It is from the heart of the Amazon Rainforest that rubber tapper Valcir Rodrigues, 50, earns his family's living and has fond memories of his childhood on the banks of the Caju creek, on the Alto Anajás River, running in the municipality of Anajás, Island of Marajó (PA). “I remember my mother taking me and my siblings to the edges of the field to lie in the hammock, while she and my father collected latex. And I remember that time very fondly,” he says.

When he was 8, he started to “scratch” the rubber trees to help his parents and he has kept the job ever since, a different reality from the one his grandparents had lived in a not so distant past, when opportunities seemed to be lost in the vastness of the forest for those who extracted latex – where the workers had neither boots nor flashlights for the work. Valcir says that, despite the odds, his mother had the dream of reliving rubber extraction, after its interruption during the administration of former president Fernando Collor de Melo (1990-1992), which marked the end of public incentives for latex production. “It was a very good activity. It was from it that they raised their children. And she really wanted it to come back.”

Differently from Valcir's family's dreams, returning to the collection of milk from Hevea brasiliensis was not in Marivaldo Pereira’s plans, a resident of Portel, Marajó. He was a rubber tapper in his teens: he helped his father cutting down the trees for six years. Then he began extracting wood and hearts of palm for two decades. In 2022, he rediscovered the joy of using a knife and bucket, earning much more and without cutting down any specimens. "All the rubber plantations are good for working. There is harvesting every day, there is money, and we are keeping the forest standing," says the 49-year-old rubber tapper.  

Valcir and Marivaldo are among the more than 500 extractivists in the region who are part of the of Projeto Marajó Sustentável de Reativação dos Seringais Nativos do Marajó” [Sustainable Marajó Project for the Reactivation of Marajó Native Rubber Plantations], launched two years ago by the government of the State of Pará, supported by the Empresa de Assistência Técnica e Extensão do Estado do Pará [Technical Assistance and Extension Company of the State of Pará  - Emater]. The initiative offers a specific line of credit for extractivists from four municipalities in Marajó (Breves, Melgaço, Portel and Anajás), and trains local families into the multiple use of the forest.

SEDAP

According to the Secretary of State for Agricultural and Fisheries Development (Sedap), Giovanni Queiroz, the work began with a study conducted together with the Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa) [Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation] , which indicated the viability of exploiting the native Amazonian rubber tree in Marajó. This has strengthened the effort to promote the training of multipliers and the promotion of rubber production, from extraction to commercialization, to meet the needs of a market that currently values ​​sustainability. “In Europe, there is already a movement of several companies that no longer buy footwear made with synthetic rubber, produced from petroleum. This is good, because we will revive a rubber economy under humane conditions, which dignifies those who live in our region,” he states.

Other states from the North of Brazil have been betting on the resumption of rubber tree milk extraction. In Rondônia, indigenous people took back the rubber chain in 2023 in an incisive manner, through the “Borracha Nativa”[Native Rubber] project, carried out in a partnership between Origens Brasil network and Mercur. They launched 100% Amazon latex rubber, a product that adds value due to its sustainability brand.

A look towards the heart of the forest

In Pará, the revival of rubber extraction gained momentum with the work of a businessman from the interior of Paraná in the 1980s. Francisco Samonek landed on Amazonian soil to develop a rubber tree planting project in Tarauacá, in Acre. He says that, at the time, there was highly attractive financing opportunities by the banking network for this purpose, via the Programa de Desenvolvimento da Borracha (Probor) [Rubber Development Program ], but soon the financing ran out and, along with it, all the public policy that promoted and made latex extraction viable.

Without being able to invest in rubber tree plantations, Samonek visited native rubber plantations and discovered that native, centenary trees were highly productive under low-cost. “I asked myself: why cut down the trees to implement a project of monoculture, if we can produce rubber without any investment?”

TECHNOLOGY

Over time, he founded the Polo de Proteção da Biodiversidade e Uso Sustentável dos Recursos Naturais (Poloprobio),[Biodiversity Protection and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources Hub], responsible for the Seringô brand, which stands out for its footwear manufacturing process using açaí seed residue and native latex. But the big difference is that the entrepreneur's team has developed a social technology called Encauchados de vegetais da Amazônia [Amazonian vegetable rubber], which was certified and awarded in 2007 by the Banco do Brasil Foundation, and which improves the quality of latex so that high-value pieces can be produced, thus improving and simplifying existing rubber production processes.

Besides, another technique developed was the process of pre-vulcanizing latex, so that it can be transformed by hand in the middle of the forest, without the need for energy, into a series of products that can be sold directly by communities, especially the ones formed by female artisans.

From rubber soldiers to sentinels of nature

It is impossible to talk about the rubber economy without remembering some of the historical missteps that marked the activity in Brazil. Divided between two periods of exploitation, latex extraction boosted the country's financial growth. The first period was between 1870 and 1920, when rubber became the second most exported Brazilian product, behind only coffee. The capitals Belém and Manaus (AM) became rich at the expense of the exploitation of local labor by “rubber barons”.

Historian Marcio Neco states that, during World War II (1941-1945), around 60 thousand "rubber soldiers" – most of them from the Northeast – came to the North full of dreams to finally live in a nightmare environment, only to meet the North American demand for rubber that was used in the manufacture of tires for airplanes and other artifacts. These rubber plantations were already owned by colonels who established eternal debts with the rubber tappers. For this reason, the scholar emphasizes: it is necessary for the government to reaffirm its commitment to repair the historical damage to these families and to value the current sentinels of the forest.

NATURAL CALLING

“The government should create public policies based on the natural calling of these people, these families. More rubber soldiers died in the Amazon than on the battlefields of Italy due to diseases, animal attacks, unhealthy conditions and extremely low wages. They are the most forgotten brigade in the history of humanity. They are riverside dwellers who have the forest as their backyard and will be its guardians. They will look after their livelihood”, argues the historian.

Neco reiterates that history helps us look at the past so as not to repeat mistakes and improve the future. And he believes that the project to revive the rubber economy is aligned with the need to give protagonism to the natives of the Amazon. “From what I can see, the government’s project will not recruit riverside dwellers, as was the case in the past, with people being forced to work. They are being trained to become agents of this process.”

In Marajó, women create pieces that reflect nature

In the Mapuá Extractive Reserve, on the banks of the Mapuá and Aramã rivers, in the Marajó archipelago, around 25 women have dedicated themselves to producing sustainable Marajó crafts and biojewels since 2010. They’ve been trained by Poloprobio to create products that reflect nature. Among the products are reproductions of leaves from the Victoria Regia and the Tajá, typical species of the Amazon that gain a special color in the hands of the artisans.

Student Mirian Miranda is the daughter of one of the group founders. She explains that participants from riverside, quilombola and indigenous communities are directly involved in the process of making the pieces, which have already been sold at events in and outside Pará. In addition to the economic impact, the activity generates empathy and self-esteem among native peoples, with the advantage of enjoying natural resources without harming the future of the lives that depend on them.

“It’s fulfilling to work with something that’s ours, and that we know won’t harm the environment. So much so that when we sell the pieces, I tell our customers: ‘When you get tired of them, you can throw them in the trash or in the forest because they won’t pollute the place.’ This is a great achievement for us. Knowing that what we sell contributes to preventing more trash and environmental degradation,” says Mirian.

CONNECTION

Today, rubber tappers are experiencing a different extraction era, when rubber is prepared at home, using everyday products such as bleach, which allows the pulp to be sent clean to its destination. In addition, they do not have to wait up to three days to return to the place where the rubber roads are located (around 100 trees in a row).

For Valcir, going back to collecting latex is like establishing a connection with his deceased mother, the one who put him in the hammock so she could work, and the one who taught him the value of preserving all lives. “As long as I can, I want to continue working here. Today I can reach a tree that my mother once touched and now I can touch it, because I help keep the forest standing.”

INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIP
The production of Liberal Amazon is one of the initiatives of the Technical Cooperation Agreement between the Liberal Group and the Federal University of Pará. The articles involving research from UFPA are revised by professionals from the academy. The translation of the content is also provided by the agreement, through the research project ET-Multi: Translation Studies: multifaces and multisemiotics.