Iquitos: History

Pre-20th-Century History

Iquitos was founded in the 1750s as a Jesuit mission, surviving attacks from indigenous tribes who didn't want to be converted. The tiny settlement survived and grew slowly until, by the 1870s, it had 1500 inhabitants. Then came the great rubber boom, and by the 1880s the population had increased 16-fold. For the next 30 years, Iquitos was at once the scene of ostentatious wealth and abject poverty. The rubber barons became fabulously rich, and the rubber tappers (mainly local tribespeople and poor mestizos ) suffered virtual enslavement and sometimes death from disease or harsh treatment. Signs of the opulence of those days is seen in some of the mansions and tiled walls of Iquitos.

Modern History

By WWI, the bottom fell out of the rubber boom as suddenly as it had begun. A British entrepreneur smuggled some rubber-tree seeds out of Brazil, and plantations were seeded in the Malay Peninsula. It was much cheaper and easier to collect the rubber from orderly rows of rubber trees in the plantations than from wild trees scattered in the Amazon Basin.

Iquitos suffered economic decline during the decades after WWI, supporting itself as best it could by a combination of logging, agriculture, specifically Brazil nuts, tobacco, bananas and barbasco - a poisonous vine used by indigenous peoples to hunt fish and now exported for use in insecticides, and the export of wild animals to zoos. Then, in the 1960s, a second boom revitalized the area. This time the resource was oil, and its discovery made Iquitos a prosperous modern town.

The 1982 movie 'Fitzcarraldo' was filmed near Iquitos. It explored the life of rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald.

During the '90s, homosexuals from other Peruvian cities fled the repressive police to live in Iquitos. Many now live in nearby Belén.

Recent History

Iquitos is home to a number of research projects. Cornell University owns a field station called the Cornell University Esbaran Amazon Field Laboratory, which was founded in July 2001. It's dedicated to the education, conservation and discovery of novel medicinal compounds along the Yarapa River Basin.

Iquitos plays an important part in the shipment of lumber from the Amazon rainforest. Other profitable local industries include oil, rum and beer production.

In recent years, tourism has played an important role in the economy of Iquitos. In particular, Westerners travel here for traditional shamanic experiences using medicinal Amazonian tea. While there are reputable curanderos (faith healers) in Iquitos, others are 'untrained' and simply specialize in collecting tourist dollars.

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