Tomb of Carlos Fitzcarrald

The rubber baron who inspired Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, buried in Iquitos

The grave of Carlos Isaías Fermín Fitzcarrald López — the rubber baron whose extraordinary feat of dragging a steamboat over the Fitzcarrald Isthmus inspired Werner Herzog's film — is in the Iquitos municipal cemetery. The grave is plain and relatively modest given his fame. Herzog's film brought more attention to the story than the man received in his lifetime.

The cemetery is a 10-minute walk from the Plaza de Armas. Easy to combine with the Ayapua museum and the Malecón as part of a walking tour of the rubber-era city.

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A story
Carlos Fitzcarrald was a Peruvian rubber baron of English descent who, in 1893, dragged a steamboat over a mountain pass separating two river systems to open a new rubber territory — the feat that inspired Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, in which Herzog himself had a real boat hauled over a real mountain. The historical Fitzcarrald died in a river accident in 1897, before the rubber boom ended.

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