A riverine society: Iquitos and the precarious urbanization of Amazonia

Abstract Steam navigation in the 1850s and the Rubber Boom beginning in the 1890s connected the Amazonia to the world. This article studies Iquitos, a major riverine port city in Peru, to interrogate the kind of urban environmental regime produced by the contrast between the modernizing impulse of the rubber era and the conditions of the rainforest and the customs of its peoples. Studying urbanization as an eco-technical process that involves both the longue durée and contingent critical junctures reveals pervasive connections between social inequalities and environmental conditions. The long-term trajectory of Iquitos reveals a vicious cycle of urban inequalities and precarious urbanization.