Photo 1: Installation by Manaus artist Carlos Matias (SOS Amazonia)
Back from Amazonia, only a few short days stay. Much beauty as expected, yet, much filth, much humanity, unexpected. Not because intellectually such scenario could not be conceived. Rather, my imagination and mind still kept Amazonia in the same compartment as Timbuktu, Bhutan amongst others. Sites away from all modern (whatever this last word means, agreeing completely with Ortega y Gasset’s amazement and surprise that we should call whatever we have now modernity – word which has implications beyond time / space).
These sites where I thought one should not find Coke, nor polluted waterways, nor Manuara shoppings (built by Sonae of Portugal) filled with stores like C&A, Cacau Show, and other franchises cluttered with blond-highlighted women with obviously indigenous skin or even non-indigenous in über-tight jeans on stilettos floating seamlessly amongst air-conditioned halls. Outside, aspiring competitors crowd the main avenues at Ponta Negra, the recently posited chic-neighborhood overlooking the Rio Negro with its own sandy beach. There is an amphitheater and outdoor show space featuring scantily clad men and women dancing the local popular dance “boi” (literally cattle) where throngs come and go, fêting, purchasing, amongst tons of debris in the floor created by none other by themselves as they discard the plastic container that minutes before had the ice-cream, chips that had just brought them the “must-have” pleasure.
But there it was, all these objects of progress, these approximately 2 million people and growing in the middle of the biggest rain forest in the world, in one of the biggest sources of fresh water in the word. There they are, while meanwhile inside the forest where we camped out, in the Rio Urubu, patches of smoke rose everywhere as pieces of rainforest are actively carved out (burnt) for planting and the river banks are cleared to let more people in. The comments of “before it used to be like this in River Amazon” pointing out to virgin forest and uncut Igapo (local name for flooded inundated forest on the river banks) “and now we have to come here (interior or Rio Urubu)” punctuated so many of the conversations. I thought of the quote I had seen in the Dolores Olmedo Museum in Mexico City many many years ago of an old man describing the now polluted waters of Xochimilco, “it was so clear that we used to be able to see until the bottom” (paraphrased).
The biggest point here being is that I don’t think we have traded the clean water source or the beautiful Amazon for anything better. A few months ago, while travelling in Mexico City, a senior Mexican banker with +20 years in the region mentioned of Mexico in a matter of fact voice, that Mexico’s main export was “poor people”. I could not stop thinking of the words as I looked at the Amazon. I think that if “development” continues for a few more years (not decades, years) that will also be true of this place. And I think the answer is not to make these people wealthy, so much humanity should simply not exist. There are places, many more beyond Amazonia, where besides the “original” settlers (and I understand this is a very :”sketchy” definition that is open to much interpretation) humanity should not exist. There are many things to do, will not expand in this site, but if you are interested, maybe we should talk – send me an email.
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