Summary

The first part of Chapter 13, “The Trembling of the Leaves”, detailed the living conditions of the men employed as rubber tappers in old Valera’s tire business. Many of the men died on the job and their deaths were explained away in official records as “yellow fever” but in reality these men had been shot and killed for trying to escape. They worked on credit and never made any money: however much rubber they collected they were always told that it would be taken off the money they owed the company for food and the cost of bringing them to the Amazon in the first place. The second part of the chapter was told from the perspective of an indigenous Brazilian man trying to escape by running away through the jungle.

In Chapter 14, “The Rules of Violence”, Reno and Sandro went to Italy and...