The Land of Rivers

Men cut an oblique line in the Amazon rainforest called Muñoz-Netto; it cut through the upper Amazon basin like an architect would precisely cut through an architectural model, creating a division between the territory of the Portuguese and Spanish empires. The history of the rubber boom in Bolivia has received scant attention; few people related in business to the rubber Barron of the period that emerged from the land of rivers, the Bolivian Oriente, and the lowlands of the nation, once belonging to the Spanish Empire. I landed into the history of the Bolivian rubber boom through an original letter, written in 1939 from Seville, Spain, by my second great-grandfather referring to Baron Nicolás Suárez Callaú with kinship, respect, and appreciation.  

   Second great grandfather Amadeus Czerniewicz Heitzmann, twenty-four years younger than Nicolás Suárez Callaú, refers to him as Don Nico, maintaining respect for the man who brought him across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to Bolivia in the 1800s. Amadeus was twenty-five years old, just embarking upon life in which he would become one of the trusted financiers of the Suarez Brothers Empire—a thriving business, with a trading house in London established in 1871, exporting natural rubber and other forms of matéria-prima such as wood and chestnuts to Europe from the Amazon basin of Bolivia. Nicolás Suárez Callaú, a cruceño born in Santa Cruz de La Sierra, is known by scholars as the only international entrepreneur the Bolivian lowlands have produced thus far. His success was mainly his making, for family relations with Europe were surplus to his dedication and untiring spirit.    

The process of exporting rubber was arduous. Rubber gatherers collected the milky liquid from trees from selected areas of the Bolivian lowlands, an extension of the Amazon basin covering more than two-thirds of the nation. The workers extracted the matéria-prima carefully from the bark of trees by a process called tapping. Then, treat the substance, a white and milky liquid, with ammonia and subsequently with acid, chemically coagulating the rubber from its raw liquid substance, preparing it for export, and passing it on to a human assembly line to pack and transport the final product.

The rubber was transported in boats, beginning their navigation from the Madre de Dios River at a village called Cachuela Esperanza in the municipality of Guayamerin, in the department of Bení. The fleet navigated past the confluence of the Madre de Dios and Bení rivers, taking the former to a small town called Rrurenabaque. Later, to pass the Yungas region, a band of forests along the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains, to arrive at the city of La Paz and then to the South American continent's South Pacific coast to ship to Europe. 

Bolivia lost its Pacific coastline to Chile in 1879. The Suárez Brothers established a trading house in London in 1871; their business operated in Bolivia until perhaps several years past 1939, the date when Nicolás retired to London and his brother Fransisco was on his way to Cachuela Esperanza to oversee the business. [1] So, the brothers most likely kept their relations with other South American nations intact to export their products. 

Records suggest that the navigators of the time lacked knowledge of what the rivers Bení, Mamoré, and Madre de Dios bequeathed, having had to take roundabouts from water to land and vis-a-vis until landing the product in the small town of Rrurenabaque for further transportation by land and then by sea. However, the success of the Suárez Brothers empire required the capacity to navigate the rivers so that the product could arrive at its designated location safely and promptly for export. The rivers of the Bolivian lowlands were at first unknown to Nicolás Suárez. Still, his lack of knowledge propelled his imagination, and the mysteries of the rivers would become known to this man, for he was fearless and unafraid of the tales of the Indian attacks. He persisted and prevailed over the river system, where most Europeans faltered for fear of the jungle.  

Nicolás Suárez was acquainted with Dr. Edwin R. Heath's writings, The Explorations of The Lower Bení maps and original surveys made during his voyage down the Bení River published in the Proceedings of The Royal Geographical Society, London, 1882. Before his writings were published, Nicolás had listened to the man upon his triumphant return to Reyes, a city in Jose Ballivián province in the Bolivian Oriente. Dr. Edwin R. Heath was a North American doctor working as a medical officer for several railroad companies, notably in Peru and Brazil, who spent much of his time outside the United States, particularly in South America, where the abandonment of the project to build a railroad around the Madeira-Mamoré falls commissioned by the Philadelphia Company of P. & T. Collins failed in 1870, it ultimately failed, and the project was abandoned in 1879 after its fourth unsuccessful attempt in nine years. [2]

The circumstances left Dr. Edwin R. Heath with time to complete a task previously attempted by his brother Ivon D. Heath, who had been in an expedition with North American naturalist professor James Orton of the Bení River. Between 1876 and 1877, both men's attempts to link the known sections of the rivers were thwarted in proximity to the confluence of the Bení and Mamoré rivers by a revolt of his Indian bearers and their desertion.[3] Professor Orton was forced to abandon his third expedition in South America, and it was when he was en route to the United States via La Paz he suddenly died while crossing Lake Titicaca. Ivon D. Heath, Dr. Edwin Heath's brother, accompanied Orton during this expedition.[4] The river Ivon of the Bolivian Amazon basin is named after Dr. Edwin R. Heath's brother Ivon, and so is the river Orton after North American naturalist Professor James Orton. Edwin named both rivers while exploring the Bení River upstream. During his exploration of the Bení, his crew was harmonious without detrimental revolts to the explorations. When they made it back to the Bolivian city of Reyes after long periods of travel, he wrote the following in his diary: