The Rubber Soldiers

In Brazil, the period that preceded the realization of industrialization around the 1930s, had its economy based on agro-export. Products such as sugar, gold, rubber and coffee were once one of the country's economic pillars. In history books, entire chapters are devoted to the study of the mechanisms of sugar and coffee production and the exploitation of gold mines. Brazilians, however during our school life we ​​heard little about rubber, a valuable raw material for the production of various genres.

Between the end of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century, this product would gain prominence in the national economy, the expansion of the automobile industry led to the need for a greater production of rubber, a material necessary for the manufacture of tires. Factories, mainly in the United States, began to buy rubber exported from Brazil, making the country the world's largest exporter of the product. The abundance of rubber trees (the tree that produces latex, natural rubber) in the regions of Pará and Amazonas facilitated the expansion of exports.

The intensification of production would lead Brazil to export about forty thousand tons of the product in 1910, which would generate the need for a greater number of labor in the rubber plantations. In the first half of the 20th century, drought and hunger devastated the populations of the northeastern backlands, knowing the job offers in the extraction regions of rubber, many workers from northeastern Brazil began a migratory cycle to the forests of Pará and Amazonas in search of a better life. better.

Rubber was not only responsible for allowing increased production in factories, but also for economic growth in the north of the country. The most benefited cities were Belém and Manaus, there was an intense transformation and modernization of these urban centers, including a intensification of cultural life to meet the needs of the local elite who needed parties and events to display their jewels and expensive dresses. There was a significant improvement in the lives of the inhabitants of these cities and the owners of the rubber plantations, but the The same cannot be said of the workers who went deep into the woods to extract the latex from the trees. rubber trees.

The decline of the rubber cycle would happen at the beginning of the 20th century, when the English and Dutch metropolises started to produce the product in their Asian colonies. Increased competition would lead to lower prices and consequently a drop in exports. The rubber barons declared bankruptcy and left a big gap in public coffers, as the government bought rubber to stock in an attempt to raise prices. Thus, one of the most important and despised economic cycles in the country came to an end, but this story would gain new chapters from the 1940s onwards.

The outbreak of Second World War in 1939 pressured American countries to take sides with one of the belligerent sides, Brazil and the United States opted for neutrality. The Americans would take advantage of the war to leverage their economy by providing raw materials for the countries directly involved in the conflict, Brazil was already experiencing the dictatorship of the Estado Novo imposed for the Constitution of 1937, created during the government of Getúlio Vargas.

The attack on the Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii and the torpedoes launched by German submarines against Brazilian ships would lead to a change in posture by both countries. The United States declared its entry into the war and Brazil created an expeditionary force to fight the Nazis in Italy, the FEB. With the adhesion of the North Americans to the Second World War, Asian countries cut off the supply of rubber to the United States, in this context the Brazilian government signed an agreement for the supply of rubber to the country. In order to comply with the established agreement, Brazil began recruiting men to be sent to the Amazon region in order to work in the extraction of latex. It was the beginning of a silent battle: the Rubber War, those recruited for this mission would become known as The Rubber Soldiers.

The second rubber cycle had the participation of sixty thousand workers who mostly migrated from Northeastern States, mainly from Ceará. The government carried out intense propaganda about the “white gold of the Amazon” (rubber) and deceived these men about the possibility of easy enrichment in the undertaking, designers were hired to illustrate pamphlets that encouraged the adherence of others workers. Tired of the misery in which these northeasterners lived, they headed north in search of a better life.

Many of these men took their families, who, upon arriving at the “Amazonian front”, ended up participating without any guaranteed rights in the rubber extraction and production process. The work was carried out six days a week, the intense pace of production had to handle the thirty-five thousand tons of rubber promised to the US government. On the day that should have been destined for rest, the rubber soldiers worked in subsistence plantations in order to feed their families.

As soon as they arrived in the jungle, the government passed responsibility for the workers to the colonels who owned the rubber plantations, many died at the hands of the bosses when they questioned them for wages that many times did not received. The greatest beneficiaries of the economic growth promoted by rubber were the North Americans, the Brazilian government and the “rubber barons”. The soldiers were left with the harsh reality of living in a jungle they were not used to, about thirty-five thousand workers died in as a result of diseases such as malaria and attacks by wild animals, such as snakes and jaguars, the work regime resembles slavery. With the end of the conflicts, there was a drop in the production of Brazilian rubber due to the resumption of production in the Asian rubber plantations, many owners abandoned the rubber plantations and the workers were left to their own devices.

““The 1988 constitution guaranteed “ex-combatants of the rubber plantations” the payment of a lifetime pension in the amount of two minimum wages, if the need for “aid” was proven. In early 2014, some former rubber tappers began to receive compensation in recognition of their participation in World War II. World Cup, nothing fairer since these anonymous soldiers even indirectly contributed to the development of the conflict.

Lorena Castro Alves
Graduated in History and Pedagogy