Introduction
About the time Tom Sawyer told Huck Finn that one day he would fill his palace with chewing gum, the exiled Mexican General Santa Anna arrived in New York with samples of a tree sap known in the Mayan language as tsictle. By 1869 Santa Anna had arranged for one ton on this gum, now called chicle, to be shipped to the inventor Thomas Adams. In 1871 Adams took out the first patenet for a gum machine and his anise-flavored Adams' Black Jack ushered in a chewing gum craze (Hendrickson 1976). By 1909 three billion pieces of chewing gum were produced annualy in the United States, and by 1930
Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize exported 15 million tons of chicle to the United States alone (Hendrickson 1976; Karling 1942). When the price of chicle rose from seven cents a pound in 1888 to fifty cents by 1900, gum makers sent botanists scouring the globe in search of alternative latexes (Millward 1909). The result was the commercial discovery of the large Sapataceae family which includes the numerous Gutta species found in southeast Asia, wild Ficus latexes from Africa, halata, leche de vaca, and leche caspi from South America, and eventually nispera and tunu from eastern Nicaragua.
The word chicle today represents a class of gum latexes. The most prized chicle-producing tree, called sapodilla in English, chicazapote in the Petén of Guatemala, and níspero in Nicaragua, was considered Achras zapota until recently but is now generally identified as Manilkara zapota (cf. Smith et al. 1992. In Nicaragua, níspero grows throughout the country but is found mostly in the well-drained mid-altitude slopes of north-central Nicaragua in the departments of Jinotega and the Autonomous Region of the Atlantic North (R.A.A.N.) (Figure 1). On the other hand, tunu (,i>Castilla fallax) growsa gregariously but its distribution is limited to well-drained open forest, especially the transitional areas that rise up behind the lowland tropical pine savannas characteristic of northeastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras.
Although Nicaragua's chicle and tunutrees saw pronounced commercial attention between 1945 and 1980, when the Contra War ended latex extraction, Nicaragua's potential to renew production remains virtually nil. Two related factors account for this. First, over 70 percent of chewing gum bases now derive from synthetics. Second, the [end p. 57]
autonomy agreements worked out between the Sandinista government and indigenous leaders in 1987 place the largest production area of Nicaragua, the R.A.A.N., in a precarious tenure situation. Although logging companies have recently struck deals with individual communities, reinvestment in gum extraction would be risky and likely unprofitable since competing authorities vie to regulate and tax resource industries. The irony here is, now that local people desire a return of the chewing gum industry, along with retention of nominal control over their own lands, the same global economics and national politics that first brought gum extraction to the region presently hinder such a development.
Boom-and-bust resource economies have directed the extraction of mahogany, pine, gold, rubber, and bananas, among other things, in eastern Nicaragua since the mid-1700s. Efforts to analyze the local impact of such environmentally and culturally transforming industries have been numerous (Centro Humboldt 1992; Jenkins 1986; Vilas 1989), but tend to stray from the actual human-geographical dimensions that underscore and propel change at the local level. Nicaraguan tunu and chicle extraction began in earnest only after World War II, after the last east-coast banana plantations had shut down but as gold mining and pine and mahogany cutting were increasing geometrically. In this context, export revenues from gum extraction were never significant within the national economy. On the other hand, for indigenous extractors, especially the Mayangna, the tunu industry provided a major source of household revenue.
To describe the historical geography of tunu and chicle extraction in Nicaragua, I divide the paper into two sections. In the first, I utilize primary sources to trace how the wider world came to understand and disseminate knowledge about Nicaragua's tunu and subsequently how Nicaragua came to know and legislate its forests and tree latexes. I end this section by considering the importance of the World War II rubber demand on the decision of the Wrigley chewing gum company to invest in Nicaraguan tunu. In part two, I utilize information acquired during fieldwork in Nicaragua in 1991-92, 1994, and 1995-96 to describe how tunu and chicle production operated at the local level between 1950 and 1980. By dividing the paper in this way, I hope to contextualize living memories of a regional industry within historical and more global cultural-political processes that unite science with commerce, knowledge with national territorial authority, and power with changing human-environmental relations.
NORTHEASTERN NICARAGUA, TREE LATEXES, AND EARLY COMMERCE
The lowland pine savanna, the rising riparian forests, and the lower montane tropical forests of northeastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras demarcate the traditional homelands of the Miskitu and Mayangna (Sumu) Indians. Continually defying Spanish colonial rule, the Miskitu aligned themselves with the British and achieved military dominance over the various Mayangna groups. The Spanish never successfully settled in eastern Nicaragua and effective British control remained pronounced until well after Independence. When the Nicaraguan Republic was formed in 1838, many statesmen turned their gaze eastward and began to conflate visions of an isthmus canal with unlimited natural resources into a nationalist ideology that increasingly sought political authority over the eastern slope. However, it was not until Nicaragua began incorporating the northeast in 1860, completing the job with a takeover of the Mosquito Reserve in 1894, that a lasting Nicaraguan influence was finally achieved. Meanwhile, reports of unending natural wealth in the east had been sporadic since the 1500s, but with the rubber craze of the mid-1800s tree gums and resins received new commercial and scientific scrutiny.
Throughout the Nicaraguan literature of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, words such as copal, gum-copal, copaiba, balsam, resin, liquid-ambar, rubber, and medicinal gum appear with increasing frequency but with little regard for distinction or evidence suggesting whether these products were actually extracted. Like all of Central America, Nicaragua contains several of these tree latexes but not all are found in the tropical lowlands of the east. For example, Liquidambar (Liquidambar styraciflua) and Balsam of Peru (Myroxylon balsamum L.), which are extracted from western and highland Nicaragua, are unknown on the eastern slope. Copals such as Protium spp. and Hymenaea courbaril L., copaiba or camibar (Copaifera spp.), cativo (Prioria copaifera), and the medicinal sangredrago (Pterocarpus spp.) are all found in eastern Nicaragua but the extent to which they were commercialized remains unknown.1
The first commercial trade in such gums along the shores of eastern Nicaragua and northeastern Honduras appears to have begun with the English based at Providence Island between 1633-1641 (Kupperman 1993; Offen 1998). In 1687, Sir Hans Sloane (1707: 79) refers to a pirate named Gaugh who "spoke of a Gum or Balsam, called China Balsam, growing in the aforesaid Mosquitos Country, [end p. 59] which is procured by applying fire to one side of the Tree, and gashing the other, at which gashes a black Balsam sweats out." During the period of the British Superintendency of the Mosquitia between 1738-1787, several documents often refer to such things as balsams "of great fragrance," "sundry sorts of gums," and "salutiferous shrubs," but remain vague on their actual commerce (PRO 1764: 137/33, 137/35). Summing up the British perspective, Superintendent Robert Hodgson Jr. (1822) wrote that balsams and gums represented an "extensive field for inquiry, and would amply reward the industrious." Hodgson should know because after transferring his allegiance to the Spanish in 1789 he was exporting "gomas" from Bluefields (Romero V. 1995: 118).
Beginning in the early nineteenth century, scattered reports testify to non-rubber latex extraction. In 1816, the American Dunham arrived at Cape Gracias and told the Miskitu leader Dalby that he wished to trade for turtle shell, hides, "gum elastic, copal, etc." But Dalby did not appear completely familiar with the latter, as Dunham relates: "We spent some time in ascertaining the Indian names of the gums, &c. before he understood what articles I wanted to purchase." Dunham remained at the Cape a week buying shell, hides, skins, and "gums, &c." (Dunham 1851: 52-54). A few years later Orlando Roberts tells us that Indians from all parts of the coast brought "gum copal, caouchouc [India rubber]" to Pearl Lagoon (Roberts 1965: 109). By the 1840s, Scottish merchants were buying "gums" at Cape Gracias and shipping them in Belize (Owen 1841: 193). A Prussian commission visiting Cape Gracias in 1844 noted that rubber, as well as what the Germans called a false rubber, including copal and a white transparent gummi, likely tunu, were also "frequently exported" (Fellechner et al. 1845: 193). Bell (1989: 266), writing about the 1850s, notes that the Mayangna Indians collected a white gum called "pantipee," which likely refers to Hymenaea courbaril L., from the Mayangna pan, tree, and tipi, the so-called tropical locust or guapinol in Spanish. Guapinol serves medicinally for dysentery and other stomach aliments in Nicaragua, but its resin is also one of the 17 New World Hymenaea species producing copals (Langenheim 1973). After the 1850s, most foreign attention shifted to India rubber (Castilla elastica), and other tree latexes do not return to the literature until tunu is mentioned in conjunction with the rubber industry in the late 1880s.2
TUNU
Tunu, a word originating from the Miskitu Indian language, has a long and interesting history in the botanical literature. In 1900, an article appearing in The India Rubber World (Anon. 1900: 36), an industrial trade journal devoted to providing market and scientific knowledge of natural tree latexes, considered "tuno" a trade name of uncertain origin. Until the turn of the century, tunu was thought "even at the Kew royal gardens," to be identical with Castilla elastica, or India Rubber (Karling 1942: 75). This error originated in 1883 when Sir Daniel Morris wrote that in Belize the India rubber tree was called "Toonu" (Morris 1883: 74). Basing its identifications on samples sent by Morris, Kew Gardens did not initially note the error; however, due to increased interest in India rubber Kew botanists re-examined their specimens and claimed two Castilla species, one of which they called C. tunu (Hemsley 1898). In 1910, the Swedish botanist Henry Pittier (1910: 265) noted that the Miskitu Indians referred to a tunu tree, but he was unsure if this referred to C. fallax or "the enigmatic C. tunu of British Honduras." Since that time, the international literature has remained confused, with several works still considering the tunu tree a native of Belize. Today, tunu is generally considered C. fallax and as far as I am aware it is unique to its limited Honduran and Nicaraguan distributions.3
According to the first issue of The India Rubber World in 1889 (Anon., 46), tunu and chicle gums sold for about thirty cents a pound. An 1890 article (Anon., 105) in the same journal claimed Nicaraguan tunu was an abundant and appropriate rubber substitute, yet it was not an article of commerce "save on a very limited scale." This scientific understanding quickly changed. By 1897, tunu was considered a "treacherous friend to those who trusted its sticking qualities in friction," and by 1900 it was known that "Nicaragua rubber adulterated with 'tuno' in coagulation soon hardens and loses its identity" (Anon. 1900: 36). Meanwhile, both tunu and chicle gums were said to compare with the Malaysian gutta percha, valued much higher at US$1.50 a pound, for insulating ocean cables (Anon. 1897). After the turn of the century, tunu was mostly used for insulation, boot soles, and the manufacture of belting in conjunction with the non-elastic balata (Manilkara bidentata) from South America (Anon. 1900). In [end p. 60] 1890-91, 5,460 lbs. of "tuna" gum, valued at 34 cents per pound, were shipped from Cape Gracias a Dios in northeastern Nicaragua (Bureau 1892: 95-96). Once tunu's commercial use was restricted, its price fell to 10-15 cents a pound. Yet steady, if small, amounts continued to be shipped from Cape Gracias to Eggers and Heinlun of New York until the bottom fell out of the India rubber market around 1912, when Hevea rubber from Asian plantations entered the world market (Table 1).
Although tunu's early commercial history is insignificant in economic terms, historians of Nicaragua appear unaware that the gum was exported at all before World War II. The principal tunu exporter from Cape Gracias, the British merchant Alexander Cockburn, was also the chief rubber exporter. In 1901, Cockburn and Hans Heiland obtained an exclusive concession to extract rubber in national forests. At the same time Cockburn received his conncession from the frontier-incorporating Zelaya government, Justo Pastor de la Rocha received the exclusive right for 12 years to extract the resins of billsamo negro, liquidambar, and copaiba in national forests. The concession specified that Rocha plant two trees for every one he killed but, as was typical of all such legislation, it did not specify how this would be supervised or complied with (La Gaceta, 7 October 1901: 205-207). Under the Zelaya regime, the concept of 'national forest' implied anywhere that did not receive formal counter claims. Such resource policies were generalized and sought to enhance government revenue without expense at the same time that they intended to bring the benefits of civilization to 'Ios indios retrasados,' or backward Indians of the tropical lowlands.
When tunu was not being exported separately it was being mixed with India rubber throughout the northeast. According to Mervyn Palmer, who spent a year ascending the Rio Coco in 1905, Nicaraguan tappers mixed "tunu milk with that of the true rubber as an adulterant." As tunu's friction failings became more widely known Palmer tells us the adulteration "practice was soon discovered, and the perpetrators were severely dealt with by the merchants" (Palmer 1945: 27). In spite of Palmer's statement, adulteration continued. From the 1860s to the present authors have lamented the indigenous practice of gum and rubber adulteration, and in most every case they have implied the habit was solved during the period of their writing, and in every case the practice continued (Karling 1942; Millward 1909; Parsons 1955).
The Nicaraguan government was aware of tunu but generally considered it the same as gutta percha (Pittier 1910: 265). Gutta percha (Palaquium gutta)--from the Malay guetah, gum or balsam, and pertcha, or tree--is native to southeast Asia, and is unknown in the neotropics. The use of this word in Nicaragua attests to British scientific influence, as well as a more general struggle to classify tropical plant species with commercial potentials. Gutta percha first appears in Nicaragua's literature as part of the liberalizing forest legislation of 1877. Designed to stimulate forest-product commerce in the newly acquired northeast, legislation decreed that timber as well as "rubber and gutapercha" could be exported duty free (Alegret 1985: 72).
Eventually the Nicaraguan government sponsored several foreign scientists to explore the northeast. Their published reports described a landscape of abundant resources in need of greater supervision, images that resonated with long-standing nationalist sentiments seeking to incorporate the Anglophile east coast. One of these scientists, the German citizen and official state geologist Bruno Mierisch (1893: 28), traveled up the Prinzapolka River in 1893 and noted seeing many gums and resins "still waiting to be exploited," including the gutta percha tree which he saw in great abundance; however, he concluded it "has no value at this time." American geologist and Leon resident John Crawford (1893a, b) spent ten [end p. 61] months starting in August 1892 in "nearly continuous exploration in the uninhabited wilderness and jungle that covers a large part of northeastern Nicaragua," and later wrote "interesting features and peculiarities discovered or noted that are worthy, from both a scientific and economical point of view." Crawford, who wrote a governmental report entitled India-Rubber-Producing Vines and Trees in Nicaragua in 1891 (Anon. 1892: 126), appears to have been the first in Nicaragua to recognize that tunu was not gutta percha. In 1893 he wrote that tunu's "milky juice appeared like the milk or sap that flows from lacerations in an India rubber tree, but concretes into a gum like gutta percha" (Crawford 1893b: 269, 271; 1893a: 175). The name gutta percha continued to be applied to all non-rubber tree latexes, including tunu and chicle, until 1917.
The stagnation of Nicaragua's rubber production beginning in 1912, combined with political unrest associated with ongoing Liberal-Conservative spats, the presence of U.S. Marines, and eventually the Sandino Rebellion, relegated all Nicaraguan tree gums to the margins of national and international concerns. Meanwhile, the Mesoamerican chicle industry was booming. Between 1885-1896, the United States chewing gum industry imported 22 million pounds of Mexican chicle, with annual imports reaching 5.5 million Ibs. valued at US$2 million by 1909 (Anon. 1896: 60; Millward 1909: 707). Likewise, in Guatemala, between 1890 and 1970, the Petén's chicle industry dominated the political economy of the region (Schwartz 1990). It was not until several decades later that the international market even realized that Nicaragua had any gums worthy of the chicle industry.
NICARAGUAN CHICLE
The word chicle appears for the first time in the Nicaraguan context in 1925, when Carlos Pardio Camara signed a contract with the government granting him the right to exploit "chicle, resins, and other gums with the exclusion of India rubber" in the department of Bluefields and the comarcas of Cabo Gracias a Dios and San Juan del Norte for 25 years. Pardio was required "with each formal exploration and technical demarcation" to advise the jefe político at Bluefields of the area's location and receive prior approval before tapping. There is no evidence to suggest that these formalities were observed in the frontier regions of the Atlantic coast. Characteristic to such agreements was the 'termination clause,' that the contractor had to begin paying taxes within one year, or the contract would be null. The agreement obligated Pardio to pay the government US$25 for each 1,000 kg. "of first class chicle" and US$5 for each 1,000 kg. "of lesser chicle or other gums or resins" (La Gaceta, 6 June 1926: 810-812). As far as the law was conncerned, contract speculation was encouraged, as government revenue remained the primary concern. According to export statistics (Table 2), it is likely that the protracted Sandino rebellion put a stop to Pardio's activities before he got started. Regardless of when chicle was first exported from Nicaragua, it was first initiated by mestizos in the north-central department of Jinotega. Jinotega had been in production since at least 1938 when Emilio Pacheco of New York's Chicle Development Company "arrived in the area to instruct the natives in the proper method of tapping" (Williams 1951: 2).
In 1939, the Nicaraguan senate incorrectly considered the chicle industry to be "new to the country" and they searched openly for appropriate legislation to meet the new demand. They approved a contract with Samuel Santos Ugarte for "the exploitation of the milky juice which is extracted from níspero, zapotillo, leche de vaca, and other related trees" within the national forests of Matagalpa, Jinotega, Chontales, Boaco, and the Atlantic Coast. The language of the agreement makes it clear that the senators were unaware of past gum exploitation or concessions, and they initiated a unique concession model, most of which would be abandoned in the language of subsequent agreements. The contract specified that Santos Ugarte had the exclusive right to select "extraction lots" of circular form not exceeding three kilometers each, but that he could only work three lots at anyone time. Two clauses directly specified conservation measures: first that Santos Ugarte must use modern scientific methods "in such a way that the trees are not destroyed and remain in condition to be newly exploited;" and second, that governmental inspectors reserved the right to visit without notice and terminate the contract any time if Ugarte failed to meet forest conservation legislation of the Ley Agraria (La Gaceta, 23 August 1939: 1690-91, 24 August 1939: 1707). The clear attempt to promote sustainable production is quite unique to this period in Nicaragua; however, all the evidence suggests that actual practice varied substantially.
In just over a year the Santos Ugarte contract was transferred to a collective enterprise headed by Pio Castellón (La Gaceta, 18 July 1941: 1283, 28 July 1941: 1348). Unlike many contracts, this one was used. In a series of reports from 1941-43 [end p. 62]
Jinotega's jefe político noted the decline in níspero production "from past years." Judging by the export statistics in Table 2, níspero production in the late 1930s must have been substantial to be declining by 1941. In 1942, Pastora (145) claimed the chicle business did not warrant sufficient advantages to promote its intensification and by 1943 (180) he blames the lack of production on the scarcity of trees in accessible regions. All of this suggests that níspero exploitation had been intense and did not follow the conservationist terms set forth in the Santos Ugarte concession. With the [end p. 63] coming of World War II, commercial attention in tree latexes shifted once again to rubber.
WRIGLEY'S GUM AND WORLD WAR II
Within weeks after the Pearl Harbor bombing, the United States was cut off from 90 percent of available sources of plantation-produced natural rubbber. The stockpiled natural rubber acquired previously by the United States Rubber Reserve Company (RRC) began to run in short supply. To insure continued access to natural rubber, the State Department signed agreements with 17 Latin American countries, paying 45 and 33 cents per pound for Hevea and Castilla rubbers respectively. Since natural rubber production had been morbid in Latin America for a quarter of a century, the RRC considered its role to re-equip local tappers and to provide a stable market (Allen 1944).
In May 1942, the RRC entered into an agreement with the Bank of Nicaragua to buy all national rubber. Less than two weeks later the RRC signed an agreement with the Chicle Development Company (CDC) to procure and develop rubber production throughout Central America. Not to be outdone, in July 1942 the William Wrigley Jr. Company "offered its services to purchase rubber" for the RRC in the countries of its operations, including Nicaragua. As with the CDC, Wrigley would receive advance financing "to explore and develop new rubber areas," a development that eventually led to the commercial rediscovery of tunu, but this time for chewing gum. At the end of October 1943, the United States Rubber Development Corporation (RDC) took over all RRC operations. In ending Wrigley's contract in Central America, the RDC made special reference to the transfer of Wrigley's equipment in Nicaragua, suggesting production was particularly intense.4 Since the inception of the rubber program in April 1942 until the RDC ended its Nicaraguan contract on June 30, 1947, 5,023 long tons of Nicaraguan rubber had been purchased for US$4 million, four times more than Panama, the next important Central American supplier. 5
The RDC pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into frontier Nicaragua through its construction of numerous landing strips, as well as supplying 40 rural commissaries for 5,000 tappers and 165 salaried employees. Meanwhile, towards the end of the war, as rubber trees got scarce and the RDC contract termination date loomed, tunu and other adulterants became an increasingly common feature in Nicaraguan rubber--Nicaragua' s reputation was among the worst (Parsons 1955: 62). The war period also saw increased U.S. spending for chicle research and development in Nicaragua at the newly established El Recreo and Cukra Hill agricultural stations. A 1944 report shows that North American corporations sent hundreds of varieties of native and non-native plants to these stations, including pasture grasses, ginger, vanilla, African palm, Hevea rubber, bamboos, and "several chicle producing trees" (Kevordian 1944: 60).
After the pullout of the RDC in 1947, the Wrigley Import Company, headed in Managua by Rodrigo Reyes, continued to purchase Jinotega's níspero. By 1948, however, tunu was added to níspero in export statistics, by 1949 it was listed separately, and by 1951 six times more tunu than níspero was being exported by Wrigley for use in its chewing gum base (see Table 2). Oral tradition tells us that after the war former RDC contractors Harry Kerr and Nicholas Osomo sent samples of tunu to Wrigley. In lieu of these samples, Wrigley sent globally-seasoned gum expert Llewelyn Williams to investigate the commercial potential of tunu in February, 1951. Williams visited several Nicaraguan departments, including the tunu region of the upper Patuca River in Honduras. From each location Williams took latex samples and reported on the trees' 'tapability.' Williams also assessed markets, the seasonal needs of trees, and workers, he advocated shipping from Puerto Cabezas, and he was the first in Nicaragua to correctly identify níspero as Manilkara zapata (Williams 1951, 1952).
Overall, Williams was very enthusiastic about the potential for tunu, especially since it could be tapped year-round, unlike níspero which could only be tapped during the rainy season (July-February), as well as the potential for another gum, leche de vaca, which he identified as Lacmellea panamensis. In the end, however, the overall promising nature of Williams' report was a function of the intact socio-economic infrastructure left by the RDC. The entire realm of Nicaraguan knowledge to which Williams was exposed derived from former RDC contractors in need of new employment. It was ultimately their initiative that led Wrigley to invest in a processing plant at Waspam on the Rio Coco in 1955. From the moment the plant came on line until it was destroyed during the Contra War in 1980, several million kilograms of washed and blocked níspero, tunu and, to a lesser extent, leche de vaca latexes were exported from Puerto Cabezas to the Dreyfus Laboratory, a Wrigley subsidiary in New Jersey.6 [end p. 64]
TUNU AND CHICLE AFTER 1950
There is no single story of tunu or chicle production in Nicaragua after 1950. Instead what we find is a collection of distinct memories and experiences. By the time I interviewed former mestizo chicleros in the Rio San Juan in 1991-1992, indigenous tuneros, and former plant workers in the northeast between 1994-1996, memories of an industry that ended fifteen years prior had become animated with hopes of rejuvenation amidst a stagnate economy. In the northeast, the focal point of this paper, many believed that my detailed interest in the charred remains of the Wrigley's processing plant demonstrated that I was a Wrigley employee, a messiah come to start buying the white gold once again. Old tuneros, many with bent backs or missing fingers, sought me out in town to tell me the tunu trees everywhere were thick and ready to be tapped. Their enthusiasm waned when it became apparent that I was nobody of consequence and that the good old days would not be returning.
In Nicaraguan vernacular, the word chicle stands for a class of tree gums, including níspero, but never tunu, which is always classified separately. Although experiences and knowledge varied greatly among my informants, it is clear that most all tappers mixed the latexes of several chicle-producing trees. Mixing gums, however, was tricky business because the Wrigley's plant chemist, Frank Chow, closely inspected incoming latexes, rejecting many, especially what he called níspero negro. From Chow's industry perspective, there were only four gums: tunu, níspero, leche de vaca, and chiquibul. Chiquibul is generally understood to mean 'bull' or bastard chicle, a second class chicle. However, tappers recognized many more chicle classes, and considered chiquibul as only one among many second-class chicle adulterants (Table 3). Chicle and tunu tappers, like other forest wisemen, identify trees by following a routine. If possible they examine the size of the tree's leaves and fruits, a difficult task when one is staring 60 feet into a darkened canopy, next they inspect the bark, and finally they cut into the tree, examine its color, and smell the wood. Each tree has known characteristics. The true níspero has a raised and grooved bark; it also has a delicious fruit. Other chicle trees, despite all being buttressed hardwoods, are distinct. Zapotillo, for example, produces a fruit only eaten by animals, níspero negro and tempisque look like níspero, but the former has a smoother bark and the latter has larger leaves, and so on.
Local decisions when to "cut tunu" or "cut chicle" balanced the competing demands of agricultural chores, the social calendar, and financial need. Christmas, New Year, Semana Santa, and the beginning of the school year in March are all peak financial-need periods. These times fit nicely within the annual agricultural cycle, greatly increasing the appeal of gum-tapping among indigenous agriculturists. The agricultural cycle starts when burned fields are sown with regional staples such as rice, maize, tubers, and plantains during the first rains, usually late in May. Red beans, another important staple, are not planted until November and December and are harvested in February and March. Thus, peak agricultural needs--bean harvesting, new field clearing, field burning, and most planting-roughly overlap with the dry season (March-May) when tunu and chicle trees produce less latex.
Most tappers initiate a new tapping season in August after the heaviest of the June and July squalls have dissipated, depending on need, and return home periodically until November when they plant beans [end p. 65] and partake in the Moravian-led Acción de Gracias, or Thanksgiving. After Christmas and New Year's celebrations, tappers set off again to collect money for new school supplies and Semana Santa celebrations. They return finally to partake in the bean harvest and new field preparation around February or March. One observer in the 1950s noted that February ushered in the merchant's tunu season: "soon from miles around the Indians would come walking in with their loads of gum to exchange for trade goods" (Baus 1959: 151). The annual cycle and the bulge of production between New Year and Semana Santa are demonstrated in delayed fashion from Puerto Cabezas shipping data (Figure 2).
As tunu supplanted níspero and the commercial hub shifted from Jinotega to Waspam by 1950 (Table 2), indigenous tappers became the industry's primary laborers. The Miskitu had been involved in regional resource economies since the 1600s; however, for the historically reclusive Mayangna Indians the tunu industry ushered in a new level of market integration. Wrigley plant employee Bill Cunningham estimates that about 50 percent of all tunu was produced by Mayangna tappers, although the Mayangna represent only five percent of the northeast's population of around 150,000. The Mayangna excelled in tunu tapping and with tunu's steady demand, the tapper's ability to work independently, and the seasonal nature of production that did not threaten subsistence routines--as would mahogany cutting or gold mining--the Mayangna entered the labor market in dramatic numbers for essentially the first time. For the Mayangna of Wasakin, Musawas, Awastingni, Bocay, and Umbra--the most significant Mayangna settlements in the northeast--tunu tapping provided the major, and in some cases the only, source of income. Tunu's distribution, which coincides with traditional Mayangna homelands, caused many Mayangna to articulate their relation to tunu as something divinely orchestrated, as one cornerstone of their ethnic identity. As one Wasakin leader told me, "God provides all people with an appropriate set of resources for their needs so he provided the Mayangna with tunu.7
LABOR AND ECONOMICS OF PRODUCTION
Chicle and tunu tapping parties were well organized and capital intensive events. Men would form groups of around 3-6, seek supplies on credit, and head out for anywhere from 2-6 weeks. Although several arrangements were made, tappers typically sought an advance from a contractor or merchant who operated in their zone (see Table 4). Contractors, almost exclusively mestizo Nicaraguans, provided supplies such as food, rope, bags, spurs, knives, machetes, barrels, etc. on credit. On the other hand, merchants ran stores and provided goods on credit, with and without expecting to purchase the gum.
Providing goods on credit did not originate with the chicle and tunu industry, as all historical accounts suggest providing credit was necessary to entice indigenous labor. After 1955, almost all contractors themselves were receiving credit from Kerr, who allegedly worked for Wrigley on commission only. [end p. 66]
Many of the more rural Chinese merchants, the most prolific east coast shopkeepers before the 1979 Revolution, received their goods on credit from larger shops in Puerto Cabezas and Bluefields, often from a relative or benefactor. The credit and debt peonage system in Nicaragua has been much discussed but poorly derstood. Labor has always been the limiting factor in Nicaragua's east coast resource economies. Without credit, especially at shops, business would simply come to a standstill. Palmer (1945: 24), writing about the entire debt-credit system along the Rio Coco in 1905, provides what I consider a good example of the ambiguities associated with debt peonage:
The Indians take almost anything they want up to a value of, say, £25 or £30, which is debited to their accounts, and every day's work done by them or every trip they make is credited to them. They are known as "so-and-so's soldier," and there is an unwritten law which the merchants all respect, not to debit another merchant's "soldier" with goods. The system is not wholly good and gives room for abuse by both parties. It is rare that one finds a "free" Indian. All are more or less compromised with a merchant, and the dishonest ones with two or more, under varying names. Sometimes, however, an Indian does succeed in paying off his debt, and then can if he wishes transfer his allegiance to a competing merchant. Also, it not infrequently happens that a merchant will pay an Indian's indebtedness to a rival in order to secure the services of a reliable man. or
In the gum industry there was substantial competition among contractors and, since they paid less than could be received from Kerr at Waspam, there was always the incentive to take an advance but sell to the highest bidder. As Frank Chow tells it, "all merchants and contractors were speculators. For if they did not pay a fair price, chicleros and tuneros would take an advance from one and sell to another." Many tappers took provisions from the Chinese merchant Roy Siu at Bonanza and Rosita and then sold their [end p. 67] gum directly at Waspam. In order to curb this activity, Siu took photos of those he outfitted and gave the photos to his people at Waspam. Table 5 shows that gum values at Waspam were consistently 40 percent higher than paid by contractors; this same percentage separates the value of níspero from that of tunu.
After getting needed supplies, men would strike out to known places, make a centralized camp, set out very early, and return individually after lunch each day. Alejandro Luna, who tapped tunu for over 15 years, would select a spot to make a camp by first looking for tree clusters. He worked a suitable spot, which might be as large as 10 acres, for 3 years before he would set out to find a new area. The old area would be returned to from time to time, but never worked consistently like the first time. According to the people I interviewed, there were never tree or territorial rights, as anyone could tap anywhere. Most could tell how long ago a tree had been tapped by simply looking at it, and although abuses were common, they were somewhat mitigated by the fact that high-risk trees would be avoided due to suspected low returns. When asked if there were ever territorial conflicts among tappers, one Miskitu responded in the negative, adding "we Miskitus are all brothers." Although confirming popular rhetoric, it is well known that the Miskitus distinguish greatly between forest resources that have a commercial value and those that are used for community or household consumption (Howard 1993).
With chicle trees, machetes are used to scrape the bark, and then to cut the tree in a staggered zigzag, or saw-tooth pattern, the entire length of the trunk, perhaps 60 ft. Trees were scaled with ropes looped around the waist, climbing spurs pegged the ankles to the trunk. Work was hard, and many chicleros cut their rope while hacking away at blocking branches and vines. As one chiclero put it, "if the rope is cut, the man has to fall."9 Once the cuts are opened, the latex trickles down into rubberized sacks called pichaleros, as metal pails could not be used due to oxidation. To be tapped sustainably, chicle trees need rest periods of 3 to 5 years or longer. By the time Williams inspected Jinotega in 1951 he noted that many níspero trees had been killed by overtapping. Given níspero's higher value, the switch to tunu gum by most tappers and contractors after 1950 reflects the particular ecology of the tunu tree.
Tunu, which is found in relative abundance in the northeast, can be tapped year round and only needs a rest period of 6 months. Unlike níspero, tunu's bark is relatively smooth and soft. Machetes generally kill the tree, so, beginning in 1950, Wrigley's representative Reyes acquired the former RDC stock of Hyde Castilloa knives, which have a roller and allow the tapper to adjust the depth of the incision, and sold them to tappers. The knife and the spurs, often placed side by side wedged in forgotten crevices, can be seen collecting rust in many Mayangna and Miskitu homes throughout the northeast. Unlike níspero, tunu cuts were made in a 'V' pattern in bands spaced 5 ft. apart that were connected in a central trough, the same as with Castilla rubber. A typical tunu tree of 16-20 inches in diameter could produce up to two gallons of latex with each gallon yielding about 3 Ibs. of gum. If work went well a tapper could produce between 100-200 Ibs. of tunu each week, or $40-$80 a week in the 1970s--a significant chunk of change when cheap American products were readily available.
Once collected in rubberized sacks tunu and chicle are processed in distinct manners. With tunu, a hole in the ground would be filled with each day's latex. Tunu coagulates after about two hours of adding a cuajo, or coagulant vine such as tataku in Miskitu and yalakta in Tuahka. Once the consistency of cheese curd the mass would be pulled out and placed in a barrel and cooked for about half an hour. The barrel would then be rolled into the water and the gum would be washed, "exactly as one would wash clothes." níspero, on the other hand, would coagulate on its own and was simply poured into the barrel and cooked. After washing, both gums would be pressed into square wooden molds. Once hauled out of the forest by canoe or mules the blackened blocks would get rafted down rivers, eventually making their [end p. 68] way to Waspam (Figure 3). Numerous old chiclero and tunero camps, their corresponding exotic fruits such as citrus, breadfruit, and pera de agua, as well as their extensive networks of radiating trails, encompass the entire northeast---what city folk consider virgin forest has been traveled and modified by people for centuries.
The tunero and chiclero's biggest concern was with the moisture content of the gum. According to Chow, if tunu had 30% moisture or níspero had greater than 25% the gum would be rejected. Whatever moisture content the gum did have, that amount would be deducted from the gum's weight. Many merchants and contractors bought gum from tappers only to find that it would not be purchased at Waspam, or that they actually lost money due to the moisture content. To circumvent this problem merchant Roy Siu simply deducted 10 percent for moisture across the board. Besides being checked for moisture, gum blocks were cut up to look for "balls of rubber" and other solid adulterants. Many tappers mixed tunu with India rubber at about 1 part to 5, as higher concentrations would separate into balls during coagulation.
Referring to tunu at Waspam, one 1950s observer noted that the "large lumps of black gum .... turn a light gray in the washing and look like half-baked dough or a dirty dumpling" (Baus 1959: 246) (Figure 4). After the Wrigley plant was built, gum would be grouped into batches and placed into large washing mixers with lye or bht as a preservative. Each batch consisted of about 40,000 lbs. and depending on the time of year, a batch would be shipped to Puerto Cabezas about every two weeks. Combining monthly production figures with tree production rates we can assume that between 20,000 and 30,000 trees were tapped each month, an incredible figure if waiting periods were actually followed.
Although commercial chicle and tunu production has not returned to northeastern Nicaragua, a 1981 study commissioned by the Sandinista government looked into market demands and the potential to start the industry anew (CORFOP 1981). Although no ecological or labor considerations were mentioned, the report was extremely positive. The study argued that European demands would offset investment costs, but it also estimated the optimistic demand of over a million pounds annually--a value approximmately 50 percent higher than was exported throughout the 1970s--and considered the processing potential of the plant as the limiting factor of production. The authors estimated ten tunu trees per hectare over a region of 317,827 hectares of appropriate forest, an overestimation on both accounts. War, the U. S. blockade, and poverty precluded Sandinista reinvestment in the plant. Currently the R.A.A.N.'s elected governor, Miskitu leader Stedman Fagoth, pursues investment in any resource industry willing to return to the once booming region, but efforts to bring back Wrigley or other tunu buyers have failed. [end p. 69]
IN THE END
Northern Europeans and North Americans have purchased tree latexes from the lowland tropical forests of eastern Nicaragua since at least the early 1700s. By 1820 the industrializing North imported India rubber and likely tunu on a limited, but increasingly significant scale. Beginning in the mid-1800s, nationalist sentiments in the new Republic of Nicaragua were underscored by progress-minded scientific exploratory reports and a belief in unlimited natural resource wealth on Nicaragua's eastern slope. Subsequent Nicaraguan treaties, foreign concessions, and legislative activism invited resource industries to exploit the east coast as a way to incorporate better the Anglo-influenced and predominantly indigenous and Creole east coast into the Hispanic cultural fold. In the twentieth century, however, the east coast became even more isolated from western Nicaragua through the cultural and economic dominance of North American companies, including the Rubber Development Corporation. In the wake of RDC's pullout, the William Wrigley Jr. company, the largest chewing gum manufacturer in the world, heeded the advice of an optimistic economic botanist, took advantage of an intact wartime socioeconomic infrastructure, and invested millions of dollars in northeastern Nicaragua. The result was the steady exportation of approximately 350,000 kilos of chewing gum latexes annually, mostly tunu, between 1950 and 1980.
To contextualize the contemporary dimensions of latex extraction, I have attempted to locate northeastern Nicaragua within a much longer and more global economic, scientific, and legislative tradition that has directed boom-and-bust resource economies and transformed eastern Nicaragua since the late 1700s. The effect of these resource economies on the lives of local people and their environment is too complex to be properly analyzed by looking at a single industry. Nevertheless, the historical geoography of latex extraction provides one previously unexamined vista from which these processes can be considered. The study shows that despite external direction and imposition at every turn, local people maneuvered within transforming socioeconomic structures to achieve limited independence. For the Miskitu and the Mayangna of the northeast, tunu tapping fit within an agricultural cycle and social calendar that were themselves of fairly recent origin. For the Mayangna, tunu tapping became integrated into an evolving world view that encompassed both the economic need to tap tunu and the tree itself. As in previous centuries, political intrigues and economic demands created a profit incentive that guided scienntific inquiries and investment decisions in ways that directly affected indigenous people in Nicaragua's northeast. Not so ironically, just as indigenous cultural priorities adjusted to the demands of labor and strong market dependencies, another war and a new science--one that made synthetic substitutes cheaper than a reinvestment in tunu--ended the very industry these two global processes encouraged in the first place.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Research for this paper was carried out at one time or another with funding from The Swedish Agency for Interrnational Development (ASDI), a Fulbright lIE Fellowship for Nicaragua, and two Continuing Graduate Fellowships from the University of Texas. With gratitude I am happy to acknowledge their support. Anonymous CLAG reviewers made suggestions that greatly improved the final product. In Nicaragua the Center for Research on the Atlantic Coast (CIDCA) sponsored my larger investigative project. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Costeños Alejandro Luna, Frank Chow, Bill Cunningham, Leonardo Montiel, Evenor Ismail Fredrick, Juan Peters-Paiz, Herberto Chang, Olidio Balle, Ana Rosa Fagoth, Augustín Lagos, Francisca Zúñiga James, Manuel Morales, Cecil Momoe, and the people of Wasakin, tanh pali.
NOTES
1. Resins, gums, and balsams are chemically distinct. Resins are insoluble in water and most organic solvents, whereas gums are the opposite. Balsams are oleoresinous exudations that contain aromatic substances.
2. Tree gums also had many traditional uses among the Mayangna and Miskitu Indians. Rubber, pine brea, and tunu were used for boat caulking. Rubber was also valued as a paint and was an internal trade and tribute item well before it saw a large-scale international market. In the case of the tunu tree, the soft inner fibrous bark had been utilized for blankets, hammocks, and clothing for millennia. A whiter bark cloth, similar to tunu, called yakuta in Miskitu, is still used for special dress, and ceremonial outfits associated with sukia, or shaman, rituals. The yakuta tree is smaller and less common than tunu and is likely a species of chilamate (Ficus spp.), or wild fig.
3. The word 'toonou' first appears in designation of a bark cloth in buccaneer chronicles from the seventeenth century. John Wright makes the first known reference to tunu as a gum (Wright 1808). Tunu is most likely a Miskitu word and not a Mayangna Indian word because the Mayangna also call tunu 'tikam.' Tunu was first identified as C. fallax in Nicaragua by F. C. Englesing of the Yale School of Forestry (Record 1929). As late as 1962 Polhamus was unsure if C. fallax and the tunu "tree of British Honduras" [end p. 70] were separate species (1962: 98).
4. As an incentive to maximize production, the agreement specified that RRC would pay in addition to the guaranteed price, 2.5 cents per pound for all rubber procured over 200 tons but less than 700 tons, and 5 cents for each pound obtained over 700 tons. Furthermore, the bank agreed that all premiums so obtained would be used to further finance "the immediate expansion of production and improvement of the quality of wild rubber in Nicaragua."
The RRC procurement contracts obligated the CDC and Wrigley to strive "for the improvement of health, saniitation, and food supply" within the procurement countries. Furthermore, the companies were required to insure that subcontractors paid wages no less than comparable work. At one point Wrigley's asked the RRC for a change in these provisions. In refusing, the RRC responded that "the living and working standards of the rubber workers must be maintained at a level sufficiently high to stimulate the maximum availability and productivity of labor." Moreover, they increased the strength of the pro-labor provisions, but allocated increased financial advancements for Nicaragua. Out of these amendments, Wrigley was required to provide machetes, kettles, mules, equipment, boats, bags, ropes, food, medicine, and personal effects to workers and these were not expected to be returned. "Agreement Rubber Reserve Company and Bank of Nicaragua," Minutes of a Meeting of the Board of Directors, May 2, 1942, vol. 4, 10 I-I 04, Box no. 10, Rubber Reserve Company, Records of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Record Group 234, National Archives; "Agreement RRC and CDC," Minutes, May 14, 1942, vol. 4, 241-248; "Agreement Wrigley's and RRC," Minutes, July 21,1942, vol. 5, 410-419; "Amendatory Agreement," Minutes, August 27, 1942, vol. 6, 247, 248; "Response to Wrigley's Request," Minutes, November 18, 1942, vol. 8, 195-207; "End of Agreement with Wrigley's," Minutes, October 15, 1943, vol. II, 265-268.
5. The RDC was first under jurisdiction of the Office of Economic Warfare and later under the Foreign Economic Administration, in contrast the RRC was a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The RDC also purchased 66.5 long tons of chicle during its Latin American tenure, but the records do not indicate from which countries such imports derived; it is likely that Mexico supplied the bulk. "Memorandum of Natural Rubber Purchases," April 28, 1948, Rubber Reserve Company, Box no. 9, Folder Rubber Development Corporation.
6. Harry 'Happ' Kerr was the Waspam plant manager until 1975. Happ, a Tennessee man like the famed filibuster William Walker, continued the long line of important southern U.S. influences in Nicaragua, a legacy responsible for the Miskitu word for African American, darki. Like many Anglo North Americans and their earlier British counterparts who essentially 'went native,' Kerr married a Miskitu woman, learned the language, and spent 40 years living in Nicaragua, and is fondly recalled by many locals. Kerr was also intimately connected with the very power structures that brought weakened Indian control over their own lands. Meanwhile, primary and secondary historical sources are silent on the legal aspects of Wrigley's presence in Nicaragua. Popular opinion believes that Wrigley had a concession, or that Kerr personally had some type of concession, but this cannot be documented and is likely untrue. Wrigley's archivist claims Wrigley has no records of its Nicaraguan operations (pers. com.). If a concession was not acquired to procure gum in national forests this would be unique to any forest resource industry in Nicaragua. Although Wrigley did pay export taxes, informants suggest that President Somoza (Tachito) was involved in the enterprise, possibly waiving the concession in exchange for a kickback.
7. Scholars have correctly noted the historical aversion of the Mayangna to participate in regional resource economies, but often this perspective is overdone. As early as the 1850s, Charles Bell was using at least two Mayangna groups simultaneously to cut mahogany in the regions of the upper Prinzapolka (Bell 1989). By the 1880s the Mayangna world was turned upside down, as gold prospectors, rubber tappers, and eventually Moravian missionaries inspired aggregate settlement within larger movement areas.
8. Price increases reflect Córdova devaluation against the Dollar, the actual value of tunu declined from about $1 to 50 cents a pound over the three decade period. Shipment exports from Puerto Cabezas during the 1970s reveal that tunu was valued around 40 cents and níspero at 50 cents for tax purposes which confirms personal recollections of prices paid at Waspam.
9. Accidents were common and many tappers were paralyzed or worse. On the other hand, work at the plant was equally dangerous. On July 25, 1972 William Chow, only distantly related to Frank Chow, was fatally electrocuted. His widow, Francisca Zúñiga, recalls that Gary Still, the Wrigley's vice-president at the time and a Mr. Lawler visited her along with Happ Kerr. They promised to provide compensation for her loss. At the time William died Francisca had 11 children, only two of whom were grown. William had worked for Wrigley's 18 years: Francisca still awaits her check.
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RESUMEN
Este articulo describe la historia geográfica de la produción de las gomas naturales tunu y chicle en Nicaragua. En la primera parte, utilizo fuentes primarias para investigar cómo el sistema global llegó a comprender y diseminar conocimientos sobre el latex del tunu nicaragüense, y luego cómo Nicaragua llegó a conocer y legislar sus gomas naturales. Esta parta termina con una consideración del impacto de la demanda del hule durante la segunda guerra mundial y la decisión eventual de la empresa Wrigley de ingresar en la producción de goma de mascar en Nicaragua. En la segunda parte, utilizo información obtenida durante una extensa investigación de campo en Nicaragua durante 1991-2, 1994, Y 1995-6 para describir como la producción del chicle y del tunu funcionaba a nivel local desde 1950 hasta 1980, momento en que la producción se terminó. Al dividir el artículo de esta manera, quisiera contextualizar el recuerdo vivo de una industria regional y transformativa dentro de los procesos culturales-políticos e históricos mundiales que unen a la ciencia con el comercio, al conocimiento con la autoridad territorial nacional, y al poder con los cambios locales en las relaciones entre los seres humanos y el medio ambiente. [end p. 73]