Nicolás Suárez Callaú (1851 in Portachuelo – 1940 in Cachuela Esperanza) set up a multinational rubber empire in South America at the beginning of the 20th century.

[2] During the heyday of the rubber boom, his empire had branches at Acre, Manaus, Belém, and London, and Nicolás Suárez Callaú owned 80,000 square kilometres of land in the Bolivian Beni and Pando departments, 50,000 heads of cattle and six steamboats.

[citation needed] Nicolás had entered the region of northern Bolivia in 1872, at the age of 21 in attempt to catch the end of the cinchona boom.

Shortly after, he gained a reputation for being a risky explorer: willing to venture alone into wild, unexplored areas in search of cinchona, and later hevea brasiliensis.

[3] After absorbing news of this discovery, Suárez went down stream of the Beni to settle a new trading site close to the Brazil-Mamoré river border.

Just before his thirtieth birthday in 1881, Nicolás started to establish himself in this location, having the site cleared of vegetation before erecting a warehouse and crude dwellings.

Key competitors like Antonio de Vaca Díez, Antenor Vásquez and Maison Braillard also expanded their businesses into the region.

In an attempt to confirm the Bolivian claim to the land settled by rubber tappers: Vaca Díez, Vásquez, Suárez along with other prominent families, began to organize convoys of immigrants from the south.

The isthmus was a series of portage crossings that connected the Urubamba river concentrated in Peru, and the Madre de Dios basin of Bolivia.

Shortly after, the family decided that Francisco should also set up the European headquarters of the newly launched Suárez Hermanos & Co: gaining an early lead in the London rubber market.

[15] Rómulo managed the ranches from La Loma, where jerked beef was sent by wagon to then be distributed to the Suárez plantations by boat.

[2][17] Gregorio, third of the Suarez sons was stationed at the Madeira-Mamoré falls to administer the movement of rubber downstream and supplies going upstream.

Nicolas Suárez and Julio César Arana, an infamous rubber baron in Peru, were the two biggest benefactors of the 1897 accident.

[27] Anthropologist Klaus Rummenhoeller describes that during this time period natives were persecuted in the region due to the correrias, or slave raids carried out by Suárez's employees.

[28] In response to the Acre revolution breaking out in 1899, Nicolas Suarez founded the Porvenir column, a "vigilante band" of hired guns.

Due to Nicolás's contribution toward the war effort, the Bolivian government granted him a concession that was composed of almost 8,000 square miles of land near the Beni region.

In this position, Pedro countered any rumors of the family, and declared the Suárez estates to be open: inviting any representatives to investigate the region if they'd like.

[34] British minister Cecil Gosling and explorer Percy Fawcett both visited the rubber territory owned by Suarez.

Gosling stayed in the Suárez rubber estates for 5 months on a tour in 1913, and labelled the peonage system as "undisguised slavery.".

[36] Bolivian historian Pilar Gamarra Tellez estimated that between 1895 and 1912 the Suárez companies obtained around 10,750 estradas through debts and or missed payments.

The cheap work force tied to the rubber industry by debts continued to be the most important financial asset for Suárez.