Jungle

This novel, published in 1930, is largely set on a rubber plantation in a remote part of Amazonia. The central character, Alberto, a law student, has come to live in exile with his uncle in Brazil, having been involved in a monarchist uprising against the republican regime in Portugal. Tiring of supporting his unemployed nephew, his uncle arranges for Alberto to join a contingent of recruits bound for a rubber plantation on the Madeira River, one of the major tributaries of the Amazon. There he's introduced to rubber tapping and to the debt bondage system operated by Juca Tristão, the plantation owner. His experience of the rubber plantation, ironically called Paraíso (Paradise), forces him to re-evaluate his understanding of justice. At the end of the novel, he concludes that in his future career “his voice could not formulate fine speeches for the prosecution... his conscience and his doubts would rise up and stifle him”; instead he thought it likely he would “devote himself to civil law... or become counsel for the defence — only for the defence”.

The author, José Maria Ferreira de Castro (born 24 May 1898), spent his early childhood near Oporto in northern Portugal. He emigrated to Brazil aged 12. His first novel was published in 1916. He spent four years working on a rubber plantation on the Madeira River and this inspired this novel. He returned to Portugal in the 1920s and worked as a journalist. He went on to write a large body of fiction as well as travelogue. This novel was translated into English by Charles St Lawrence Duff (born Enniskillen, 7 April 1894). He was educated at The King’s Hospital, Dublin and was a prolific author, linguist and translator.

Towards the end of the novel, the author gives an overview of the devaluating rubber economy in the context of recent history:
“As rubber had lost greatly in value, the prodigious elasticity of the dream of greatness and revival had reached a limit. The great European War had come as a generator of cherished hopes which soon disappeared before the certainty that the material employed for killing men in Europe would not by a scarcity in the supplies of rubber bring back to life the men buried in the jungle of Amazonas. The development of the North American industry had come and millions of pneumatic tyres were bursting daily all over the world — and yet the loss in value was a fact, like an inevitable curse.”