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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the late-fifteenth-century configuration of the Amazon River estuary as a site of contemplation, exuberance, and potential location of the Earthly Paradise eventually shaped the narratives of resource exploitation built around this river up to the seventeenth century.

Paper long abstract:

My proposal argues that the narratives built around the Amazon River as the location of Paradise from the late fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries shaped processes of resource extraction in the river. Early modern Iberian explorers and natural historians argued that the estuarine landscapes of the New World, particularly those of Amazonia, constituted the actual location of the Garden of Eden. This notion, that started with Christopher Columbus’s diary from the late fifteenth century and was later debated and reinforced by notable seventeenth-century Iberian scholars, emphasized the richness and sacred nature of the South American fluvial tropics. My research argues that these narratives of profusion and religious inviolability paradoxically informed the formulation of plans designed to exploit the alleged multifarious and never-ending resources of the river.

My focus on the correspondence between narratives of sacredness and profusion and the concomitant project of extraction aims to become a required tool to rethink our understanding of Amazonia and the conflicted configuration of the politics of conservationism around this river. Patterns of ecological protection and sustainability are conventionally presented as detached from practices of exploitation. In the case of early modern Amazonia, however, my proposal seeks to demonstrate that those quasi-religious narratives paved the way for the implementation of plans to promote the extraction of its resources. Thus, the prevailing image of the Amazon as the 'last lung' of humanity should be rethought considering the long history of appropriation and exploitation that has surrounded this river since the end of the fifteenth century.