The Amazonian Rubber Boom: Industrialisation, extractivism, and violence

Curated by Giuliana Borea and Erna von der Walde in partnership between the NewBridge Project and Newcastle University's Centre of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), with the support of NU Engagement and Place Fund, CAAAP, and LaMula.pe.

Launch: Thursday 29 June, 5pm – 8pm

Exhibition Dates: 30 June – 22 July 2023

Open Times: Wednesday – Saturday, 12pm – 5 pm

Place: The NewBridge Project Gallery 

More information: The NewBridge Project

In the second half of the 19th century, a new phase of industrialisation in Europe and the US triggered a demand for rubber that would have tragic consequences for the peoples of the Amazon (1870-1930). It fuelled not only the mass displacement of indigenous people from their original lands, but also their enslavement, along with that of many others, mostly poor peasants seeking a better living in a booming extractive industry. One of the most controversial episodes in the history of rubber is the revelation in the British press of the regime of terror under which rubber was extracted in the Putumayo region on the border between Peru and Colombia. This violent event has been in the memory of indigenous people and constitutes to this day a defining moment in their history. This exhibition brings together historical photography, documents, maps along to artworks of Brus Rubio, Santiago Yahuarcani, and Sarah March, literature on the rubber exploitation, and the film El Canto de la Mariposa directed by Núria Frigola Torrent to explain the rubber exploitation in the Amazon.

About Giuliana Borea:

Anthropologist and curator. She is a lecturer in Latin American Studies at Newcastle University, and an affiliated lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Her publications concern Amazonian indigenous art and cultures, the political economy and transnational networks of art, museums, and place-making. Her Amazonart projectexplores the aesthetics, agendas, and circulation of Amazonian art and produces new curatorial narratives in collaboration with indigenous artists. 

About Erna von del Walde: 

Independent researcher and author of articles on Colombian literature, culture and art. She recently published a co-edited volume on José Eustasio Rivera's La vorágine setting the text of the novel, which prominently deals with rubber exploitation in the Upper Amazon, within the history and geography of extractivism.