Jennifer Feathers
West Virginia University College of Law, 3L
Friday, August 1, 2008

Raping and Pillaging Begets Raping and Pillaging

After another night of being swayed to sleep in our hammocks our haggard crew, smelling less than lovely after several days roughing it on the Rio Negro, was awakened once again by a breakfast call from the deck below. Soon afterwards we set up river to visit the small indigenous village of Nova Esperanza. For days we have been discussing the indigenous peoples of the Amazonia region of Brazil and the challenges they face as their jungle home continues to be pillaged by deforesters, ranchers, and farmers. It wasn’t until today though that the true damage that will be done to this region should this environmental rape continue truly resonated with me.

Jasmine Morton and Caroline Clark with several of the children from the village located deep within the Amazon

As we approached the village, our boat ran ashore and we saw a group of children eagerly awaiting our arrival. They looked curiously at us, probably as curiously we were looking at them in their Barbie and Hello Kitty clothes. The children were beautiful, bronzed by the equatorial sun, beautiful complexions, wide grins, big dark innocent eyes, and sun streaked hair. We carefully made our way down the plank to the shore where the village’s leader Mutuca met us adorned in an odd combination of neon swimming trunks and an elaborate headdress.

Our amazing guide, Anandi (“AN-an-jee”), an Amazonian version of Bear Grills from “Man Versus Wild” was well received by Mutuca as Anandi had established a relationship with the Baré, delivering school supplies and advising them as to how to deal with the ever encroaching problems of this region. We began our tour with the village’s school, where children and adults can receive no higher than a primary education. Inside looked like any American kindergarten, colored pictures on the wall, alphabet chart, and tiny little desks. However, here the children draw pictures of Toucans and other local wildlife. We continued through the village and watched a demonstration of how the village women prepare the Mantioch root, a staple in the indigenous diet similar to a potato. The efforts these women put forward to turn this root, poisonous in its natural form, into sustenance amazes me. Even more amazing is the effort the villagers take to recycle and replant the root, giving back to the Amazon what they take.

The most striking part of this excursion however was the inherent difference between the children in this remote village compared to the children we met in the more tourist laden region of Manaus during the beginning of our journey down the Rio Negro. The first group of children we met occupied a small dock with their family where they kept wild animals such as sloth, anaconda, and cayman for the tourists to pose with. These children received us much differently than the Baré children. The dock children immediately rushed over to us with their menagerie and began trying to shove the animals into our arms then quickly repossessing them while promptly holding out their hands for Reias. These children had been integrated, trained to grind for money. They even rebuffed our efforts to give them keepsakes such as shiny American coins and chewing gum due to their lack of monetary value.

The Baré children were nothing like this. The Baré children were shy, keeping a safe distance until they felt more comfortable around us. They scurried around after realizing we were not intimidating, gathering us berries to eat. They watched me in fascination as I blew bubbles with my chewing gum, they showed me how to shoot their marbles in the dirt where they played underneath a shade tree. They wanted to learn from us it seemed as much as we wanted to learn from them. Not once did they demand money and when one of my trip-mates gave one of the village boys a hat upon our departure he took it graciously, smiling from ear to ear and then turned to quickly show his friends his new treasure.

A little boy from the native village of ‘Nova Esperanza’ shows off the new hat given to him by one of our trip mates

This comparison is critical because it is illustrative of the effect that the invasion of the Amazon by industry, technology, and greed has on its people. During lecture after the village visit, Anandi told us of the after affects this invasion has on people such as the Baré. Organizations who are supposed to be protecting the Amazon are essentially destroying it by forcing the people who hold it sacred out. Fishermen, fishing the same waters they have fished for years to feed their families are now being issued fines that they cannot pay and even more insultingly having their canoes confiscated forcing the men to swim back to their villages in the cayman and piranha infested Rio Negro. Village men, who enter the forest to take one log, one log that they meticulously turn into 12 pieces of lumber and float down the Rio Negro into Manaus to receive a meager penance of 40 Reias (approximately 20 American Dollars) that they used to buy necessities for their families such as salt, are now being punished. How are the indigenous supposed to survive when their very way of life is now made criminal? It seems a great injustice to punish people who are not the problem. As aforementioned, the indigenous respect the Amazon, taking only what they need to sustain life and replacing whatever they can.

Anandi told us what the indigenous have been forced to do in order to compensate for these unjust restrictions. Starve, sneak, or run. Some go hungry, die out, some sneak around and hope not to get caught breaking IBAMA regulations, others simply leave. Many flee to Manaus, live in cramped quarters with the rest of their ousted family and scrape by. Due to the lack of secondary education available to these people and the absence of a skilled trade, the people are forced into appalling means of making money. Either become the dock people exploiting the beautiful Amazonian creatures and essentially pimping out their children or turn to selling drugs or even worse, prostitution. As Anandi put the thought of those beautiful Baré daughters being violated into my head my stomach turned, and it was not because I had enjoyed a refreshing Caipirina with ice in it at the Posada Amazonia Jungle Lodge that night against the travel clinic’s advice. I felt ill and motivated at the same time.

It is not until someone is immersed in another culture that they begin to understand the beauty of it. You don’t have a full grasp of what it means to save the rainforest until you see exactly what is at stake. You don’t understand the impact your environmental footprint has on this world until you see exactly where your Brazilian cherry wood floors come from. I hope that my trip-mates came away from this experience with the same impression and desire to make a progressive effort to change.