page_title: Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve
section_title: Historical background
hierarchical_section_title: Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve / Historical background
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: brazilamazonscoa00smit (find matches) Title: Brazil, the Amazons and the coast Year: 1879 (1870s) Authors: Smith, Herbert H. (Herbert Huntington), 1851-1919 Subjects: Folklore -- Brazil Brazil -- Description and travel Brazil -- Economic conditions Amazon River Valley -- Description and travel Publisher: New York&#160;: C. Scribner's Sons Contributing Library: Brown University Library Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: uiet. You notice,also, that the brown people avoid the sun, but the blackones seem to revel in it.^ ■^ One is reminded of Captain John Codmans observation: When a whitefireman on a steamer comes up from his watch, he always leans over the rail in theshade, where he can get the air&#160;; but the negro fireman comes up at noonday, undera vertical sun, and throws himself down to sleep on a deck that would blister arhinoceros. Ten Months in Brazil, p. 8i. The Indians are much more suscep-tible to heat than the whites are. 46 BRAZIL. Many of these Indians have come from surrounding rivers,a hundred, two hundred, occasionally even five or six hun-dred miles away. Most of them will sell their small cargoesand leave with the return tide. The women and children willsee nothing more of the city than is visible from the water,or, at most, they will be treated to an hours walk about thetown, or a visit to one of the churches. And that is enough.They do not care to remain longer among the sweltering Text Appearing After Image: The Market Wharf. streets and glaring white walls. They long for their cool,shady forests, where they can swing their cotton hammocksby the water-side, and lounge away the hot noon hours, asfree from care as the birds are above them. Besides the small canoes, there are many larger ones, be-longing to traders, who make long voyages on the upperrivers. They bring back forest produce which they have PARA. 47 received in exchange for their wares. Here are bales ofcrude rubber, in flask-shaped masseS; as it came from themoulds; tall baskets of mandioca-meal, the bread of the poorerclasses; bundles of dried salt piraruai fish&#160;; bags of cacaoand Brazil-nuts. There are turtles, too, reposing peacefullyon their backs, and odd-looking fish, and pots of crabs andshrimps. Not a few of the canoes bring monkeys and par-rots, but their owners are loath to part with these. On theAmazons all classes are extravagantly fond of pets. Formerly all the commerce of the river was carried on intrading canoes. Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: The Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve is an extractive reserve in the state of Acre, Brazil.
  The inhabitants extract rubber, Brazil nuts and other products from the forest for their own consumption or for sale, hunt, fish and engage in small-scale farming and animal husbandry.
  The reserve was created in 2002 as a sustainable use conservation area after a long campaign by the rubber tappers to prevent the government from evicting them and clearing the Amazon rainforest for cattle ranching. The reserve is rich in biodiversity, and helps form a buffer zone for the adjoining Chandless State Park.
  Due to decreases in rubber prices, some families want to clear the forest to raise cattle, which is seen as more profitable.
context_section_description: Rubber extraction began in Acre in the 1870–90 period, using workers from the dry northeast of Brazil.
  The rubber was extracted from trees growing naturally in the forest.
  In the 1870s seeds were smuggled out of Brazil to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, and from there the plants were distributed to Malaya and elsewhere in South East Asia. 
  British companies developed huge rubber tree plantations in Malaya to meet growing demand for tyres after 1900.
  By 1912 Malaya exceeded Brazilian output and charged lower prices.
  Many Brazilian producers failed and rubber concessions were abandoned.
  The rubber tappers began to cultivate clearings and to hunt and extract other forest products.
  During World War II (1939–45) Japan occupied Malaya and cut off its rubber supplies.
  The United States funded an ambitious program to reactivate Brazilian rubber extraction.
  Many of the residents of the Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve are descended from "rubber soldiers" who were brought to Acre in this period to extract rubber for military use.
  The government advertised "a new life in the Amazon", but the workers who came there from the northeast of Brazil found that conditions were harsh. 
  With no easy way to leave, they were forced to adapt to the forest and learn how to use its resources.
  After the war ended Malaya again became the preferred international supplier of rubber, but the government kept the rubber industry running through subsidies.
  The Brazilian military government that ruled from 1964 to 1985 wanted to open up the Amazon to protect national sovereignty, and resettled thousands of people from the south.
  The Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform, INCRA) created farm settlements in Acre in the 1970s and 1980s along new roads through the forest.
  The settlers would clear the land so they could raise cattle and grow a few crops.
  In the 1980s INCRA expropriated part of the area of the present Cazumbá-Iracema Extractive Reserve to implement the Boa Esperança (Good Hope) farm settlement project.
  The land included the Iracema seringal (rubber extraction area) on the Caeté River.
  The rubber tappers began a long campaign to preserve the forest, sometimes stopping loggers with human chains of women and children.
  In the early 1990s rubber prices fell and many families left.
  INCRA threatened to evict more than 200 remaining families from the Iracema seringal so it could be converted to cattle ranching under the government's agricultural extension program.
  Most of the families were living in tiny isolated settlements along over 37 miles (60 km) of the upper Caeté River.
  Aldeci Cerqueira Maia (known as Nenzinho) was one of the local leaders.
  He organised the Cazumbá Rubber Tappers Association (ASSC) in 1993 to fight the INCRA evictions and with the help of Father Paolino Baldassari, the Catholic priest, managed to have them revoked.
  In 1995 Nenzinho persuaded a number of families to move to Nucleo Cazumbá, a central location on land his grandfather had owned, and form a cooperative to share the resources.
  The cooperative prevented subdivision of the area and land speculation.
  It transported and sold the rubber.
  When prices dropped further the members began to also harvest Brazil nuts for sale and to grow crops for food.
  A school was established in 1993 and a dirt road reached the reserve in 1997, although the rains often make it unusable.
caption: Bales of Brazilian rubber from the Amazon being unloaded for shipment (1870s)
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