…en Perú - Travel Culture History News

Peru’s Amazon rainforest has seen the last of the great Taushiro nation. Prospering in the area of the Quebrada Aguaruna in Alto Tigre, Loreto, for thousands of years, the Taushiro, like countless other tribes, have been wiped out by us and our world.

by José Álvarez Alonso

Photo: Euclides Hidalgo

Amadeo García, the last of the Taushiros, escaped death because was living in the town of Intuto, capital of El Tigre, a day and a half away by canoe from his homeland. He was lucky, he was receiving treatment for a terrible new illness. The last time he went back to his ancestral town was to bring his brother Juan, dying from the same illness, to Intuto for the same treatment.

Juan, the penultimate of survivor his people, was latter buried, just a short time after his father and aunt had also passed away. At their graves remain dozens of dogs, companions of the last Taushiros during their final years. Here they stay, watching over the graves of their masters for weeks until they die of hunger, loyal to the end. Perhaps the Taushiro kept so many dogs to fill the vacuum left by the deaths of all their children, so that their ghost towns weren’t quite so quiet.

José Hualinga, a Kichwa-Alama hunter that travelled along the Tigre river, by chance saw, between the bushes, a canoe that appeared abandoned. When he approached he found Juan inside, weak and suffering an agonising death from malaria. He took him to Intuto, where he was slow to recover.

Malaria did not exist in the Amazon. It was a disease brought here by outside invaders, illegal loggers, barbaric slavers and the first missionaries. With no resistance to the disease, countless native tribes were wiped out, while others were weakened so much that outsiders - our oil companies, illegal loggers and other criminals from our civilisation - could come in and wipe out the rest so that we can benefit from the destruction of their land.

Juan spoke at the most just a few words of Spanish and he wasn’t much of a talker, but, shivering from the fever of his malaria, he explained that he had had to bury, just days ago, his father and his aunt. He later left in his canoe, letting the current of the Quebrada Aguaruna tributary take him to the Tigre river. He couldn’t make it to Intuto and would have died there and then if it wasn’t for that passer-by.

Juan couldn’t get used to life in the tiny village of Intuto. As soon as he had his strength back, he left Intuto and returned to the forest and his uninhabited village. Months later, the vicious malaria returned and took with it Juan and the very last of the Taushiros. Today, Amandeo is the last Taushiro of full blood and the last speaker of the Taushiro language.

Proud Hunter

Photo: Euclides Hidalgo, Intuto, 2008.

The first time I saw Amadeo, in January 1984, I was very impressed. He came walking along a street in Intuto with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He gave me an impression of someone with a pride and dignity that is not very common among the Amazonian indigenous. I knew of this man much before, from the Spanish missionary Tomás Villalobos, who had worked in Intuto since the early 1970s. He spoke to me of Amadeo and the sad history of his people, on the border of extinction.

Amadeo was famous as a great hunter. “In those times we hunted the big animals with spears and arrows for the smaller ones. Now I cant hunt like that because there are so few animals, I can only hunt with a rifle, and very deep in the jungle, walking for one day“, he explains. He remembers with nostalgia the old days, when he learnt the arts of hunting and fishing with his father and his uncles. He also remembers with joy the moment when the hunters arrived back to the village loaded down with meat. That day was a celebration, and all would eat until they were stuffed full.

Nostalgia

Photo: José Álvarez

Amadeo remembers well the abundance of animals and trees in the rainforest when he was young, and the beautifully made canoes that lasted decades. “The Taushiros cared for the forest because the forest gave us our food. We didn’t cut down the trees like they [the outsiders] do now, just to get at its fruit. The Taushiros were very good climbers, they could even climb the biggest trees like the leche caspi“, he says. With sadness he explains that these giant trees that once fed his people are now gone, cut down by another tribe who had forgotten the old ways and become part of our modern destructive world. Other trees, great numbers of them, were removed by outside loggers from far away. The animals too, the vast majority, were systematically exterminated by professional hunters from the outside world who would skin them and leave they carcases to rot, before moving on a ravaging other virgin areas of forest.

Today, the territory of the Taushiros is, like many of parts of the Peruvian rainforest, permanently devoid of animals and of fine trees. To find wildlife you have to travel days into the forest, to parts not yet destroyed but that soon will be.

Generational Change

Amadeo had five children with a woman named Margarita Machoa, an indigenous Kichwa-Alama. She later left him, because he was an “auka”, an indian, someone who had only recently had contact with civilisation and “learnt to wear clothes”. An evangelic missionary, in what was a difficult time for Amadeo and his children, offered to adopt them and take them back to his home country of Puerto Rico, an offer Amadeo had no choice to except. He couldn’t support his family. There was no longer anything to eat.

Photo: José Alvarez

With his children left the last hope that new blood would learn and speak the Taushiro language. His children have grown up in an environment far removed from the rainforest and their Taushiro heritage. They had little contact with their father other than sporadic letters.

One day I went to visit Amadeo. They had told me he was very sick, but not only was he sick, he was very depressed. In a daze he spoke to me, crying, about his children who did not want to go to see him, didn’t want to help him, didn’t want to know anything about him and his primitive ways, didn’t want to learn about their Taushiro origins, nor the language, nor the culture.

When Amadeo dies, so will the Taushiro.

For those who read Spanish, you may enjoy the story of Amadeo and his precious bible;

Amadeo y la Biblia

Una de las últimas conexiones con su pueblo y con su idioma estuvo, curiosamente, en la Biblia. Amadeo, que no tiene ya con quien conversar en su propio idioma, se refugiaba en la lectura del Nuevo Testamento en Taushiro que tradujeron hace años los lingüistas del ILV, los que también le enseñaron los rudimentos de la lectura. Todos los días, como si de un ritual sagrado se tratase, se calzaba con cuidado sus lentes de aumento y leía algún fragmento de su destartalado pero precioso libro, rememorando quizás otros tiempos de largas conversaciones en Taushiro con su gente.

En 1997 un amigo común en Intuto, Jorge Coral, me comunicó por radio desde Intuto que se había producido una desgracia: Amadeo había perdido sus preciados lentes de leer, no podía leer su Biblia y estaba muy triste. Me pedía que le enviase desde Iquitos unos nuevos. Obviamente esto no era posible, necesitábamos saber las medidas de su vista, así que no quedaba otra que Amadeo bajase a Iquitos a medirse la vista. Conseguimos convencerlo de que viajase en la siguiente lancha, acompañado con nuestro común amigo Jorge Coral.

Amadeo se alojó en mi casa. Al día siguiente le pregunté que tal había descansado, y me confesó que no pudo dormir en la cama (que tenía un colchón de resortes) y había tenido que dormir en el suelo, ya que estaba acostumbrado a dormir sobre un simple emponado (piso de tronco de palmera). El calzado fue otro problema: Amadeo siempre había caminado descalzo y, para ir al monte de caza, con botas de jebe. Para ir oculista le presté unas zapatillas deportivas, pero sus anchos y encallecidos pies no se acostumbraban, y luego de caminar unos metros se las tuvo que sacar y caminar descalzo: prefería quemarse las plantas con el cemento calcinado por el sol que torturar sus pies con las zapatillas.

Le conseguí unos nuevos lentes el mismo día, pero se sentía tan incómodo en la ciudad, que a cada rato preguntaba por la lancha para Intuto, que se demoró varios días en zarpar. Cuando por fin se embarcó para Intuto, juró no volver a la ciudad jamás.

Hoy Amadeo ya no cuenta más con ese su último vínculo con el idioma Taushiro. La humedad y el comején, que devoraron las últimas casas y las cruces de las tumbas de sus parientes en Aguaruna, acabaron destruyendo su preciado Nuevo Testamento en Taushiro.

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In Peru’s vast Amazon region there are 65 ethnic groups with their own distinct traditions and languages passed down orally from generation to generation. What does the future hold for these peoples?

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, rubber tappers swept through the Amazon in search of the trees that would make them rich. This was the same Amazon that centuries before proved too inhospitable for even the Incas to dominate. But here, living in the forest at this point in history, were 80 indigenous groups that choose not to try to dominate the land, but to live in harmony with it. Each of these peoples, completely distinct with different languages, traditions and myths all had the same idea. Although the Incas, and those Andean civilisations that came before them, didn’t venture into the forest, they did trade with the people there and items from the jungle are found in burials on Peru’s Pacific coast.

Everything changed when the rubber tappers came. They introduced savage violence, exploitation and servitude - the plight of the indigenous was ignored by the Peruvian state they were told they were part of.

Fear and flight

Whole groups were forced to abandon their ancient territories, fleeing violence and slavery. Fugitives on their own land, they retreated into the remotest areas of the jungle and eventually became nomads - giving up fledgling villages and a settled lifestyle. Without contact with others, they became more vulnerable to diseases. It is estimated by anthropologists that about 14 different groups are still wandering through the Amazon, the combined population is probably between 5,000 and 10,000 people. Although no longer fleeing rubber tappers, they rightly fear all outsiders.

Groups in voluntary isolation however only make up a small fraction of the total native population. The bulk are organised into communities according to their language group. In the 1993 census, 300,000 natives in 65 indigenous groups were recorded in 1,450 communities. In the 20th century some 18 ethnic groups were wiped out by either the rubber tappers, the diseases they brought or were forced into and assimilated by large cities.

Community Initiatives

In the 1950s the Peruvian Government began a series of initiatives to help the indigenous communities. They were encouraged to settle in the areas they were now located so that they could have healthcare and schooling provided for them. Following this, today each community has at least one primary school and a health centre run by the Ministry of Health. But, without doubt, the most significant help came in 1974 when the lands they occupied were protected by law. They could now never be taken away - at least in theory. These protections were particularly useful when peasants from the mountains began arriving in the Amazon in the 1970s in search of better farm land. The majority were swiftly moved on.

Although as many as 50,000 natives died during the Rubber Boom, their populations are now doubling every 20 years. According to the Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica (Amazonian Centre of Anthropology and Practical Application), this increase is partly due to improved health care, though this doesn’t explain it entirely. Most diseases are recorded as being stomach or respiratory infections, diseases brought in by outsiders and now there are new reports of HIV infection. 76% of the medical posts have no way of reaching communities in their jurisdiction and the sick have to come to them. Quality of care is also limited by high staff turnover.

As development takes hold, so too do the problems of our developed society. Alcoholism in particular is a growing problem. Father Jaime Reagan, Catholic priest and anthropologist, thinks that far from taking a paternalistic attitude in dealing with these growing issues the key is instead education. Development and integration into our society, he explains, should be gradual and at a pace the communities decide.

Education means nothing though if there is no control over Amazonian territory. As with the rubber tappers in the past, communities today face the ever-increasing threat from illegal logging, mining and drug trafficking. This problem is particularly huge for the Sampantuari Asháninka community of the River Apurímac and River Ene Valley who are under constant threat from cocaine producers.

With 72% of the Amazon now carved up for gas and oil exploration, the old protections long since repealed, and new ones being proposed by greedy outsiders looking to get rich off the remaining 28% in the name of progress, the communities are facing an ever-growing threat.

Future

Anthropologists do not agree on what might be the future of these Amazon groups. Will they successfully isolate themselves, join our system or just be consumed by it? There is a growing protectionist trend that aims to ensure their current lifestyles are protected, and this competes with plans to integrate them and provide better healthcare and education.

Reagan explains that development doesn’t necessarily mean loss of culture and that ethnicity goes beyond the use of a particularly dress or an outward appearance. He cites the case of the Cocoma, a people who now mainly live in cities. The no longer have external forms of expression, but they have their own world view and pass on their knowledge within their community. He is also not convinced that a global homogenisation of cultures where the small are gobbled up by the big will take place. He explains that today there is a growing interest within these groups, globally, in preserving their cultures and keeping their languages alive using modern tools like the internet.

Read the rest of this entry »

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It is a story repeated throughout modern human history - people living sustainable lifestyles on land rich in resources, who are not forced to work on extracting them for a pittance and are not contributing to the economy in the way the wealthy would like… have no value. They must change in the name of progress. They must move into shanty towns, work dangerous jobs until the resources are gone and they must spend the rest of their time consuming alcohol. This is the story of Brazil’s Amazonian progress, and it’s a “success story” that Peruvian President Alan Garcia wanted to repeat in Peru.

When Peru signed the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, too much of the Amazon Rainforest was considered protected. Economists estimate 3.5 billion dollars’ worth of timber, mineral and oil products are locked in a 92,000-square kilometre (35,500 square miles) region of the Amazon basin, the size of Taiwan. US companies have been desperate to exploit these resources and the Peruvian Government couldn’t chip away at National Parks or indigenous land fast enough. To give some semblance of legality to all this, the US demanded a simple change in the law to make it easier for US oil interests to buy up the land.

Alan Garcia has long been attacked for not distributing the country’s new-found wealth - a booming economy has drastically changed the lives of the urban poor for the better, but outside of Peru’s cities little has progressed. The rural poor have seen no change, and have been fiercely demanding it.

Garcia, calling the people of the Amazon “backward”, declared that he would bring progress (of the kind the US and the wealthy in Lima have been asking for) and unilaterally issued a presidential decree that stated that now only 50% + 1 of any indigenous community in question would need to be in favour of land sale or development, as opposed to 66%+, and those who are not in favour would just need to adapt.

Garcia explained that these new development laws are aimed at improving the livelihood of indigenous communities by developing their farming, livestock and mining activities so they can better integrate with the country’s economy. The communities saw it as an attempt to make vast land-grabs easier in the future and really only intended to benefit the cities and the United States.

They began to protest and areas of the northern Amazon were completely shut down. Protests in Peru often mean hugely destructive acts and violence, and when these protests moved to oil and gas installations, pipelines having to be shut down, the police moved in and a state of emergency declared in parts of Loreto, Amazonas and Cusco. Garcia prepared the army to quell unrest and suspended the population’s rights to public gatherings, protests and free movements.

On the 20th of August, after more than a week of unrest, indigenous rights groups ended the protests after Congress stepped in to review the new laws with a view to revoke them. Many in Congress said Garcia had gone too far.

An angry Alan Garcia said revoking his laws would be a “historic mistake”. “If that were to happen out of fear of protesters, fear of unrest, Peru would some day remember it as the moment when change came to a halt and hundreds of thousands of people were condemned to poverty, exclusion and marginalisation,” he told reporters.

On Friday Congress voted 66 to 29 in favour of revoking the laws, sparking joyous scenes in Bagua in the Amazonas region where the worst violence took place. Not a single congressperson from another party backed Garcia. Roger Naja, president of the National Commission for Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples said people would remember Friday as “the day that the disappearance of the indigenous communities in the jungles and mountains was avoided”.

Alberto Pizango, leader of the Inter-Ethnic Association of the Peruvian Forest (Aidesep), hailed the repeal as “a moment of true democracy and true inclusion”. “This is a new dawn for the people of this country, and for all Peruvians who wish to develop in freedom, not in oppression,” he said.

Today 70% of Peru’s huge share of the Amazon rainforest has been leased for oil and gas exploration. That is 20% more than when I wrote this piece not long ago. These areas already include protected national parks and the land of indigeous groups with little explanation of how this could be allowed

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It was a freak encounter with tragic consequences.
A Canadian woman who had travelled to South America last year died 10 days after stepping, barefoot, on venomous caterpillars, a team of Edmonton doctors reported Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Her case should be a cautionary tale for people embarking on exotic trips to far-flung places, her doctors and others suggest.
“Obviously the more exotic we get in where we travel, the more opportunities there are that we’re going to interface with bizarre things,” said Dr. Kevin Kain, a Toronto-based travel and tropical medicine expert who did not treat the woman but was asked to comment on the report.
“There are some bad things out there. They’re rare, but they’re bad.”

The woman, who was in northeastern Peru on an organized jungle trek, accidentally stepped on five caterpillars of the Lonomia genus, which secrete a toxin that causes haemorrhaging in humans.

There are two species of the caterpillars known to cause haemorrhagic syndromes in humans. Found in parts of South America, including Venezuela and Brazil, the insects emit venom through bristles or hairs that cover their bodies and have been blamed for many deaths in the Amazon.

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By Survival

Peru’s government has dropped plans to open up uncontacted Indians’ reserves to oil exploration. The latest round of concessions, announced this week, do not include any of the uncontacted Indians’ reserves.

The move appears to be in response to a storm of criticism from Survival and Indian organisations in Peru. Survival had urged the Peruvian government not to permit exploration in such areas because it could lead to the tribes’ extinction.

The decision represents a U-turn for Perupetro, the state body responsible for negotiating exploration rights. Perupetro spokespeople had previously suggested the uncontacted Indians did not exist, and that exploration in their reserves would be permitted.

According to reports, a Perupetro spokesperson stated this week that none of the new areas include ‘reserves for uncontacted tribes in order to avoid confrontation with local communities and environmental organisations.’

However, part of one of the new concessions, although not a reserve, is inhabited by uncontacted Indians, and elsewhere in Peru oil and gas exploration remains a huge threat. French company Perenco has recently acquired the rights to work in the northern Peruvian Amazon where at least two uncontacted tribes live, and companies Repsol-YPF, Petrolifera and a consortium led by Pluspetrol all work in areas inhabited by the Indians.

Survival International’s director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘Perupetro’s decision is the right one – from both a legal and humanitarian point of view – and we hope this change of heart is permanent. However, there remain other areas inhabited by the Indians where exploration is still going on. These areas must be made off-limits too, and the companies should withdraw in accordance with international law.’

For further information contact Miriam Ross on (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or email mr@survival-international.org

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The Amazon Rainforest is full of isolated indigenous peoples. They exist in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brasil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. For President of PetroPeru Daniel Saba speaking of this is like speaking of the Loch Ness monster. Faced with protests from organized native groups, who point out the dangers for uncontacted and isolated tribes of selling off huge areas of Peru’s Amazon, he declared in April of this year “no one has seen them, so what uncontacted people are they talking about?” Surely Saba is not so unbelieving now, after the publication of photos taken from the air on the 18th of September by a group of belonging to the Zoological Society of Frankfurt and the National Institute of National Recourses of Peru, showing some 20 isolated and previously unknown villages along the Los Piedras River.

Beatriz Huertas, anthropologist and writer of the enlightening book Los Pueblos En Aislamiento, says that “it is terrible, criminal even, that the National Institute of National Recourses has published the co-ordinates of where they saw these villages. I have received a lot of letters in protest and also a lot of letters from people wanting to contact them such as Christian missionaries, film makers, television producers and journalists. But this is not good for these communities, not at all”.

The law relating to isolated peoples and first contact does not guarantee these groups territorial rights. “It is very ambiguous”, Huertas says, “it indicates that once they remain sedentary, and give up their patterns of migration, then they begin to have rights. This means they have to give up their way of life to have any form of protection.”

Before they were known as “uncontacted tribes”, now they are known as being in “voluntary isolation”. Both descriptions don’t really describe the reality. According to Klaus Rummenhoeller, a German investigator with 25 years of experience in studies of Amazon natives, “the indigenous peoples, including those considered to be in isolation have maintained and continue maintaining contact with their indigenous neighbours”. They are not isolated from each other, they are isolated from us.

Neither is it entirely true that the people want to isolate themselves, clarifies Beatriz Huertas, but some feel it is the only way to protect themselves against threats from the outside world. Some communities were enslaved in the times of the rubber boom and by illegal loggers. They also have a fear of outside illnesses – they can die just by catching a cold.

Now the phrase “first contact” is used to define a phase when the natives have started a process of interaction with national society. Generally this is an absolute failure. As Antonio Iviche, a Harakmbut native and President of the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios river explains “we were once 30,000 people – until they contacted us. They infected us with illnesses that we had no immunity to. We couldn’t work. We began dying. Now there are only 1500 of us.”

There are five reserves that have been created by the state for the native tribes; Kugapakori, Isconahua, Mashco Piro, Madre de Dios, Murunahua, and there are petitions from the native federations to create five more, but this is all on paper only. In practice these territories are being sold off to oil companies and their peoples are being killed. Currently, the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios (Fenamad) and Interethnic Association of Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (Aidesep) are arguing their case with the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights in Washington.

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The following article has been translated by me from an insert of the newspaper El Comercio, regarding the sale to oil companies of a large part of the most biodiverse place on earth, the Amazon rainforest of Madre de Dios in southern Peru.

No one is against the exploitation of oil per se, but when it is done within the boundaries of a national park of such importance as the Bahuaja Sonene, declared by the National Geographic Society as one of the seven most emblematic natural sanctuaries of the world, it is a different story.

Behind everything is petroleum. Behind wars, behind global warming, behind the insane position of wanting to mutilate a national park. “The news impacted me but didn’t surprise me”, said Daniel Winitzky, an Argentinean of 48 years, who has visited Candamo some thirty times (in 1999 he presented an excellent documentary about “the last jungle without man”). He explains that we are at a breaking point, that if Candamo can hold out 25 years, and the fever for oil, then we might be able to save it. Meanwhile, so much is going to be in danger.

Winitzky, who was in Candamo in January of this year, explains that due to its isolation, this site is unique in the world. “Thomas Vallqui, the ornithologist, was seated in the jungle and a deer passing by bumped into him”. Tigrillos (wild cats), sachavacas (pig-like creature) and ronsocos (large bear-like rodents), they all curiously approach these strange two-legged almost hairless creatures exploring their jungle. They don’t fear humans. But they should.

James D. Gilardi, PhD, a British biologist specialising in ornithology in tropical forests and marine vertebrates, is the director of the prestigious World Parrot Trust and is extremely worried by the storm that awaits Bahuaja Sonene and, like Winitzky, considers this a key battle for sustainable development. “To save a natural gem requires more than drawing lines on a map. It’s in moments like these, when nature is threatened with the exploitation of gas and petroleum… we can only hope that the spirit that formed this national park remains strong”, expressed Gilardi. “There are more species of parrots and macaws in Candamo than any other place on earth, of all the forests of the world. Of all those forests that deserve to be saved, Candamo is, in my opinion, the most important”.

Obviously, the ministers of the Government don’t think the same way. 70% of the Amazon rainforest of Peru has been sold in lots for oil exploration and exploitation. The problem is not this in itself, but where and how it is done. The regional president of Madre de Dios, Santos Kaway, only found out about the sale of 209,782 hectares of the Bahuaja Sonene national park after being told by a journalist, two days after the national government made the sale to oil interests. Luis Alfaro, then chief of Peru’s National Institute of National Recourses was abruptly removed from his job, after he expressed his deep discomfort with the sale, declaring it unconstitutional and breaking various international agreements. He says the sale has demonstrated the weaknesses and susceptibility of the Government in regards to oil contracts.
The sale even violates conditions of the hard-fought for Free Trade Agreement with the United States, violating chapter 18, where it expressly prohibits reduction of protected areas and destruction of rare natural resources.

In this case, one fifth of the Bahuaja Sonene reserve, right in its nucleus, is being removed and sold.

Author of many books dealing with ecology and director of the conservation program Peruvian Society of Environmental Rights (SPDA), Pedro Solano, recently attended the Congress of Parks in Argentina. The participants were dismayed by the “lack of stability in the conservation policies in cases like this, where the government itself only in recent years stated that this national park should and would be permanently protected under the strictest possible orders.” Solano continues, “It appears incoherent, that all the studies done on the Candamo are to be ignored in order to take a new decision – one that allows the area to have absolutely no protection. The justification for this, ‘that there’s oil’, is no justification to reduce the size of the park, patrimony of the nation. The Government will not explain how this natural heritage can continue to be viable if you destroy it’s most important and pristine part”.

Kurt Holle, president of the Peruvian Association of Adventure and Ecotourism is clear that this sale will tremendously affect tourism in Madre de Dios, which happens to be consistently increasing between 15 and 20 per cent annually, becoming the principle destination of 50,000 foreign visitors a year. “The impact on the tourist’s perception of Peru is serious. This destination loses its integrity being next to a petroleum operation. Besides, many species such as the jaguar, the huangana (a jungle pig) and the macaws need large territories to survive. The famous mud-licks of the macaws, that attract so many people are going to lose their splendour. And, the area sold being at the head of a river, the fish and the water are going to suffer the consequences. There are 40 tourist-frequented look-outs along the length of the river Tambopata and river Madre de Dios that will be affected and no longer receive investment”, Kurt says.

For Daniel Winitzky, the new bill permitting the sale is disappointing because “since the park was created, the amount of wildlife has increased noticeably. You can now see Arpia Eagles only 15 minutes from the city of Puerto Maldonado”. Adding to the destruction in the region is the Interoceanic Highway from Pacific to Atlantic oceans, which “is going to unite the most devastated area of Brazil’s forests to the least devastated of Peru’s. Imagine how this collision of distinct economic cultures is going to be”. In Madre de Dios the vision until now has been one of eco-tourism, conservation and sustainable development, for this is considered the world capital of bio-diversity. “All this scarce wilderness is valuable. In 10 or 15 years, what forests are their going to be to capture and trap carbon and provide fresh water? Tropical forests will be very scarce then and their value will increase, even economically”.

Puerto Maldonado does not care much for oil companies. When ExxonMobil were exploring there in the 1990s, they had to hire staff from elsewhere, as the locals, who lived relatively well, didn’t want to give up their lives and families for such hard work. They didn’t live in luxury, but they were happy with their sustainable approach. Winitzky says, “when the oil companies come they promise only good things, but they don’t mention the social costs. Who is going to pay for the loss of tourism, for the death of the river’s fish, for the forest fires, for the water filtration the people will now need, for the health costs?”

This decision to exploit the national park opens the door for the sale of other protected areas, like Huascarán or even Manu. Behind this virtual collapse of the idea of protected areas, behind this irrational short-sighted action that compromises the future of the next generations, behind all of this is petroleum. 30 to 40 years of a fresh source of cash and afterwards… nothing, an Amazon with humans, but without animals, with no possibility of that they can return. Millions of years of evolution thrown away.

***
Readers might also be interested in my blog, Half the Peruvian Amazon covered with oil leases.

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According to some of the climate change models that were reported on the news here some time ago, predictions were made that showed in as little as 50 years the Amazon could dry up to become an arid savannah. The dense tropical forests would be replaced open grassland, and eventually, desert.

This process, according to some, has already started. 2005 saw rainfall in the Amazon at record low levels. One of the wettest places on earth suffered a drought, as seen in the photos above. Villagers were stranded at the banks of dry river beds, helicopters were used in Brasil to deliver food to those who had none. This year, as in 2005 and 2003, river levels were at near record lows. In Peru this has meant shipping lanes closing, or river trips that once took days now taking weeks.

So, when I heard of new research today, that stated that the rainforest could cope with higher temperatures and dryer weather better than we thought, I was happy to hear some good news.

The research showed that during the drought of 2005, rather than dying off, resilient plant life not only kept going but increased their rate of photosynthesis - becoming greener and absorbing more carbon dioxide - as a by product of trying to retain more water. This means the Amazon would be able to survive short term droughts.

But, with droughts occurring more frequently and for longer periods of time, its not all good news.

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In the heart of the vast jungle department of Loreto, close to the river Pastaza, live an ethnic group known as the Kandozi, ancestral guardians of an immense lake called the Rimachi. A lake where floating islands form a labyrinth of channels between which shoals of fish dash perhaps avoiding the ferocious piranhas.

The Pastaza river is tributary of the Marañón, itself a tributary of the Amazon, the father of all the rivers of America; the longest, the most mighty and deepest of the planet. Rimachi lake is at the heart of the extensive territory of the Kandozi-Chaprade nation of more than 15 thousand kilometers, South between latitude 3 degrees and 5 degrees and West 76 degrees and 78 degrees of latitude, in the humid tropical forest that grows under the Andes and extends throughout amazonía until the Atlantic Ocean.

Kandozi means “more people” and these people live mostly along the rivers of Huituyacu, Chapuli and Chuhuida - lands so marshy that any dewellings and farms are built in the higher zones, but ones that also have steady high temperatures. In the zone of the Rimachi lake the high temperatures stay throughout the year and the rainy season is predictable. On the shores you can find the most exotic of amazonian animals.

The Kandozi have maintained a reputation as warriors since 1744, when the mission of Santo Tomé reported their existance and constant threat to the Andoas. Throughout the centuries they stayed hostile towards neighbouring ethnic groups, developing a reclusive isolationist society. Today there exists a very organized federation of Kandozi peoples in the high Pastaza that defends the exclusive fishing in the Rimachi lake and against oil developers and loggers.

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The Initiative for Integration and Infrastructure of South America, launched in 2000 by the governments of 12 of the region’s countries with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank and the Andean Fomentation Corporation (CAF), includes the promotion of 10 integration axes that bring together 335 projects with a combined value of 37.5 billion dollars. These projects are principally concerned with transport, but they also include energy and communications initiatives, one of which is the Inter-Oceanic Highway between Brazil and Peru.

The project, in Peruvian territory, consists of asphalting or improving 2,586 kilometres of highway, from the small city of Iñapari (Madre de Dios) - on the Brazilian frontier - to the ports of Moquegua, Arequipa and Ica at a cost of US$ 892 million. The Amazon section of the project, the subject of this study, crosses the Amazon regions of Madre de Dios, Cusco and Puno, between 200 and 4000 metres above sea level. This part of the project will be executed and subsequently administered in concession by two companies, known as BOT (build, operate and transfer). The work was studied, offered in tender, awarded, partially financed and initiated between 2003 and March of 2006. Part of the financing came from the CAF, with a guarantee by the Republic of Peru. The highway in Peru is linked with the Brazilian road system, allowing road traffic by asphalted road between the seaports of the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The Amazon region through which the road will pass is the most pristine area of Peruvian forest and one of the greatest concentrations of biodiversity on the planet (including a high number of endemic species), due to its good state of general conservation and the enormous variety of ecosystems. It is also the refuge of a number of indigenous groups that live in voluntary isolation. Therefore, the improvement of this road is extremely significant in terms of the risks for the worldwide efforts to conserve biodiversity and also the rights of the last human populations that live without (or, at least, with very little) contact with modern society.

Read the full article at Rumbos del Peru

Slideshow with comentary from Kelph.com

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