Chapter XIX from this 1911 book gives an account of rubber production in Peru, written during the period of the rubber boom. Given the time, one can assume this chapter was written as a guide for those interested in entering the rubber business in Peru. As rubber became a very profitable export, Iquitos grew very quickly and foreign companies quickly began to build roads to facilitate access to the city. The text mentions that for two years around 1902, an English steamboat company had a monopoly on rubber export using boats specially built for the area. It lasted until direct shipments from Iquitos to New York and Liverpool began. At the time, several tribes had settled and would “wage relentless warfare against the wholly savage tribes,” capturing them and teaching them to work as rubber laborers. The chapter gives an overview of the extraction techniques and types of rubber. Lastly, the author gives an overview of the legal issues in securing land from the government, including that the government allows land contracts to go into effect only after a surveyor has viewed the land.

This source is rather unique in that it acts as a primary source for the rubber boom in Peru. By looking at a guide to Amazonian rubber at the time, one can better understand the mindset of the characters that inspired the movie. The section on legalities indicates that the entire purpose behind Fitzcarraldo’s journey has a historical basis rather than existing solely as a creation of Herzog’s to make a more coherent plot. The discussion of Iquitos allows one to better understand the setting of the film. The town was just on the brink of a population explosion during the period in which the film takes place. Watching the film, one can understand that most of the wealth in the town has just emerged. As Fitzcarraldo explores the land in the film, he contributes to only the earliest stages of the rubber boom, and while somewhat apparent in the film, one understands this far more upon reading this account written a little over a decade of the movie’s setting.

In the chapter entitled, “Tappers and Traders,” Barbara Weinstein gives an overview of the Amazon rubber economy during the rubber boom around the turn of the century, while the book focuses on Brazil, the same methods were used in Peru. For a variety of natural causes, rubber trees grow very far apart naturally. Thus, in the extractive stage of rubber production, huge amounts of land were needed. Typically the estate owner would lease trails through the jungle to individual tappers. The tapper would then collect rubber from a number of trees, and sell the collection to the owner for roughly 50% of the market value of rubber. The rubber would sometimes change hands six times before being sold to consumers, hence the small fraction of the actual value the tapper received. The estate owner would sell the collected rubber to either an local intermediary who collected from a number of owners to then transport to Manaus or Belem, or if an estate had a river dock the owner would transport rubber directly to a major city like Manaus. Generally establishing a plantation involved little capital, and the money to be made during the boom helped offset any risk.

    This overview of the rubber economy helps contextualize Fitzcarraldo. By understanding the ways in which rubber was extracted, one can see why Fitzcarraldo needed such a huge tract of land. Additionally, in the film, most of the loan he takes goes to financing the ship. Because of the importance of transporting rubber, and the lack of any intermediaries in the area he was exploring, the motivation for moving the ship over the mountain becomes more evident. Without a means of transport, extracting rubber would prove to be fruitless. Fitzcarraldo seeks to establish his own company that would own the land and then transport the rubber a market. In doing so, he could maximize his profit by selling the rubber at the fair market value.