In this report you will learn a little about the customs, traditions and what life was like for the owners of the rubber plantations and their workers in the rubber production in the Amazon. Stories that used to exist only in books can now be experienced in a museum, in the rural area of Manaus.
INTERVIEWS:
- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso
- HENRIC JOHN, tourist
- MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper
CONTACT:
E-mail: museudoseringal@cultura.am.gov.br
PRODUCTION AND DIRECTION
Amazon Agency
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Johnathann Klismann
EDITING AND FINALIZATION
Alexandre Almeida
TP: 15'28"
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"The Museu Seringal Vila-Paraíso is a setting based on a book called 'The Jungle'. And the person who wrote this book was Ferreira de Castro, a Portuguese man who, at just 12 years old, became a rubber tapper. He lived in the real rubber plantation."
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"And, after a while, returning to Portugal, he wrote the book, telling everything he saw and experienced, giving rise to the film shot here."
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"And this space was left to the State Department of Culture, which opened it as a museum to tell the story."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Vila Paraíso Rubber Plantation Museum
"Here we have a living history, which is not told in schools, forgotten by the population. Nowadays, young people no longer listen to their grandparents, their great-grandparents, they don't listen! So, this history is being put to sleep! When they come to the Rubber Plantation, this history comes alive again. Here we breathe a history that dates back to the end of the 19th century, but I go much further. I go back to the arrival of the Portuguese, who already had knowledge. I go back to when they took the first samples to France. I go back to the first tire, and who made the first tire. There is the vulcanization process that increased the value of rubber, you know! And I have been telling this story until today."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Vila Paraíso Rubber Plantation Museum
"When tourists come here, they think, wow, did this really happen in Brazil?"
- HENRIC JOHN, tourist
"It's a very interesting thing.
The rubber era was the whole history of Manaus. Before the rubber era, there was practically nothing in Manaus. And then, suddenly, the rubber era came, and then everything came, the theater, and then it fell again and now there are other ways of presenting the beauties of the Amazon. It's not the first time I've visited this museum, but it's fantastic. They really like it, the people, because it really represents the idea of the wealth of the rubber era, yes!"
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- HENRIC JOHN, tourist
"There was a huge difference between those who milked and those who owned the rubber plantation. But it gives an idea of the suffering, and also the pleasures of the time."
- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso
"At first, the rubber colonels had a simple house on top of a supply shed. When they started to make money, because the price of rubber went up, they started to build a house like this one, with balconies. Everything they had inside the house came from abroad. Silver, Portuguese porcelain, Italian crystal. On the walls, the paintings that were there were from Europe, a piano from Germany, a Swiss watch.
The colonels had everything of the best and the best."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso
"There was a kitchen inside the house, but they didn't use it. This kitchen was only for heating the house. How can it be heated if we're in the Amazon? That's how it was in Europe. There was a house with a stove that was for heating. Here they only had it in the house, as if they were in Europe. A stove in the middle of the house. But they had a rustic stove, the kitchen outside, but inside the house there was a kitchen as if they were in Europe. All of this I'm talking about is in a house in Serengeti. Imagine the house they had in Manaus, or even in Belém. I don't know if you've ever heard that they lit a cigar with a dollar bill. They burned it and lit it, you know? So this was little compared to what they had, even in the capital."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Seringal Vila Paraíso Museum
"80% of the people from the Northeast who arrived were from Ceará. So they would leave Ceará and go to Belém. When they arrived in Belém, there was no boat for them to take them to Manaus, so they would stay at a hotel. When they arrived in Manaus, they would come face to face with a city, a luxury. Manaus was developed. Those women in long dresses, men in tailcoats walking around. He said, wow, what a prosperous city, so much wealth. So I'm going to stay in Serengeti when I get there. I'm going to get rich and I'm going to come back. But when they arrived, when they arrived in the Serengeti, everything they went through was written down. Flight, lodging, food. They arrived here with only their clothes. They were going to live in the middle of the forest and they needed them. Pots, plates, cups, spoons, work materials."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso
"Moisés came to visit us and I'm going to set up a show so he can see what life was like for a rubber tapper. Okay, Moisés? First, we're going to put the poronga on. This is called a poronga. The poronga is a cousin of the oil lamp. You know what the oil lamp is. And as for the poronga, Moisés, you're going to have to put it on your head. Put it on your head because a rubber tapper's work was nocturnal, okay? In addition to the poronga, they had to carry a scraper and a knife. More than 400 bowls, a bucket to collect the latex. To defend themselves at night, a machete. Imagine the night. Jaguars, snakes, scorpions, spiders. And not to mention that they were scared by the noises. Inside the forest, we hear noise. Wow, what's that noise? When are you going to see a frog, okay? So, they had... And the indigenous people. At that time, there was also a war between the rubber tappers and the indigenous people. The shotgun wasn't given to him on the first day. It was only after he paid off his first debt. One year, two years, three years. Then he could take a shotgun, which was one of the most expensive things. Now, yes, I have a worker ready to go to the forest and he's full of ......... debt. All this material, Moisés, would have to pay." - soundtrack - MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper "Every rubber tapper is illiterate. So, that's what the boss says. He goes to the boss's shed and says he wants to cut rubber. So, he gets coffee, sugar, kerosene, ammunition, the necessary things. But he doesn't even try to find out how much the boss is giving him. He doesn't try to find out! Rubber tappers never pay their bills, they just live in debt, and in debt their whole lives."
-ambient audio
- MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA - former rubber tapper
"You have to work 15, 18 hours a day. You start at one, two in the morning, cutting the rubber in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of the forest, with the polava on your head. He arrives with the scraper and does this here. First, he has to scrape the rubber tree."
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- MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper
"Then, he puts down the scraper and goes to get the knife."
-ambient audio
- MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper
"The rubber tapper has to cut 250, 300 of these birds a day. So, if he cuts 250, 300 of these birds a day, he has to stuff at least 500 of these little bowls. Because at least it's one. Some birds have two bowls, some birds have three bowls, some birds have five bowls. Depending on the thickness of the bird, depending on the number of bowls he's going to put in. It can fill up, because it doesn't spill, no. It stays very safe." - ambient audio - MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper "When it's 10, 11 o'clock in the day, he finishes cutting. Then, he stops cutting and goes to harvest. He goes to harvest the latex. When he finishes harvesting, it's 3, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Then, he takes the latex to the smoker to smoke the rubber. Smoking the rubber is a transformation of the latex into the canvas. Because the latex is a liquid. The canvas is a ball. So, he has to transform that liquid into that ball."
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- MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper
"When he brings the rubber, he makes it in the middle of the forest, brings it and delivers it to the boss. He also doesn't try to find out how much the boss is paying for a kilo of rubber."
- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso
"This one here is an example of rubber. In fact, they had to make 50 kilos per week. This one here only has 10. And look, to show that it is really original rubber, 10 kilos, it returns safely to your hand."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Vila Paraíso Rubber Plantation Museum
"They went to the forest, produced rubber and came to pay off their debt. They put it on the scales, which were already tampered with, stealing some percentages. Illiterate people were always cheated. And the bookkeeper, he would stay there writing down and deducting the worker's debt. It would take four years to pay off the first debt, and he would arrive with all that debt. And when he arrived, he would offer a shot of cachaça. Here, how is the rubber plantation? Is it okay? And the jaguars? One more shot. Are they attacking? And the indigenous people? He drank four shots, but he wrote down a bottle of cachaça. That's how they were welcomed by the bookkeeper here. Cachaça was the rubber tapper's companion. It was the stop for sadness, for sorrow, it was the worker's companion on feast days. "
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- MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper
"Back then, the rubber tapper's food, the real food, was flour. So, all food had to have flour. It could be meat, it could be wine, it could be anything, fish, it had to have flour. And to roast it takes an hour, an hour and a half, two hours to make a batch. It has to be a lot of people, because there have to be people here, there have to be people there, there have to be people there. Everything is done in a single process. Flour is very important."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso
"All the rubber plantations had chapels. It was no different in Seringal-Paraíso. The Portuguese introduced Our Lady of the Conception here in our region and put the festival on December 8th. All the rubber plantations had a festival. They called all the workers together. It was a big party. Food and drinks for everyone. But right there in the middle of it all, the bookkeeper was already writing down everything they were consuming. The food, the drinks. When the party was over, they would go to the bookkeeper and everything they had consumed would be written down for them to pay for. There were even those who didn't come. The party was for everyone. They didn't come because they didn't want to. So they used this trick to make the rubber tappers even more in debt."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Vila Paraíso Rubber Plantation Museum
"They had this great faith. They would arrive and confess to the priest. But the colonel, many of them, I'm not saying that all of them did this, but it did happen, that they would get a friend to pretend to be a priest. At the time of confession, they would tell what they had, if they had stolen, if they had killed, that they wanted to run away, I can't take it anymore, I'm going to run away on such and such a day. And that fake priest, who was a friend of the colonel, was already telling him." - background audio - MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper "The foreman's house was already much improved. Why? Because the foreman was the rubber tapper's right-hand man. Nowadays, it's as if he were the manager. Whenever the boss wanted to do something bad to the rubber tapper, he was the person chosen to do it. Whip him, tie him up, kill him. Do whatever the boss wanted to do."
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- MANOEL HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, former rubber tapper
"Every rubber plantation had to have a cemetery back then, because a lot of people died. People died, let's say, from snake bites, people died from malaria. Back then, there was no medicine, everything was difficult, so a lot of people died from malaria. Especially the people from the Northeast, when they arrived here, they weren't used to the forests. So many people died of malaria, women also died in childbirth. Many women died in childbirth. So every rubber plantation had to have a cemetery."
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- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Vila Paraíso Rubber Plantation Museum
"When the Amazonian comes here, he says, am I a descendant of a Northeasterner? Of a rubber tapper? Then he leaves. And when the person gets here, his grandfather has heard the story, has already told it, has already told his grandchildren, he, my God, I'm remembering my grandfather. I've seen people cry when I show them a poronga, when I show them a scraper, when I talk about smoking."
- MOISÉS BARROS PRAIA, Human Resources analyst
"You feel like you're part of that scene. Knowing what the rubber tapper's life was like back then, seeing their clothes, their tools from that time, how they used them. Being able to enjoy each environment, each artifact that we saw here during the tour, was incredible."
- MARI SOUZA, Technician and tour guide at the Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso
"People get emotional. Only those who come to visit the Museu Seringal Vila Paraíso experience this."
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