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Illusions of power: vision, technology and the geographical exploration of the Amazon, 1924–1925

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569320701682518

1469-9575

Luciana Martins,

Historical Geography and Geographical Thought

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge the British Academy and the Faculty of Arts at Birkbeck, University of London, whose funding permitted the research on which this paper is based. She would also like to thank staff members of the Smithsonian Institution, the Museu Amazônico Archives, the Cinemateca Brasileira, the British Film Institute, the American Geographical Society Archives and the Royal Geographical Society Picture Library, in particular Daisy Njoku, Custódio Rodrigues and Peter Lewis, for assistance with the sources and permission to quote from documents in their care. She is grateful to Márcio Souza for so generously sharing his knowledge of Silvino Santos's work, as well as to Aurélio Michiles and Domingos Demasi. Audiences at the ANPUH meeting in Rio de Janeiro, the RGS-IBG conference in London, and the ABIL conference in Nottingham responded to earlier versions of this paper with supportive critique. She would particularly like to thank Silvia Martins for her support in Brazil and Felix Driver for his careful reading and invaluable suggestions. Notes 1 In 1920, Hamilton Rice was presented the David Livingstone Centenary Medal by the American Geographical Society for his 'pioneer work' in exploration of the Amazon. Early recipients included Theodore Roosevelt and Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon; Presentation of the David Livingstone Centenary Medal to Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice and lecture by Dr. Rice. Geographical Review 11 (1921): 139–40. 2 Isaiah Bowman to Hamilton Rice, 25 June 1924, Bowman papers, American Geographical Society, New York (hereafter AGS). 3 Smith, Neil. 1986. Bowman's new world and the Council on Foreign Relations. Geographical Review 76 (4): 438–60. 4 Bowman, Isaiah. 1921. The New World. Yonkers-on-Hudson: World Book Company: 564, quoted in Smith, Bowman's new world and the Council on Foreign Relations, 450. The contrast between the temperate and the tropical is an enduring theme in the Western geographical imagination; see Driver, Felix, and Luciana Martins, eds. 2005. Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 5 See Salvatore, Ricardo D. 2005. Library accumulation and the emergence of Latin American studies. Comparative American Studies 3 (4): 415–36. 6 For a compelling account of the impact of modernity in the Amazon region, see Hardman, Francisco Foot. 2005. Trem-Fantasma: A Ferrovia Madeira–Mamoré e a Modernidade na Selva, 2nd ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. 7 See Martins, Luciana. 2001. O Rio de Janeiro dos Viajantes: o Olhar Britânico, 1800–1850. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar. 8 Hamilton Rice, A. 1921. The Rio Negro, the Casiquiare Canal, the Upper Orinoco, September 1919–April 1920. Geographical Journal 58 (5): 321–43, quote from p. 343. 9 Foot Hardman, Trem-Fantasma, 221–2. 10 Kossoy, Boris. 1998. Photography in nineteenth-century Latin America: the European experience and the exotic experience. In Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America, 1866–1994, ed. Wendy Watriss and Lois Parkinson Zamora. Houston, TX: University of Texas Press/Fotofest: 19–53. 11 Stepan, Nancy Leys. 2001. Picturing Tropical Nature. London: Reaktion Books: 120–2. 12 Foot Hardman, Trem-Fantasma, 222. 13 This article forms part of a broader research project on modernity and the Brazilian image world, 1900–1930. 14 Baker, Aloha. The last of the Bororos. 76.5.1, Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Hereafter HSFA. 15 At the beginning of her account, Aloha Baker reports reading an 'old Portuguese volume titled "Inferno Verde"'; Baker, 'The last of the Bororos'. Quote from Excerpts of 'The last of the Bororos', 1930–31. 76.5.1, HSFA. 16 Griffiths, Alison. 2002. Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, & Turn–of–the–Century Visual Culture. New York: Columbia University Press: 198. 17 Baker, The last of the Bororos. 18 Baker, Excerpts. 19 For an account of the pitfalls of this project, see Diacon, Todd A. 2004. 'Selling a person and a product: public relations and the Rondon Telegraph Commission. In Stringing Together a Nation: Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon and the Construction of a Modern Brazil, 1906–1930. Durham and London: Duke University Press: 131–61; see also Maciel, Laura Antunes. 1998. A Nação por um Fio: Caminhos, Práticas e Imagens da 'Comissão Rondon'. São Paulo: EDUC, and de Tacca, Fernando. 2004. Luiz Thomas Reis: etnografias fílmicas estratégicas. In Documentário no Brasil: Tradição e Transformação, ed. Francisco Elinaldo Teixeira. São Paulo: Summos: 313–70. 20 See Thielen, Eduardo V., Fernando A. P. Alves, Jaime L. Benchimol, Marli B. Albuquerque, Ricardo A. dos Santos and Wanda L. Weltman, eds. 1991. A Ciência a Caminho da Roça: Imagens das Expedições Científicas do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz ao Interior do Brasil entre 1911 e 1913. Rio de Janeiro: FIOCRUZ/Case de Oswaldo Cruz. 21 For a detailed study of the role of these expeditions in the process of nation-building in Brazil, see Lima, Nísia Trindade. 1999. Missões ao interior e interpretação do Brasil. In Um Sertão Chamado Brasil: Intelectuais e Representação Geográfica da Identidade Nacional. Rio de Janeiro: Revan/IUPERJ/UCAM: 55–89. 22 Pinney, Christopher. The coming of photography in India: a photographic revolution in late colonial India? The Panizzi Lectures, British Library, London, 21 November 2006. For a comparable study of the spatial consequences of the introduction of telegraph cabling in Argentina, see Canaparo, Claudio. 2005. Marconi and other artifices: long-range technology and the conquest of the desert. In Images of Power: Iconography, Culture and the State in Latin America, ed. Jens Andermann and William Rowe. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books: 241–54. 23 See Turazzi, Maria Ines. 1995. Poses e Trejeitos na Era do Epetáculo. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco/Funarte; and Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. 1999. The Spectacle of the Races: Sciences, Institutions, and the Race Question in Brazil, 1870–1830. trans. L. Guyer, New York: Hill & Wang. 24 Foot Hardman, Trem-Fantasma, 216–35. 25 Rice, Alexander Hamilton. 1925. Plans for exploration at the headwaters of the Branco and the Orinoco. Geographical Review 15: 115–22. See also Strong, Richard P., George C Shattiuck, Ralph E. Wheeler and Joseph C. Bequaert, eds. 1926. Medical report of the Hamilton Rice Seventh Expedition to the Amazon, in conjunction with the Department of Tropical Medicine Harvard University, 1924–1925. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 26 In fact, Hamilton Rice and his team arrived in Manaus on the day the revolt broke out, on 23 July 1923; Note on the progress of Dr. Hamilton Rice's South American expedition, Geographical Review 15 (1925): 264–6. See also Hemming, John. 2004. Die if you must. London: Pan Macmillan: 775; Santos, Silvino. 1969. Romance da minha vida. Manuscript, Museu Amazônico Archives, Manaus. 27 For a compelling account of Araña's economy of terror, see Taussig, Michael. 1986. Shamanism, colonialism, and the wild man: A study in terror and healing. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 28 Santos, Romance da minha vida. 29 Santos, Romance da minha vida; Vale da Costa, Selda. 1996. Eldorado das Ilusões. Cinema & Sociedade: Manaus (1897/1935). Manaus: Ed. da Univ. do Amazonas: 161–2. 30 Souza, Márcio. 1999. Silvino Santos: O Cineasta do Ciclo da Borracha. Rio de Janeiro: Funarte: 231. 31 See Nichols, Bill. Documentary and the coming of sound. Available from http://filmsound.org/film-sound-history/documentary.htm; INTERNET (accessed 21 November 2006). 32 In the Land of the Amazons was shown in cinemas in Lisbon, Paris and other European capitals, as well as in the US; see Costa, Eldorado das Ilusões, 206–7. 33 Santos, Romance da minha vida; Costa, Eldorado das Ilusões, 176. 34 Stevens. Albert W. 1926. Exploring the Valley of the Amazon in a hydroplane. National Geographic Magazine XLIX (4): 353–420. 35 Hamilton Rice Seventh Expedition to the Amazon Footage, 1924–1925. HSFA 94.6.2. 36 I am grateful to Tim Boon for drawing my attention to the edited nature of the 'footage'. 37 Fragments of the final version of No rastro do Eldorado with intertitles were reproduced in the following films: Domingos Demasi and Roberto Kahané, Silvino Santos: o fim de um pioneiro (1970) and Aurélio Michiles, O cineasta da selva (1997); see also Silvino Santos. Jornal do Brasil Caderno B, 8 August 1970: 2. The Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo holds a shorter version of Silvino Santos's film without intertitles that is catalogued as No rastro do Eldorado. 38 Altman, Rick. 2006. From lecturer's prop to industrial product: the early history of travel films. In Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff. Durham and London: Duke University Press: 62. 39 Altman, From lecturer's prop to industrial product, 63. 40 Stevens, Exploring the Valley of the Amazon in a hydroplane, 353. 41 Stevens, A. W. 1926. The Hydroplane of the Hamilton Rice Expedition, 1924–25. Geographical Journal 68 (1): 27–43. 42 Michael Taussig is referring to the speed of motor-boats in Santa Bárbara, Colombia; 2004. My Cocaine Museum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 166. 43 Stevens, Exploring the Valley of the Amazon in a hydroplane, 412. 44 The long caption reads: 'On setting off the flashlight the Indians suddenly departed, head sets and all, but fortunately the plugs pulled loose. From a distance of 25 feet they were coaxed back again. Jazz music meant nothing to them, neither did songs or recitations. They got more "kick" out of an ordinary mouth-organ, or harmonica, than out of the radio. Weight and bulk considered, a mouth-organ possesses greater trade possibilities than almost any other article except a burning-glass or a good knife.' Stevens, Exploring the Valley of the Amazon in a hydroplane, 400. 45 Thomas, Nicholas. 1991. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press: 87. 46 The letter, dated 6 November 1924, was published as 'Note on the progress of Dr. Hamilton Rice's South American expedition'. 47 See Smith, Neil. 1987. 'Academic War over the Field of Geography': the elimination of geography at Harvard, 1947–1951. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77 (2): 155–72; and Martin, Geoffrey J. 1988. On Whittlesey, Bowman and Harvard. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 78 (1): 152–8. 48 Pinney, Christopher. 2003. Introduction: 'How the other half…'. In Photography's Other histories, ed. C. Pinney and N. Peterson. Durham and London: Duke University Press: 6. 49 Pinney, Christopher. 1992. The lexical spaces of eye-spy. In Film as ethnography, ed. P. I. Crawford and D. Turton. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 27–8, quoted in MacDougall, David. 1998. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 210. 50 Barthes, Roland. 2000. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. trans. Richard Howard. London: Vintage: 117–19. 51 MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema, 210. 52 Lefebvre, Martin. 2006. Between setting and landscape in the cinema. In Landscape and Film, ed. M. Lefebvre. Routledge: New York and London: 19–59. I would like to thank Mariana Cunha for drawing my attention to this text and Maurício Lissovsky for helping me to clarify this point. 53 Santos, Romance da minha vida. 54 Stevens, Exploring the Valley of the Amazon in a hydroplane, 413–15. 55 Peterson, Jennifer Lynn. 'The nation's first playground': travel films and the American West, 1895–1920. In Virtual Voyages, 79–98. 56 Stevens, Exploring the Valley of the Amazon in a Hydroplane, 412. 57 Griffiths, Wondrous Difference, 195–6. 58 Salvatore, Ricardo D. 2003. Local versus imperial knowledge: reflections on Hiram Bingham and the Yale Peruvian Expedition. Neplanta: Views from the South 4 (1): 67–78, quote from 67. 59 Pinney, Introduction: 'How the other half…', 7–8. 60 Aloha Baker papers, HSFA. 61 Borrowing from Stephen Greenblatt, Ricardo Salvatore employs the concept of 'representational machine' to refer to the multiple representational practices that have constituted the US informal empire in South America; Salvatore, Ricardo D. 1998. The enterprise of knowledge: representational machines of informal empire, In Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. Legrand and Ricardo D. Salvatore. Durham and London: Duke University Press: 69–104.