Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Brazil Initiative

Seth Garfield -“A Third-Rate Musical Comedy, Except in the Deadly Seriousness of its Implications”: Brazil, the United States and the Amazon Rubber Campaign of World War II

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

6:00pm – 7:30pm

Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

Faced with the devastating loss of over ninety percent of its rubber supply in 1942, the United States invested millions of dollars to boost wild rubber production in the Amazon. A host of social actors, however, armed with competing visions of the Amazon’s future, would reshape public policies for regional development. This lecture explores the wartime history of the Amazon as a window onto the nature of a region, and the origins of contemporary environmental debates.