“So, es you giving up on your South American Dream?” Auntie M’s whispering out of the side of her mouth, standing next to me in this small museum housed in an original, German-built, turn of the 20th Century riverboat, complete with wood-burning steam engine room.
The guide looks like he’s been plucked from the set of Fizcarraldo: charcoal grey, pencil-thin mustache, finely-pressed white suit, a thick, teutonic accent, and a nametag that reads Dieter. “Charles Goodyear invented the vulcanization process in 1844, making the rubber producers in Iquitos obscenely rich. Its population exploded from around 1,500 in the 1870s to around 20,000 by the 1880s.”
“It crossed my mind. I can’t hack it down here. All the litter. Stray dogs. The people urinating everywhere in public.”
“Does it makes you homesick?”
“Kinda. Plus, even the simplest things seem to take an eternity down here, and I can’t tell if it’s the culture, or maybe just humanity, or just me.”
She gives me a stern look.
“Maybe I’m just incompetent.”
“You es. Then head back home?”
“To what? You know what I do. . . did for a living?”
Our curator drones on in a rhythmic monotone, like he’s got a word quota to keep even though Auntie M and I are the only people on the tour. “Iquitos was so awash in money that the wives of the rubber barons couldn’t bear for their fine linens to be washed in the Amazon, so they packed them on steamships and sent them all the way to Europe for laundering. Fantastic architecture was constructed in the city, almost exclusively with materials shipped in from Europe, some of which can still be seen to this day.”
Auntie M ignores him, raising an eyebrow my way, instead.
“I work an unfulfilling, useless job that anyone who hasn’t been completely lobotomized can do in their sleep. There’s a guy at my work who’s taught himself to sleep standing up. Every day, he clocks into his shift, then heads to his little cubby in the back storage room so he can space out. All day. And nobody cares.”
She laughs.
I shake my head, trying to stifle a chuckle. “It’s not funny. He’s the smart one. He found a way to keep himself from going insane.”
“Ahem.” Dieter politely coughs to re-capture our attention, then points over at a picture of an ancient steamship. “The steamships were the workhorses of the rubber trade. They transported cargo and people from the far ends of the Amazon river, delivering imported goods, food, medicine, tools, and of course, natural rubber. They became highly-prized and extravagant luxuries themselves, serving purposes besides transportation, such as hotels and even brothels.”
I nod and smile at Dieter to make him feel like he’s doing something important, then lean over to Auntie M. “My incompetent manager chooses to hire liked-minded, completely incompetent middle-managers, who, in turn, promote beyond sub-incompetent supervisors until all you’re left with are shiteating weasels of walking moral afterbirth housed in fleshy skeins of self-delusion. ‘Hi, my name’s Tom Foolery, but you can call me Mister Shitnose because all I do all day is shove my schnoz up the head secretary’s fartbox, human centipede-style because I’m a no-talent ass clown. “Yeah buddy! You get it?”
She bows her head, quizzically. “I think eh-so.”
“After watching my youth tick away, I just couldn’t stomach the stupid games anymore.”
Poor Dieter recites his mantra, impassively. “The rubber boom had a few downsides to it, like, well, slavery. The caucheros hired well-armed men from Trinidad and Jamaica to capture natives from the rainforest. These enslaved natives would be required to collect at at least 50 kilos of rubber every four months. They were not paid in cash, but were provided a hammock, a cup, a machete and a pair of trousers. If the natives failed to collect sufficient latex they were often killed.”
Auntie M gives a restrained shrug. “The things people do to get ahead.”
“Exactly.” I face her. “Besides, I’m all out of excuses. I’ll be fired sometime soon. They just know they’ve gotta keep up the formalities with me to keep from getting sued.”
“Eh-so, what es you going to do?”
Dieter coughs politely to corral our attention. “Around 1920, the Rubber Baron’s heyday came to an end. British entrepreneurs smuggled rubber tree seeds out of the area, and set up plantations in Malaysia, allowing them to produce rubber more economically. Some researchers estimate the loss of indigenous peoples to the rubber trade of around 250,000.”
“I’m not answering my phone. That’s what I’m doing.”
I give an awkward clap as Dieter finishes his schtick, then offers us a tray of sugar cookies and a spot of tea.
On the bright side, if you stick around the steamboat museum for a bit, they’ll play a Spanish-language version of the movie ‘Fitzcarraldo’, so you can watch Klaus Kinski traipse around the jungle screaming in badly-dubbed Spanish.