GLOSSARY
aguardiente. A local rum brewed in the Americas from sugar cane.
aldeira. Village.
aviador. The wholesale rubber dealer, or “forwarder,” who sat at the top of the chain in the Amazon rubber business. He bought rubber from the patrão and sold it to the exporter.
balatá. A type of rubber made from the latex of the Manilkara bidentata tree native to northern South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. The rubber produced from this tree is almost identical to gutta-percha.
borracha. Rubber (latex of the hevea tree).
caboclo. The peasant and subsistence farmer of the Amazon Valley.
cacau. Cocoa.
campos. Prairie-like pasture leading up to or on the high plateaus and mountaintops.
candiru. The “toothpick fish,” a tiny catfish that swims up the stream of uric acid released by bigger fish (or animals), then lodges in the gills or cloaca (or urethra) with the help of some sturdy, sharp spines.
caoutchouc. Early name for rubber, still current in France.
caucho. Rubber from the Castilla elastica, or Panama rubber tree, a genus of the Moraceae (or mulberry family). Caucho was the rubber reported in his travels by la Condamine.
caudillo. A type of landed strongman or populist dictator, a social force in revolutionary South America of the early nineteenth century.
cidade. City. Nearly every Amazon town was divided into cidade and aldeira, the city and the village.
cinchona. A genus (Cinchona) of about twenty-five species of the Rubiaceae family, native to tropical South America. They are large shrubs or small trees, and the bark is the source of a variety of alkaloids, the most famous and sought after of which was the antimalarial quinine.
confederado. Former Confederates of the defeated American South, who came to Latin America after the Civil War in hopes of starting a new slave society.
Cruzob. During the Caste War of the Yucatán peninsula, followers of the “Talking Cross.”
curiara. Small fishing canoe.
curupira. The “pale man of the forest,” a lethal spirit in Indian myth that kills forest wanderers, inhabits their bodies, then kills their families.
Dothidella ulei. Fungal parasite known to destroy vast stands of maturing Hevea brasiliensis in Central and South America. It does not naturally occur in the rubber plantations of Southeast Asia. Dothidella destroyed Henry Ford’s dream of becoming a rubber baron in the Amazon Valley.
engenho. Sugarcane plantation.
estrada. The jungle path cut between trees in a rain-forest rubber “estate.”
faca. The small, curved knife used by rubber tappers in Central and South America to make a thin cut through the bark of the rubber tree.
farinha. Manioc flour, toasted and often popped in the mouth like popcorn. Also farinha de mandioca.
feiticeira. “Witches” living at the edge of the forest in solitary hovels. Most of them specialized in jungle cures and love potions, though some had knowledge of native poisons.
Ficus elastica. A species of plant in the banyan group of figs, native from northeast India south to Indonesia. Grown today around the world as a houseplant, its milky latex sap could be used to produce an inferior grade of rubber.
formigas de fogo. Fire ants.
goma. On the Orinoco River, the local term for rubber.
gaurapo. The heated juice of sugarcane.
guayule. A shrub of the Parthenium genus, native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It can be used as an alternate source of latex that is hypoallergenic, unlike the normal hevea rubber.
gutta-percha. The Palaquium genus of tropical trees native to southeast Asia and northern Australasia, which produces a latex that is a good electrical insulator. By 1845, telegraph wires and transatlantic telegraph cables were being coated with gutta-percha, since this rubber was not attacked by marine plants or animals.
Hevea brasiliensis. Also known as the Pará rubber tree and referred to simply as hevea throughout this book, a tree of the Euphorbiaceae family that initially grew only in the Amazon rain forest and is still the world’s primary source of natural rubber. Today most rubber-tree plantations are grown with hevea in Southeast Asia, though some are also found in tropical Africa. In 1876, Henry Wickham smuggled seventy thousand hevea seeds from the Amazon Valley to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, a disputed act of biopiracy that began the British rubber plantation industry.
jararaca. The fer-de-lance, the most common, and deadliest, venomous snake in Amazonia.
lancha. Portuguese term for a larger trading vessel used in the rain-forest rivers, often covered with a shelter, or toldo, a half-open deck.
Landolphia. A genus of rubber vine, also known as white rubber vine and mbungu vine, particularly indigenous to tropical Africa.
Lingoa Geral. European missionary script form of Tupi Guarani language.
llanos. The vast tropical grasslands situated east of the Andes in the Orinoco Basin.
matapalo. The parasitic “tree-killer,” or strangler fig, native to tropical America.
mestizo, mestiza. A term of Spanish origin used to describe people of mixed European and Indian ancestry.
mishla. A native beer in Nicaragua made from fermented cassava and other fruits and vegetables.
Paranáquausú. “Great River,” Indian name for the Amazon River.
Paraponera clavata. An inch-long, glistening black ant native to Central and South America that sports a massive hypodermic syringe at the end of its abdomen and large venom reservoirs.
patrão. The rubber boss, or patron, who often owned the rubber stands in the jungle, hired the seringueiro, and supplied him with food and essential supplies during the tapping season.
perros de agua. “Water dogs,” the large river otters of South America.
pitpan. A long, flat-bottomed canoe used in the rivers and lagoons of Central America.
praça. Plaza or square.
rancho. A rude thatch hut or open-air shed.
rede. Hammock used for sleeping in the Amazon Valley.
saudade. A Portuguese term considered untranslatable: a sadness of character best thought of as the longing that infiltrates many literary descriptions of life in the Amazon Valley. Weltschmerz.
seringa. Early name for “syringe” rubber.
seringal, ciringal. A stand of rubber trees.
seringueiro. A rubber tapper, rubber collector.
sucuruju. Anaconda.
temblador. Electrophorus electricus, the South American electric eel.
terra firme. Forest on land above the flood plains, terra firma.
terra preta do Indio. “Indian black earth,” a rich compost built up over the generations by ancient Indian farmers, still found around ancient sites in the Amazon Valley.
timbó. Vine from which insecticides are produced.
toldo. Shelter, awning.
tonina. The fresh-water dolphin of the Amazon basin.
ubá. A fire-hollowed dugout canoe.
vulcanization. A chemical curing process for rubber discovered accidentally in 1839 by American chemist Charles Goodyear. Individual polymer molecules are linked to other polymer molecules by atomic bridges, resulting in a springy rubber that is hard, durable, and more resistant to wear.
Xtabay. In Mayan mythology, the sinister and seductive temptress of the rain forest who lured men to their doom.
zamora. The ubiquitous “turkey buzzard” found throughout tropical and semitropical America.