Chapter 23 - Manaus, Brazil

Summary

This essay offers an overview of literature and culture in Manaus between 1870 and 1930. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, Manaus grew from a remote outpost in the Brazilian Amazon to one of the capitals of the rubber boom – a bustling port where British bankers mingled with Turkish traders and opera companies from Italy sang at the opulent Teatro Amazonas. By World War I, however, the rubber trade had shifted to southeast Asia and the city entered what is typically portrayed as a long decline. Most accounts of the boom depict Manaus as a place where “culture” was just another import and object of conspicuous consumption. In contrast, this essay shows how the social and economic relations, international influences, and cultural infrastructure established during the heyday of rubber were essential to the postboom emergence of a regionalist movement and efforts to articulate an explicitly Amazonian identity.