Memories of the Rainforest

 

The Amazon Basin

A couple times a year some news item from the Amazon Basin brings forth memories of my own time there, now more than sixty years ago. Unfortunately, reports from the Amazon in recent times are most often alarming, and even horrific. Most recently, the headlines have been about the murders of the journalist, Dom Phillips and the indigenous expert, Bruno Pereira, who had been investigating the plundering of natural resources and the displacement of indigenous people. I believe the two men had been traveling at the time along the Javari River.

In 1960 I made a brief trip from Leticia in southern Colombia to the town of Benjamin Constant, Brazil, which is at the confluence of the Amazon and the Javari River. About all I can clearly recall now of that visit was the heart-stopping high speed ride there through a flooded forest in a canoe powered by a big outboard motor.

The Northwest Amazon

Most of the time I spent  in the Northwest Amazon was actually far to the north of Leticia along the Río Miriti-Paraná, a small tributary of the Río Caquetá. Getting to the Catholic Mission outpost which my four American friends and I used as our basecamp required hundreds of miles of travel on small river boats, first downstream on the Amazon, then upstream on the Japurá/Caquetá. The final portion of the journey was in dugout canoes powered by small outboards with additional paddle assistance to get through the rapids of the Miriti-Paraná.

The indigenous peoples of he entire Amazon Basin have suffered a very long history of exploitation through debt peonage connected to rubber and timber harvesting, and mineral extraction. In the last half-century huge portions of the vast rainforest have been clearcut to make way for soy plantations, forcing the culture-destroying displacement of many indigenous people.

At the time of my visit the Yucuna people around the Miriti-Paraná still seemed to have a pretty firm grip on their traditional ways with only minimal intrusions from the military, religious and commercial institutions of the countries claiming sovereignty over the area.   Manioc cultivation on small slash-and-burn plots was supplemented by hunting and gathering to provide what seemed to be an adequate diet and a stable lifestyle. A few people had firearms, but poison dart blowguns and archers' bows were still much in use. Family coca plots were common, but I only saw the drug used for social and ceremonial gatherings.

Padre Norberto, who oversaw the Miriti-Paraná Catholic mission seemed to be a genuinely caring advocate for the local people. He engaged in no condemnation of traditional religious beliefs and ceremonies and his religious and teaching efforts seemed well received by the people in the area. The Padre was instrumental in gaining our group's access to attend and film an important annual Yucuna dance ceremony, along with a generally friendly reception when we visited with families along the river.

I wrote a few letters home to my own family about life around the Miriti-Paraná, but I kept no diary at the time. At this distance from those days, my memories are fragmentary and rather dream-like. One incident a do recall vividly is a forest stroll near the mission in which I was asked to accompany a group of children who were around six or eight years of age. I recall the children being barefoot and dressed very simply in shorts.

The children on our field trip led the way along narrow forest paths and seemed to take great pleasure in pointing out and naming plants and birds along the way.  At one point a fallen log was split open to reveal a harvest of fat, squirming grubs; the children ate some and offered me some as well. I declined the offering, which prompted considerable giggling.  I think the children guessed I would likely not accept their offer, and that in doing so I would betray the incapacity of non-indigenous people to do something as basic as feeding oneself from the natural bounty of the rainforest. I took it as a good lesson.

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Some Amazon Links:

* The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes by Wade Davis (My brief review of the book)

* On Fábio Zuker’s “The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon: Dispatches from the Brazilian Rainforest” (A review at the Los Angeles Review of Books)

* Tristes Tropiques by Claude  Lévi-Strauss (My brief review of the book)

* Seattle to Bogota (in a Piper Tri-Pacer)

* A lucky flight out of the jungle (in a Grumman Duck)