Euro Tourinho was eight, in 1930, when he accompanied his mother to Campo Grande, the big city and then centrooccidente Brazil for the birth of a younger brother.
To take office in what is now Rondônia, the northwestern Amazon state bordering northern Bolivia, had to travel six months with the family, by land to the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, then by sea to Belém and Amazon rivers to the new home. An almost complete by the geography of Brazil back.
Practically accessible only by riverboat slow until 1960, is today a logistics Rondônia hinge between the Amazon , Brazil ‘sindustrialized south, Bolivia and Peru, an important factor for possible development.
It is in the middle of roads linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in Peru, has other penetrating the Amazon or go to northern Bolivia and the waterway of the Madeira River, where much of the harvested soybeans is exported in the western Brazil, lowering transport.
The most recent transformation of the state derives from the construction, between 2008 and 2016, two large hydroelectric plantson the Madeira, near Porto Velho, the capital of Rondonia, which thus becomes large energy supplier.
At 94 years Tourinho is the living history of this process and economic cycles that occurred in Rondonia, a state with 1.8 million people, 510,000 of them in the capital.
He began the business of rubber , which enriched the Amazon since the late nineteenth century, thanks to demand for tires of the nascent automotive industry. At 22, he inherited the father died a forest of trees rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), or “seringueiras”, the Portuguese word for which is also known.
At that time, 1944, a new boom lived rubber . World War II (1939-1945) demanded large supplies for military and Malaysia, the largest producer, vehicles Japan was under control, leaving the US and its allies dependent Brazilian rubber.
After the war, prices fell and was inevitable decline of the rubber economy in the Amazon , unable to compete with intensive production in Southeast Asia.
