Working in Bolivia 247in virtual slave conditions, rubber workers extracted the
once valuable sap from wild growing trees in what could
be termed ‘jungle mining’. There were no bars or walls
but escape was nearly impossible. River routes crossed
rapids and encountered caimans. Land routes requiring
machete mastery were boobytrapped with malaria
and dysentary.
Quality of life for lowland rubber workers was as grim as
it was for highland miners. With better growing conditions
for rubber discovered in Malaysia and synthetic materials
on the rise, the whole industry collapsed. Taking its place
was the harvesting and processing of the humble Brazil nut.
This industry centres around the steamy towns of Cobija
and Riberalta.
By 2003, the total market value of Brazil nuts reached
US$ 48 million, a tidy sum for a vast but sparsely inhabited
region. The industry supports nearly 30,000 families, creating
as many as 100,000 collateral jobs in packaging, transport
and export. Bolivia controls 80
per cent of the Brazil nut market,
with bordering Brazil and Peru
accounting for the rest. Like
rubber, the nuts grow in the
wild, and therefore, no intensive
farming will disrupt the rainforest in their harvest. With the
help of the Swiss government, quality control (reducing
toxins, improving packaging) within the industry has
greatly improved.
The relative success of the Brazil nut has spread to other
exports, usually non-traditional products for niche markets.
These include cotton textiles originating in the lowlands
and cameloid textiles such as the warm alpaca from the
highlands; gold and silver jewellery; leather products, wood
manufactures (with some mahogany coming from illegal
loggers), and certain exotic food products such as fava beans
and especially quinoa, the supergrain that grows anywhere
in the Andes above 2,000 m (6,561 ft) in altitude.
At the moment, quinoa is targeted to health food shops
in developed countries. For a quinoa cereal to make it in the
The presence of the Brazil nut
industry acts to discourage
residents from environmentally
catastrophic slash-and-burn
agriculture.