Amazonia, MERCOSUR, and the South American Regional Integration

Abstract

Euclides da Cunha wrote the above words in one of his many books about the Amazon. This prolific writer and thinker whose ideas are key to understanding the process through which Brazil ceased to be a monarchy and became an independent republican country is known both in his home country (Brazil) and abroad rather as the celebrated author of Os Sertões:

One of the main books in Brazil’s history … it gave rise to over 10 thousand research projects, as professor Roberto Ventura said in his lecture in the 2002 event Semana Euclidiana [Euclides’ Week]. Scholars researching the works by Euclides da Cunha came together for this annual meeting in São José do Rio Pardo, a city in São Paulo State. [In the 2002 Week] no more than two papers focused on the works Euclides da Cunha wrote about the Amazon region.²

In 2004, events were organized throughout Brazil to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Os Sertões’s³ publication. However, his writings about the Amazon are not well known, even in Brazil. In 1903, he was a member of the team the Brazilian foreign minister, Baron of Rio Branco, appointed to define the borders between Brazil and Peru, thus ending the disputes between the two countries over a huge area in the Amazon. This is when da Cunha collected the valuable data about the Amazon included in his writings.⁴ There was a point in time when these disputes almost created a bellicose situation. Euclides wrote these words, “There is no need to prove it. Geography images themselves are highly suggestive” to argue, from a military perspective (i.e., geopolitically and strategically) that should a war break out those disputed lands could benefit either his country, Brazil, in case troops came from East, or Peru, if troops came from West.⁵

There is no need to prove it. Geography images themselves are highly suggestive

Da Cunha, “Primeira Parte”¹