, p.42-44).

The last trips of Osvaldo Cruz to the Amazon happened between 1910 and 1911. He was commissioned to fight a yellow fever epidemic in Pará. On September 7 1911, the governor João Antunes Luís Coelho published the results of yellow fever campaign in the annual report sent to the Congressmen of Pará. According to this report, yellow fever was finished in the state. Osvaldo Cruz's name was definitively associated with the progress that Brazil needed.

After sanitation improvements, the country's development was just a matter of time. However, the last sanitation campaign conducted by Osvaldo Cruz would reveal it would be more challenging than expected.

In 1910, the Asian rubber from British colonies entered in the international market, ending the Amazonian rubber boom. In 1912, the Brazilian government tried to revert the market loss of the rubber trade in the region by creating the Superintendence of Rubber Defense. The superintendence commissioned Osvaldo Cruz to organize the sanitation efforts in the Amazon.

The area covered by the commission was the state of Amazonas and the territories of Acre and

Roraima (now states).

A medical team travelled to the Amazon between October 1912 and March 1913. This commission was composed of the physicians Carlos Chagas, João Pedroso de Albuquerque, and Pacheco Leão. They travelled to Amazonas between October 1912 and March 1913. On September 11, 1913, Osvaldo Cruz presented a report to the Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce Pedro de Toledo, entitled "Sanitation conditions of the Amazon Valley". Although he had not traveled to the Amazon at this time, Osvaldo Cruz coordinated the work of the medical team from a distance and signed the first and the fourth parts of the report.

In this report, Osvaldo Cruz presents similar conclusions to the previous report of 1910, drawing attention to the need of fighting malaria. However, with the market growth of the rubber from British colonies, the Rubber Defense Superintendence was extinguished in less than two years.

The Amazon at the margins of Brazil: confluences between Euclides da Cunha and

Osvaldo Cruz

The content of Osvaldo Cruz's reports was published on many newspapers of the time and it confirmed to the public opinion the observations that have been made by Euclides da Cunha a little earlier during his trip to the Amazon. In order to investigate boundary issues with Peru, Brazilian government sent a commission to the Amazon region in 1904, headed by the engineer and writer Euclides da Cunha (1866Cunha ( -1909)). The Treaty of Petrópolis, signed in 1903 to solve a series of armed conflicts between Brazil and Bolivia had brought discontentment to other countries, as they also had limits problems with Brazil in the Amazon region. Peru was among those countries. As it was said earlier here, after he arrived in the region, Euclides da Cunha wrote other texts published posthumously in the book Land without history, in 1909. The original idea of the author of Rebellion in the backlands was to produce a book about the Amazon similar to the one he had written about Canudos' conflicts in the interior of Brazil. This second book would be named Lost Paradise, after the text of the British writer John Milton, from the seventeenth century.

I quote an extract of a letter from Euclides to his friend Arthur Lemos, where he details his intentions:

"If I would write now I would draw an unintelligible and turbulent miniature of chaos, a perfect mixture of flooded forests and vast brilliant skies. Between such extremes, there is a new world, with its infinite forms, that was entirely unknown to me. Furthermore, this Amazon reminds us the genial space definition of Milton: it hides in itself. The foreigner contemplates it without seeing it, through a vertigo. It only partially appears to him, slowly, anxiously. It is a greatness that demands the microscopic subtle penetration and the extremely precise and short observation of the analists; it is an infinity that demands to be measured."

« Se escrevesse agora esboçaria miniaturas do caos, incompreensíveis e tumultuárias, uma mistura formidável de vastas florestas inundadas e de vastos céus resplandescentes. Entre tais extremos está, com suas inumeráveis modalidades, um novo mundo que me era inteiramente desconhecido. Além disso, esta Amazônia recorda a genial definição do espaço de Milton: esconde-se em si mesma. O forasteiro contempla-a sem a ver através de uma vertigem. Ela só lhe aparece aos poucos, vagarosamente, torturantemente. É uma grandeza que exige a penetração sutil dos microscópios e a visão apertadinha e breve dos analistas; é um infinito que deve ser dosado". Euclides da Cunha, carta a Artur Lemos, de 1905. (Cunha, 1995, p. 696) The book remained a project as the writer was killed by gun in 1909 by his wife's lover, in self-defense. Euclides da Cunha's texts about the region represents a vast material preserved in different places in Brazil. It can be partially found at the National Historical and Geographic Institute, the Brazilian Academy of Letters, O Estado de São Paulo newspaper's archives, as well as the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations (known as "Itamaraty").

As reference works about the subject we can find in Portuguese the Euclides da To write about the Amazon, Euclides surrounded himself with the opinion of foreign travelers and naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt (Germany), Louis Agassiz (Switzerland), Walter Bates (GB), Carl von Martius (Germany), Johann von Spix (Germany) and many others. The problem of Euclides influences is an issue the permanently occupies the author's mind, as we can see when he writes about Theodor Roosevelt's book American Ideals (1904), in which he quotes the American politian on this matter: "Those severe and strongly ironic pages seem to have been written for usbecause among us it shall be constantly, even exhaustively said that 'it is better to be an original than an imitation, even when the imitation is something better than the original'. Moreover, to be a first-class Brazilian, however modest the title were, 'is fifty-fold better than to be a second-class imitation of a Frenchman or Englishman". (Cunha,Obras Completas,p. 195) In view of that, with the project of being a genuine Brazilian, Euclides da Cunha finds in the Amazon his main raw material: the rubber tapper, original from the migrations flows from the Northeast. He was the logical continuation of Canudos's victims, killed by the government army, described in Rebellion in the backlands. In the article "This accursed climate", published in the book The Amazon: land without History, Euclides da Cunha writes about them: "When the great droughts of 1879-1880, 1889-1900, 1900-1901 scourged the arid sertões (backlands) and in a few weeks the coastal cities filled with a population of refugees, starving, overcome with fever and smallpox, the single concern of the public powers consisted of liberating the cities as soon as possible from that invasion of moribund barbarians infesting Brazil. Steamboats were quickly crammed full of those troublesome cargoes consigned to death. They were sent to the Amazon -vast, unpopulated, almost unknown -, which amounted to expatriating them within their own country. That martyred multitude, all rights lost, family ties severed, torn apart in the tumult of forced departure, in effect set out bearing sealed marching orders to the unknown. And it went with its starving, its fever victims, and its pox infected, in conditions that would contaminate and corrupt the healthiest locales in the world. And once this purgative task was performed, no further attention was paid. Government intervention ceased. Never, down to our own days, has a single government agent, or doctor, been involved in the case. The banished bore with them the single, sorrowful mission of simply disappearing." (Da Cunha, The Amazon: land without History, p.36) "Quando as grandes secas de 1879-1880, 1889-1890, 1900-1901 flamejavam sobre os sertões adustos, e as cidades do litoral se enchiam em poucas semanas de uma população adventícia, de famintos assombrosos, devorados das febres e das bexigasa preocupação exclusiva dos poderes públicos consistia no libertá-las quanto antes daquelas invasões de bárbaros moribundos que infestavam o Brasil. Abarrotavam-se, às carreiras, os vapores, com aqueles fardos agitantes consignados à morte. Mandavam-nos para a Amazôniavastíssima, despovoada, quase ignotao que equivalia a expatriá-los dentro da própria pátria. [...] Mas feita a tarefa expurgatória, não se curava mais dela. Cessava a intervenção governamental. Nunca, até aos nossos dias, a acompanhou um só agente oficial, ou um médico. Os banidos levavam a missão dolorosíssima e única de desaparecerem..." (Cunha,Op.Cit.,p. 276) Five years after Euclides da Cunha's trip to the Amazon, in the 1910 report, when he was working for Madeira-Mamoré Railway Company, Osvaldo Cruz wrote about Santo Antônio do Madeira village, the place where the company's workers were settled. The village is now the city of Porto Velho, capital of Rondônia state and it was founded by the railroad building company.

"The village has no sewage, no running water system, nor lighting of any kind. Garbage and all vegetative life products are thrown onto the streets, if those narrow, undulating alleys that cross this unfortunate village deserve the name. There are hills of trash against the walls of the houses. Large holes in the center of the village receive rainwater and water from the flood and become dangerous swamps from which clouds of anophelines 6 arise, spreading death throughout the village. There is no slaughterhouse. Cattle is slaughtered in the middle of the street, by gunshot, and the undesired parts, like the head, viscera, leather, shells, etc, are abandoned at the same spot of the sacrifice, lying in a lake of blood. Everything is rotting near the houses and the fetid smell it has is indescribable. On the organisms living in such an environment, malaria executes the greatest devastation. There is no child population and the few children that can be seen have a very short life. There are no native people known among the inhabitants of Santo Antônio: they all die." "A vila não tem esgotos, nem água canalizada, nem iluminação de qualquer natureza. O lixo e todos os produtos da vida vegetativa são atirados às ruas, se merecem este nome vielas esburacadas que cortam a infeliz povoação. Encontram-se colinas de lixo apoiadas às paredes de habitações. Grandes buracos no centro do povoado recebem as águas das chuvas e da cheia do rio e transformam-se em pântanos perigosos, donde se levantam aluviões de anofelinas que espalham a morte por todo o povoado. Não há matadouro. O gado é abatido em plena rua, à carabina, e as porções não aproveitadas: cabeça, vísceras, couro, cascos etc., são abandonados no próprio local em que foi a rês sacrificada, jazendo num lago de sangue. Tudo apodrece junto às habitações e o fétido que se desprende é indescritível. Sobre os organismos que vivem em tal meio o impaludismo faz as maiores devastações que se conhecem. A população infantil não existe e as poucas crianças que se vêem têm vida por tempo muito curto. Não se conhecem entre os habitantes de Santo Antônio pessoas nascidas no local: essas morrem todas". (Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, 1972, p.10.) Banished in their own land, the moribund barbarians that had migrated to the region accomplished the "single, sorrowful mission of simply disappearing", in the words of Euclides.

In the same article "This accursed climate", Euclides da Cunha details the food conditions of rubber tappers: "Year after year, he is deprived of nutrition, which is the solidest base of tropical hygiene, for he does not engage in even the most rudimentary cultivation to provide himself with it. Indeed, in contradiction of all precept, his diet is limited to various kinds of suspect and harmful canned goods supplemented by meat according to the luck of the hunt." (Cunha, The Amazon: land without History, p.39) " A alimentação, que é a base mais firme da higiene tropical, não lha fornece, durante largos anos, a mais rudimentar cultura. Constitui-se, ao revés de todos os preceitos, adstrita aos fornecimentos escassos de todas as conservas suspeitas e nocivas, com o derivativo aleatório das caçadas." (Cunha,Ibidem,p. 278) In the report of 1910, Osvaldo Cruz writes about the food diet of the inhabitants of Madeira River and its tributaries: "In the region below the waterfalls, where there are many transport facilities, the rubber tappers' feeding is extremely poor and of terrible quality. Addicted to alcohol, of which they incredibly abuse, they don't have proper food and they pay fabulous prices for it. The base of the food is dried meat and manioc flour. The first usually arrives damaged, which is very easy, in view of the terrible conditions of storage and the humidity of the region. The ones who feed better themselves make use of canned food coming most of the times from Manaus and Pará. These preserves are sold without scruple and largely deteriorated. The fraud comes to a point that the import houses have an employee called box sealer, whose work consists in stick deformed cans, in order to give out the putrefaction gases and to weld the opening made". (Cruz,Chagas & Peixoto,Ibidem,p.11) "Na região abaixo das cachoeiras, onde as facilidades de transporte são grandes, é deficientíssima e péssima a alimentação dos seringueiros. Viciados pelo álcool, de que abusam de maneira incrível, não têm alimentação conveniente e por essa mesma pagam preços fabulosos. A base da alimentação é a carne seca e a farinha d'água. A primeira quase sempre chega deteriorada, o que é facílimo à vista de seu péssimo acondicionamento e da umidade da região. Os que melhor se alimentam fazem uso de conservas que vêm em grande parte de Manaus e Pará. Estas conservas são vendidas sem escrúpulo e em grande parte deterioradas. E a fraude vai a tal ponto que as casas de importação de conservas têm um empregado denominado caixeiro da solda e cujo mister consiste em furar as latas deformadas pelos gases da putrefação, a fim de dar saída a esses e soldar a abertura feita." (Cruz,Chagas & Peixoto,Ibidem,p.11) The texts of Osvaldo Cruz and Euclides da Cunha echo the same problems and the same diagnosis: climate or nature are not the great evil in the Amazon, but the absolute absence of of public services. Osvaldo Cruz says in the report of 1913, about the sanitary conditions in the Amazon valley: "Epidemiological elements, however, are always the same and in the Amazon, as everywhere else, they can be reached through the adoption of measures that can mitigate them. The cause of an immense hecatomb and the origin of prejudices against the natural conditions of the Amazon is the absolute absence of medical assistance. It is the complete lack of prophylaxis against malaria. It is the abandonment of proletarian to a perfectly avoidable morbid state, or the fatality of death caused by a curable disease. What, in short, constitutes in the Amazon valley the greatest fatality is the disregard for human life on the part of the public authorities and the rubber farm owners. In a place where the wealth brought by the results of an extractive industry depending only on the human labor, there is not the very notion of a life!" (Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, Ibidem, p.122) « Os elementos epidemiológicos, porém, são sempre os mesmos e na Amazônia, como em toda parte, acham-se ao alcance de medidas muito capazes de atenuá-los. O que aí existe, ocasionando imensa hecatombe e malsinando as condições naturais de toda a Amazônia, é a mais absoluta ausência de assistência médica e medicamentosa, é o desconhecimento completo das medidas de profilaxia individual contra a malária, é o abandono do proletário a um estado mórbido perfeitamente atenuável ou a fatalidade da morte por uma moléstia perfeitamente curável. O que, em fim, constitui no vale do Amazonas a maior fatalidade é esse desprezo pela vida humana da parte dos poderes públicos e dos possuidores de seringais, não existindo lá, onde a riqueza, trazida pelos resultados de uma indústria extrativa, só depende do trabalho humano, a noção exata de uma existência"! (Cruz, Chagas & Peixoto, Ibidem, p.122)

The similar analysis can be found in "The Amazon: land without History , from Euclides da Cunha: "Although painful examples could be adduced to accompany this overview, going through them would be useless. What comes definitively to the fore is the urgent need for measures to rescue this hidden, abandoned culture: a work law that ennobles human effort; an austere justice that curbs excesses; and some form of homestead provision that definitively links man and land". (Cunha, The Amazon: land without History, p.261) "Esta resenha comportaria alguns exemplos bem dolorosos. Fora inútil apontá-los. Dela ressalta impressionadoramente a urgência de medidas que salvem a sociedade obscura e abandonada: uma lei do trabalho que nobilite o esforço do homem; uma justiça austera que lhe cerceie os desmandos; e uma forma qualquer do homestead que o consorcie definitivamente à terra". (Cunha, À margem da História p. 261)

Conclusion

To make a conclusion, I would like to clarify an idea that this paper evokes. The question I would like to make is, in which extent the texts of the physician Osvaldo Cruz and the writer Euclides da Cunha contribute to create a critical view about the Amazon?

As an attempt to answer to this question, I would like to bring the thoughts of Brazilian "Um estágio fundamental na superação da dependência é a capacidade de produzir obras de primeira ordem, influenciadas, não por modelos estrangeiros imediatos, mas por exemplos nacionais anteriores. Isto significa o estabelecimento do que se poderia chamar um pouco mecanicamente de causalidade interna, que torna inclusive mais fecundos os empréstimos tomados às outras culturas". (Candido, 2011, p.184) In this sense, the external content is always decoded in a national articulation. Thus, reporting to the Amazon, the texts of Osvaldo Cruz and Euclides da Cunha mentioned in this paper, together with other Brazilians that went to the region at the early twentieth century, such as writers Alberto Rangel, José Veríssimo and Manuel Bandeira and the engineer Cândido Rondon can help to create a national approach about the region. Furthermore, following Euclides da Cunha's steps, it is important to consider foreign influences, in order to build a dialog. To read these texts together and to place them side by side constitute the establishment of a fertile dialog. It helps to build a new way of thinking not only in historical or political terms, but also in the literary and cultural fields, which is the space I want to explore later in my research.

1 -

 1 Title: Travels to the center of the periphery: reading the texts of Osvaldo Cruz and Euclides da Cunha about the Amazon between 1905 and 1913. 2 -Author: Marcia Caetano Langfeldt 3 -University: Paris 3 -Sorbonne-Nouvelle -Centre de Recherches sur les Pays Lusophones (CREPAL) -Research Center of Lusophone Countries

  In 1903, following the success obtained with the publication of the book Rebellion in the backlands (1902), Euclides da Cunha became member of the National Historical and Geographic Institute and the Brazilian Letters Academy. However, although he had fame and recognition, he found himself without a job in 1904 (Santana, 2000, p. 902). With the purpose of getting the position of chief of the Purus River Commission, Euclides da Cunha wrote four articles about the subject, before going to the Amazon. These articles were published in the newspapers O País and O Estado de São Paulo in 1904 and, later, in the book Contrastes e Confrontos (1907) Contrasts and Conflicts.

Cunha' s

 s Complete Works Edition under the coordination of Afrânio Coutinho, published in 1966, 1995 and 2005. There is also the book of Leandro Tocantins Euclides da Cunha e o paraíso perdido (Euclides da Cunha and the lost paradise) (1966), the commented edition of Euclides' letters by Walnice Nogueira Galvão and Oswaldo Galotti, (1997) and the book Vingança da Hileia, Euclides da Cunha, a Amazônia e a Literatura, about the literary project of Euclides in the Amazon, by Francisco Foot Hardman (2009). In English, À margem da história was published in 2006 under the title The Amazon: land without History, translated by Ronald W.Sousa. I would like to mention the book The scramble for the Amazon and the lost paradise of Euclides da Cunha, by professor Susanna Hecht of the University of Chicago, published in 2013, a 632-pages book that brings Euclides da Cunha's life and works about the Amazon.

  literary critic Antonio Candido about dialog. In the article "Literatura e Subdesenvolvimento" (Literature and Underdevelopment) Candido suggests the adoption of a systematic dialog between both external and internal influences, in order to create what he calls a national critical thinking. I quote him: "A fundamental step to achieve independence (of thinking) is the ability of producing first-class works influenced, not by immediate foreign models, but by previous national examples. This means the establishment of what one might call a little mechanically an inner conversation, which makes it more useful loans taken to other cultures" (Candido, 2011, p.184)

CRUZ, Osvaldo. Testamento, site da Academia Brasileira de Letras. http://www.academia.org.br/abl/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?infoid=352&sid=112. Acessed in Jun, 6, 2015.

CRUZ, Osvaldo. Testamento, site da Academia Brasileira de Letras. http://www.academia.org.br/abl/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?infoid=352&sid=112. Acessado em 30/06/2015.

Malaria mosquitos.


Marcia Caetano Da Silva

Caetano Langfeldt

Marcia Caetano

Silva Caetano

The hypertext of the Amazon: reading Euclides da Cunha's unfinished book

1

The hypertext of the Amazon: reading Euclides da Cunha's unfinished book

Marcia Caetano Langfeldt 1

Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.

Italo Calvino

In the early twentieth century Brazilian government sponsored several trips to the country's interior. At that time, the main interest was to incorporate these areas into the larger national project begun during the Brazilian Empire and that continued when Brazil became a republic in 1889. It was in this context that the military engineer, journalist and writer Euclides da Cunha (1866-1909) went to the Amazon, commissioned by the government of the Brazilian First Republic (1889-1930). In 1904, the Brazilian Foreign Relations Ministry and the Peruvian government agreed to constitute a binational commission in order to collect data in the region of upper Purus river. Euclides da Cunha headed the Brazilian team of the Commission. The Commission's purpose was to collect measurements of the geographical limits of the Purus River region to provide detailed information to the boundaries negotiations between Peru and Brazil.

The agreement between the two countries happened only in 1909, with the Treaty of Petropolis.

In 1902, Euclides da Cunha had published the book Os Sertões, translated into English in 1944 by Samuel Putnam as Rebellion in the Backlands and in 2010 by Elizabeth Lowe as Backlands: the Canudos Campaign2 . The book, a mix of science and literature, brought fame and success to the author, who became a member of the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute and the Brazilian Academy of Letters. However, although recognized, Euclides da Cunha found himself without a job. As happened in Canudos campaign, he wrote about the Amazon before even landing there. In order to be appointed as an engineer of the commission, he wrote four articles on the subject. These articles were published in newspapers of Sao Paulo and were later published in the book Contrastes e Confrontos (Contrasts and Confrontations), in 1907.

In addition to these articles and the Comission's reports, Euclides da Cunha also wrote a book of essays, À margem da história (1909) (At the margins of history), translated into English as The Amazon: land without History (2006) and a foreword in a friend's book 3 . He also gave interviews and made speeches and produced a correspondence during the period, as well as travel notes, marginal notes of other people's writings and made commented maps. This set is known today as the "Amazonian writings of Euclides da Cunha". As it happens in his other writings, he blurs the delimitations between essay, fiction and journalistic discourse. His original intention was to make a book about the Amazon, similar to the one he produced about the Canudos war. This second book would be titled "Lost Paradise", in reference to the work of the English poet John Milton, from the seventeenth century. But the project was never finished, as he was killed in selfdefense in 1909 by his wife's lover. In order to write about the Amazon, Euclides da Cunha surrounded himself with the opinion of foreign naturalists such as the Germans Alexander von Humboldt and Carl von Martius, Swiss Botanic Louis Agassiz, British explorers Henry Walter Bates, Alfred Russel Wallace and William Chandless. In his writings, he also dialogs with English poet John Milton and French writer Victor Hugo, among other, mixing scientific discourse, journalism and poetry. Impressed by these readings, Euclides da Cunha finds in the Amazon the inspiration to write his next book, the one that remained unwritten, but that comes to us today, through this set of writings and the readings that the author made, in order to build his project.

In the book A imitação dos sentidos (1995), Leopoldo Bernucci discusses the mimeses in Os Sertões in a different perspective: taking mimesis not as a representation of the similarity, but the representation of difference. As he argues that the myth of artistic originality was created by Romanticism, Bernucci points out the presence of other authors in Euclides da Cunha writings, approaching him to authors, such as Victor Hugo, Domingo Sarmiento, Graciliano Ramos etc.

The purpose of this communication is to analyze the mimeses in the Amazonian writings of Euclides da Cunha, based on Roland Barthes' concept of interpretation in the book S / Z: "to interpret a text is not to give it a (more or less justified, more or less free) meaning, but on the contrary to appreciate what plural constitutes it." 4 The permanent unfinished work that Euclides' "Lost Paradise" will always be -would this have really been the book's title?gives us the opportunity to approach the vision and the method of the writer and the intellectual that contributed to build not only the Amazon region as we know it today, but also Brazil, as an emerging nation in the local and global arena, a country full of possibilities, shaping its geographical and ideological limits.

Finally, we will connect Euclides da Cunha with some of the authors quoted by him in this Amazonian writings, we will consider the ideas and opinions that interested him, in order to determine the guidelines for the national project he wanted to be part of. This purpose of this paper is not to make an exhaustive analysis, as we don't have the necessary time to do it, but to point out some of these topics that can introduce the subject.

Around the book

As we have said before, Os Sertões was well received both by the public and the critics, granting recognition and admiration to its author from some of the most important institutions and influent intellectuals from the national scene. Among others, we can mention the writer and member of the Brazilian Academy of Letter José Veríssimo, the most influent literary critic of the time, that published a positive review the following day of the book's publication at the most influent newspaper of the time, Correio da Manhã, in December 3, 1902, in Rio de Janeiro. Soon afterwards, in February and March of the next year, the reviews of Araripe Junior, Medeiros e Albuquerque and Coelho Neto were published and they highlighted the qualities of the author.

Regarding the public reception, we can mention the fact that when he died, in 1909, the author had already seen three editions of his book, in 1902, 1903 and 1905 and left another revised edition to be published posthumously by another publisher, Francisco Alves, who had already published a previous edition soon after the author's death, in 1911.

The highly positive reception of the book instilled a desire in the author to abandon the engineering career to devote himself exclusively to literature, his "real vocation", as he states in a letter to the president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters Machado de Assis. This explains why he quits his job as a responsible for public works for the state of São Paulo, but soon after that he changes his mind and starts to look for a commission in the upper Purus river in the Amazon.

Reading the correspondence of the writer, we can see that his main intention was to write a second relevant book. In a letter to his father, announcing his appointment to the Upper Purus Commission on August 8, 1904, he says: I have just received a telegram from Mr.Oliveira Lima5 announcing my name to the commission of engineers to the limits with Peru. I still don't know what my function will be, but I will accept it anyway. I can only see benefits in doing thisas a Brazilian, in order to provide a service to my country, as an engineer, as it is a decent work , and as a writer, who could not have a better subject. 6 On March 10, 1905, in a letter to his friend, writer Coelho Neto, while Euclides was living in the city of Manaus, Amazonas, where he was doing the preparations for the trip to the Purus region, he said: I have been living without light in my spirit, half unconscious. I will tell you nothing here about the people and the land, but later, in a book: the "Lost Paradise", where I will revenge the amazing nature of all brutalities committed by the irrational people that have been destroying it since the eighteenth century. What a mission and what a dream! And on the same day, he asks to José Veríssimo (member of Brazilian Academy of Letters): "Do you think "Lost Paradise" a good title for my book about the Amazon? It reflects well my incurable pessimism. But how true it is! In another letter in the same month to his friend Arthur Lemos:

If I would write now I would draw an unintelligible and turbulent miniature of chaos, a perfect mixture of flooded forests and vast brilliant skies. Between such extremes, there is a new world, with its infinite forms, that was entirely unknown to me. Furthermore, this Amazon reminds us the genial space definition of Milton: it hides in itself. The foreigner contemplates it without seeing it, through a vertigo. It only partially appears to him, slowly, anxiously. It is a greatness that demands the microscopic subtle penetration and the extremely precise and short observation of the analysts; it is an infinity that demands to be measured. 7 The problem of Euclides influences is an issue the permanently occupies the author's mind, as we can see when he writes about Theodor Roosevelt's book American Ideals (1904), in which he quotes the American ex-president on this matter:

Those severe and strongly ironic pages seem to have been written for usbecause among us it shall be constantly, even exhaustively said that 'it is better to be an original than an imitation, even when the imitation is something better than the original'. Moreover, to be a first-class Brazilian, however modest the title were, 'is fifty-fold better than to be a second-class imitation servile copy of a Frenchman or Englishman. 8 Thus, with the design of being a "genuine Brazilian", Euclides da Cunha finds in the Amazon his main raw material: the rubber tapper, original from the migrations flows from the Northeast. He was the logical continuation of Canudos's victims, killed by the government army, described in Rebellion in the backlands.

The Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha

The literary work mentioned by the author as the source of inspiration for his future book on the Amazon, the poem in ten books of John Milton, Paradise Lost, is about the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Paradise and their adaptation to their new life on Earth. If we replace the God of Milton by the Brazilian government that was expelling unwanted people from the coastal areas to send them to the Amazon, it becomes clear the analogy Euclides intended to establish between divine punishment that marked humanity forever and the public abandonment that was determined to those internal immigrants.

Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd

For those rebellious, here their Prison ordain'd In utter darkness, and their portion set As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n As far from the Center thrice to th'utmost Pole. O how unlike the place from whence they fell!9

It is interesting to compare this excerpt from the poem with the Euclides da Cunha's account of the immigrants who had followed for the extraction region of the rubber in the article " This accursed climate ", from the book At the margins of the History:

When the great droughts of 1879-1880, 1889-1900, 1900-1901 scourged the arid sertões (backlands) and in a few weeks the coastal cities filled with a population of refugees, starving, overcome with fever and smallpox, the single concern of the public powers consisted of liberating the cities as soon as possible from that invasion of moribund barbarians infesting Brazil. Steamboats were quickly crammed full of those troublesome cargoes consigned to death. They were sent to the Amazon -vast, unpopulated, almost unknown -, which amounted to expatriating them within their own country. That martyred multitude, all rights lost, family ties severed, torn apart in the tumult of forced departure, in effect set out bearing sealed marching orders to the unknown. And it went with its starving, its fever victims, and its pox infected, in conditions that would contaminate and corrupt the healthiest locales in the world. And once this purgative task was performed, no further attention was paid. Government intervention ceased. Never, down to our own days, has a single government agent, or doctor, been involved in the case. The banished bore with them the single, sorrowful mission of simply disappearing. 10 We and the others In the early twentieth century, there was a long list of travel writings produced by adventurers, foreign scientists and naturalists who helped to shape the image we had of the Amazon. Euclides da Cunha read a large volume of these texts, both in his articles and in his letters, he quotes and comments the observations made by his predecessors, such as Wallace, Bates, Humboldt and Agassiz. Many of these travelers, if not all, tended to see the native populations, both indigenous and mestizos, as individuals without the necessary qualities for the development of the region, due to the important biological determinism that prevailed in the scientific writings of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Brazilian historian Gilberto Freire dressed a portrait of Euclides da Cunha that is now a reference work in the author's critical work, where he points out the issue of biological determinism in many of Euclide's writings. As an important interpreter of the social-cultural mechanisms of Brazilians, Freire seems to be disturbed by some of the propositions stated by Euclides da Cunha, under a biological bias. In fact, biological determinism was an important factor in the interpretation of the world made by travelers that had come to the Amazon before the beginning of the twentieth century. We can find traces of this even in the work of the more enlightened scientists, such as German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, named as the "second discoverer of America" and an important presence in Euclides da Cunha's writings. Humboldt traveled to America from 1799 to 1809 and published an extensive scientific work, as well as a personal account of these trips, such as the Scientific Report, which he wrote and published in Paris, between 1814 and 1825. Although Humboldt was against the slavery system, we can find statements on biological determinism in his writings.

As we can see, the issue race, biological determinism and evolutionism were important keys to understand these European naturalists who visited the Amazon and Humboldt is an 10 Da Cunha, The Amazon: land without History, p.36. example of that ideological environment. It is also important to mention Swiss Louis Agassiz, who visited the region accompanied by his wife, between 1865 and 1866, collecting numerous photographs of human samples of different races, constituting what at the time was considered an important anthropological collection, but that now constitutes an unfortunate example of an ethnocentric and racist science.

Taking Euclides da Cunha, we could mention many examples that he was trying to adapt to this ideological landscape, but we will mention only the article "Between Madeira and Javari", published in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo on May 29, 1904, before the author traveled to the Amazon:

In reality, what happened here (in the Amazon) and still happens is the natural selection of the strong. As it is not enough to be rich to adventure in the unknown. It requires, above all, a strong will, an obstinacy, a fearlessness and even a privileged physical constitution. 11

In fact, as pointed out by American geographer Susanna Hecht [START_REF] Hecht | The scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha[END_REF] , the three pillars of scientific racismenvironmentalism, scientific anthropology and social Darwinismhad justified slavery in Brazil and the social inequality that prevailed after the abolition of slavery. According to Hecht, Euclides da Cunha was based on environmental evolutionary theory, which claimed that Brazilian miscegenation had generated a race that was best adapted to the region. Gilberto Freire had already observed that event impregnated by this biological determinism of the Brazilian intellectuals of the period, Euclides da Cunha never advocate for a superiority of race, seeking a quite unique way of analysis for his time, rather taking historic-social elements to explain the places he visited. 13 In addition to that it is important to note a clear contradiction between Euclides's statements and the determinism, that helps to understand the mission he had assigned for himself: the nationalization of the Amazon. Now, within this perspective, combined with a certain sympathy for the people who immigrated to the region, the author clearly overlaps the determinist [...] Those strong mestizos and this exceptional Saxon are not effects of the environment; they arise in spite of it; they triumph in a final fight, in which succumbed in a great number, those not gifted with the same strength, energy and persistence. In this case we must throw away at once a sterile sentimentalism and recognize in the climate a superior function. [...] It ruled, moralized. It elected and reelected for life the strongest. It eliminated and eliminates the unfit, that has to leave or to die. And it is certainly this admirable climate that prepares new steps for the strong.

Final considerations

If the correspondent journalist who went to Canudos war was not entirely aware that he would become a successful writer in the Brazilian intellectual scene, the engineer who headed the Upper Purus Commission knew exactly that his observations were going to be published in a book that everybody would read. Thus, his role as an engineer in the process of the integration of the Amazon in Brazil cannot be dissociated from the project of the writer that wanted to produce his masterpiece and of the man of ideas, that desired the recognition of his effort.

The comparison between Euclides da Cunha and other authors highlights that the author of Rebellion in the Backlands appropriates ideas and aesthetic elements of others, in order to support his own views and to constitute himself as a "tropical intellectual", as Gilberto Freire says. A tropical ideology that combines a wider and more social approach in the analysis of Brazil of his time.

  The wide range of Euclides da Cunha Amazonian writings is divided between the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute, the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, the Itamaraty (Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the National Library and the Army's archives. As reference works, there are Obras Completas, a two-volume book with the complete works of Euclides da Cunha, published under Afrânio Coutinho direction in 1966 in Portuguese, with two reeditions in 1995 and 2005, the book of Leandro Tocantins Euclides da Cunha e o Paraíso Perdido (Euclides da Cunha and the Lost Paradise) in 1966, the author's correspondence, published by Francisco Venâncio Filho in 1938, and by Walnice Nogueira Galvão and Osvaldo Galotti in 1997 and the book of Euclides da Cunha's poetry, organized by Francisco Foot Hardman and Leopoldo Bernucci, published in 2009.

PhD Candidate in Brazilian Literature at Sorbonne Nouvelle University e-mail : marcia.langfeldt@gmail.com

The author narrates the story of the Canudos war (1893-1897) in Bahia, Brazil, where a community formed around a messianic leader fought against the republican army.

Inferno Verde (1908) (Green Hell), by Alberto Rangel, a short stories book about the Amazon.

Translation made in 1974 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, published by Hill and Wang, New York.

Worked at the Itamaraty, was later the Brazilian Ambassador in Washington.

Cunha, Correspondência de Euclides da Cunha, p. 219.

Cunha, Correspondência de Euclides da Cunha,

Obras Completas, p. 195.

Milton, Paradise Lost:a poem written in tem books, p. 5.