Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

A Farmhouse in the Forest Region

Iquitos is the centre of the rubber trade for Peru, and substantially all the product now goes out from it to the Atlantic coast under the name of Para rubber; but with the completion of the central highway or transcontinental railway much of the product unquestionably will come to the Pacific coast and pass through the Panama Canal. In 1858 Iquitos was founded by the Peruvian government as a strategic outpost. In 1885, the year in which the rubber exploitation began, it was an obscure settlement. In 1905 its population was 20,000, and it was agitating municipal sanitation, electric lighting, and inviting bids for sewers. It is the third port of Peru in point of its foreign commerce, which amounts to $3,575,000 to $4,000,000. The exports of rubber from Peru for the year 1904 were $2,142,000, and they passed almost entirely through Iquitos. Since a contraband commerce is carried on in order to escape the export tax, the full production in a stated year is not obtainable. The quantity exported ranges from 1,200 to 1,500 tons each year. The exports are divided about equally between Havre and Liverpool.

When Bolivia settled her controversy with Brazil over the Acre territory, she transferred a boundary dispute with Peru. The latter country and Brazil, after some threatening passages of diplomatic arms, agreed on a modus vivendi, and that the extent of rubber territory belonging to each Republic should be fixed by arbitration. This dispute did not relate so much to the territory contiguous to Iquitos as to the Yavari River frontier. This basin has an annual known production of 1,500 tons and a large contraband output. The southern districts as yet are in the initial stages of exploitation. The Inambari River basin, including the Marcapata valley, is an almost virgin field.

The Peruvian government, having adopted effective measures for the protection of the rubber forests from prodigal destruction, also has sought to aid the various private enterprises by supervising the supply of labor. This is a much more difficult problem. The native Indians and the cholos are hardly numerous enough to meet the needs of the industry in its present state, and both persuasion and compulsion are exerted in order to force them to work. Its ultimate solution and the full exploitation of the rubber wealth of Peru must rest on the colonization of the trans-Andine region, and a gradual transformation into tropical agriculture of the districts which are not rendered unfit for habitation and cultivation by the annual high-water overflows of the Amazon’s affluents. But for this river region, as for the other regions of Peru, there is no artificial aid which can compare with the Panama Canal.

CHAPTER IX

WATERWAYS AND RAILWAYS

Importance of River System—Existing Lines of Railroads—Pan-American Links—Lease of State Roads to Peruvian Corporation of London—Unfulfilled Stipulations—Law for Guaranty of Capital Invested in New Enterprises—Routes from Amazon to the Pacific—National Policy for their Construction—Central Highway, Callao to Iquitos—The Pichis—Railroad and Navigation—Surveys in Northern Peru—Comparative Distances—Experiences with First Projects—Future Building Contemporaneous with Panama Canal.

NEITHER the economic future of Peru nor the prospect of realizing the national aspirations can be understood without turning to [the map] and studying the waterways and the railways. The Marañon, having its source in Lake Lauricocha within the inner slope of the Central Cordilleras, flows in a northwesterly direction till about [south latitude 40°], when it turns abruptly northeast. The Ucayali, receiving its initial waters farther south and east of the eastern range of the great Cordilleras, flows north until it joins the Marañon below Iquitos and the two form the mighty Amazon. Between them flows the Huallaga, smaller than either, yet a great river. It empties into the Marañon. The general parallelism of the Marañon, the Huallaga, and the Ucayali afford alternative routes from the Amazon basin to the Pacific coast. The Huallaga was on the transcontinental trail of the early Spaniards, who crossed the mountains from Pacasmayo to Cajamarca and then continued to Yurimaguas on its banks.

The existing railroad lines of Peru extend from the coast toward the Andes, the only practicable system in the first stages of national development. The second stage is to secure a spine for these disjointed ribs by means of a main trunk line north and south—the Intercontinental or Pan-American idea—and to fill in the lacking links in rail and water transport from the Amazon or trans-Andine region to the Pacific. The intercontinental project contemplates rail connection to the shores of Lake Titicaca, so that ultimately there will be through communication with Buenos Ayres, and also the gradual and necessarily slower plan of joining railroad and water links north to the boundary of Ecuador. All of this will make for mineral development.