The virtual slavery and the almost universal mistreatment of the Indians, many of them recruited from the highland communities of the Andes, makes a sad chapter of human brutality, now long since closed. The Brazilian Amazon conditions were scarcely better. Most of the workers who came into the region during the 70's and 80's were from the drought-stricken regions of Ceara . People from Ceara poured into the Amazon during part of the rubber period in numbers averaging 20,000 a year; but few of them returned. Today a very large proportion of the Brazilians scattered over this vast extent of territory came originally from the sertao of the Brazilian Northeast. .
The rubber was gathered by workers who were almost literally buried in the forest. The owner of the tract of land recruited his workers in Belem or Manaus, loaned them the funds with which to buy not only essential items of equipment but also tinned foods. Each family of workers was then transported to a spot on the river bank accessible to the launch of the owner, and there deposited and left to build a rude shelter for a home. From each isolated camp the gatherer cut for himself a path or Estrada through the forest, leading to perhaps as many as two hundred rubber trees . The latex tapped from these trees was brought to the camp and there formed into solid rubber balls by smoking over a slow fire. There could be no supervision of the tapping methods and no care of the trees to insure their continued productivity. At intervals the owner's launch would make its appearance to pick up the product, and to leave supplies, for which the worker was never quite able to pay "and thus always remained in debt to the owner. Debt peonage is a great name for it and the workers of rubber were no stranger to this situation. .
The question of debt is by no means an unimportant one to the rubber worker. He will probably collect one pound of rubber milk a day, which was worth about $2, and will undoubtedly consume in material and supplies about $4 to $5 a day, so that after three or four months he owes the boss $400 to $500 .
