Exploitive By Design: Warning Signs From the Northwest Amazon

Abstract

This body of work concerns the impact of imposed capital and culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries’ “Rubber Boom” and today’s 21st-century tourism industry in Iquitos, Peru, because there are parallels in the effects of their economic processes that I will argue can be seen as “warning signs” that appear through the territorial, urban, and architectural scales. These warnings reveal imbalances in power dynamics, cultural and caste hierarchies, and predatory structures that perpetuate and contribute to exploitive cycles with dire consequences on the people and environment of the Amazon. In identifying such warnings and excavating their histories, they can begin to provide insights into strategies that might shift places away from the repetition of exploitive cycles, not only for Iquitos and the broader Amazonian region but other exploited contexts globally as well.