A Day on the River, Part 2: The Rubber Plantation
January 1, 2020, upriver from Manaus, Brazil — The Seringal Felicidade rubber museum is on the bank of the Taruma Mirim Creek. I don’t know what ‘Seringal’ means but ‘felicidade’ means happiness. I bet the only person who was ever happy on this 20th-century plantation was the rubber baron who got rich off the back-breaking, dangerous and exploited work of the latex tappers.
The ‘Paradise Villa’ of the plantation owner... his wife and family lived in Manaus.
The Catholic chapel...
... and inside...
Inside the Paradise Villa. You all know I love shooting interiors. Spot the self-portrait?
Self-portrait with clock...
Note the wallpaper. Considering where this house is located, it’s the Downton Abbey of the neighborhood. The photos are atop a piano.
Indoor plumbing, of a sort...
A water tank on the roof. It rains a lot.
The company store. There was a bar — a counter and a few bottles — next door. This is where the exploitation begins.
Remember the Tennessee Ernie Ford song ‘Sixteen Tons’? It’s an age-old story of exploitation:
Sixteen tons and whaddaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter, don’t ya call me cuz I can’t go:
I owe my soul to the company store.
When the bonded worker arrived at the plantation, he had to buy his own supplies: his food, a lamp, a lump cup, a tapping knife, etc. He had no money, so he owed the store and would pay off his debt with the latex he tapped, which would be weighed and entered against his account. Only the scales were rigged, and the worker got credit for much less than he had actually produced. Being uneducated and numerically illiterate, he didn’t catch on — and he couldn’t get out of debt.
The tappers went into the forest at midnight — imagine the insects — and sliced the trees for two hours, placing a lump cup under each cut so the latex would ooze into the cup for the next 6 hours.
In order to see what he was doing, each tapper wore a lamp, fueled with oil which could drip and burn him. This is our assistant tour guide, modeling.
Behind the four thin tree trunks you can see the wharf: the creek can rise to that level.
Styrofoam models of what balls of latex looked like, prepared for shipment...
Going back downriver... the first bridge over the Amazon was built here, outside Manaus, in 2011.
Manaus, from my aft cabin. Yesterday I told you my friend Frank was stopped from going off the ship alone. Found out today that one woman passenger was robbed of a bracelet, an ankle bracelet — and her shoes. Another story I heard: a young crew member was robbed of all his clothes.
Next stop: Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon. I had signed up for the Old Belém On Foot city tour. We can’t dock in town due to the ship’s size. Now we can’t anchor in the harbor due to sand bars and tides: we have to anchor 45 minutes out of town and bus in. Belém is on the list of the 50 most dangerous places in the world. I’m staying onboard. #
