Petrópolis, Treaty of (1903)

Treaty of Petrópolis (1903), one of the treaties negotiated by the Brazilian José Maria da Silva Paranhos, Jr., Baron of Rio Branco, and other diplomats to settle territorial disputes and open hostility regarding the poorly surveyed interior borders of South America. The Treaty of Petrópolis awarded Acre and its 73,000 square miles of rubber-producing lands to Brazil. Bolivia gained necessary land along the Madeira River for access to the Atlantic, open navigation on the Madeira River, $10 million, and the promise of a Brazilian-financed Madeira-to-Mamore railroad that would permit Bolivia to reach the lower Madeira River, bypassing treacherous rapids.

This settlement ended the hostilities aggravated by the recent economic boom in the rubber industry. Migrant Brazilian rubber tappers resented a Bolivian contract of 1901 to develop Acre in partnership with American capitalists and refused to pay the newly enforced Bolivian taxes demanded of all Brazilians who attempted to transport their goods via the Acre River. Led by José Plácido de Castro, the Brazilians seized the Bolivian customshouse in 1902. Brazil and Bolivia sent troops to the area before the Treaty of Petrópolis ended the threat of war.

See alsoRubber Industry .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Bradford Burns, The Unwritten Alliance: Rio-Branco and Brazilian-American Relations (1966), and A History of Brazil (1993), pp. 277-279.

Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 6 (1984), pp. 346, 565, 570.

Additional Bibliography

Klein, Herbert S. A Concise History of Bolivia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Tocantins, Leandro. Formação Histórica do Acre. Brasília: Senado Federal/Conselho Editorial, 2001.

                                        Lesley R. Luster