Lumber Industry

Much of Latin America is denuded of commercial timber, but select areas have supplied specialized markets. Europeans were early attracted to the variety of subtropical trees, both dyewoods and construction wood, formerly available only from the Orient. Craftsmen and builders prized Caribbean mahogany; textile manufacturers coveted brazilwood, Nicaragua wood, and logwood. The best wood commanded high prices in European markets, but the quality was inconsistent and the risks of obtaining it were considerable. Valuable trees such as mahogany were widely scattered. Finding and removing them was a major undertaking. Costs were proportional to overland haulage; the greater the distance, the higher the cost. The competition for accessible trees that consequently arose often provoked international controversy. The dyewood trade suffered from inroads by such other natural dyes as Mexican and Guatemalan cochineal and was destroyed by synthetic dyes after 1856.

Brazilwood, which yielded a brilliant red dye, was the premier wood. It grew along the coast from the state of Pernambuco (Recife) to that of Rio de Janeiro, and provided the economic base for the first Portuguese settlements in the early sixteenth century. Overcoming a French challenge, the Portuguese crown monopolized the brazilwood trade for 300 years. The trade peaked before 1600 and was followed by a sharp drop attributed to the decimation of the coastal forests and Indian laborers. Exports in the seventeenth century averaged only 100 tons annually, even less in the eighteenth century, and ceased altogether in 1875.

Nicaragua wood, a brazilwood substitute that furnished a less intense and less durable red coloring, grew on the Pacific coast of Central America, particularly near Lake Nicaragua. The trade enjoyed a brief boom in the 1830s, when ships rounded Cape Horn to trade along the Pacific.

Logwood yielded a bluish-red dye that was the basic fixing dye for almost every other color used in the textile industry. The major source was the Yucatán, where the Spanish monopoly was threatened in the seventeenth century by English interlopers from Belize. Failing to expel them, Spain finally conceded woodcutting privileges in 1786. By then most of the logwood had been shipped overseas. Moreover, technical changes adopted by the dyemakers, plus the availability of better natural dyes, reduced the demand for logwood. Consequently, loggers shifted to the mahogany resources of the region.

The market for mahogany expanded in the nineteenth century to include building construction, shipbuilding, and railway carriages. Although mahogany grew elsewhere in the Caribbean, the Bay of Honduras was by far the major supplier for the boom that lasted into the 1850s, when exports from the region averaged 25,000 tons annually. As accessible mahogany within the Belize borders became exhausted, aggressive cutters expanded into Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, thereby precipitating controversies that questioned the status of both Belize and the resurrected Mosquito Kingdom. As the market declined, the tensions that had accompanied the expansive phase subsided.

Lumber in the twenty-first century remains a limited export. Brazil continues to be the primary exporter, sending mainly mahogany and virola to the United States. Bolivia and Peru also export mahogany and Ecuador primarily trades in balsa wood.

See alsoBrazilwood; Forests.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arthur M. Wilson, "The Logwood Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in Essays in the History of Modern Europe, edited by Donald Cope McKay (1936, repr. 1968), 1-15.

Alexander N. Marchant, From Barter to Slavery: The Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500–1580 (1942, repr. 1966).

William J. Griffith, Empires in the Wilderness: Foreign Colonization and Development in Guatemala, 1834–1844 (1965).

Susan Fairlie, "Dyestuffs in the Eighteenth Century," in Economic History Review 2d ser., 17 (April 1965): 488-510.

Robert A. Naylor, "The Mahogany Trade as a Factor in the British Return to the Mosquito Shore in the Second Quarter of the 19th Century," in Jamaica Historical Review 7 (1967): 40-67; Influencia británica en el comercio centroamericano 1821–1851 (1988); and Penny Ante Imperialism: The Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras, 1600–1914 (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Miller, Shawn William. Fruitless Trees: Portuguese Conservation and Brazil's Colonial Timber. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Scholz, Imme. Overexploitation or Sustainable Management: Action Patterns of the Tropical Timber Industry: The Case of Pará (Brazil), 1960–1997. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2001.

Seminario sobre Industria y Comercialización de Productos Forestales en Latinoamérica. La Industria y la comercialización de productos forestales en Latinoamérica. Heredia, Costa Rica: Instituto de Investigación y Servicios Forestales (INISEFOR), 2003.

                                        Robert A. Naylor