Amazon

by Carla Cal (Brazil)

Making a local connection Brazil

From up here I see only clouds, I no longer see the dense forest cut by water rich rivercourses, nor the forest jagged by the immense pastures that form geometrically perfect shapes on the confusing and democratic plenitude of greenish tones. The cutouts are hierarquical, tamed by the tonal slumber of the monocultures and the pasturing plains which, despite being outsiders in that landscape, don’t make it more interesting, only more pale and tired. The Amazon is not pale, it’s not ochre (perhaps acre, but not ochre), it’s leafy, fresh, abundant – green – from it the water gushes! And how could we not take part in this cicle? From within us comes the salt for this earth, which is sweet and serene by itself. Salt is necessary in small doses, since it’s excess is unpalatable. The forest naturally expels the excessively salty one by one and saves the good souls by sweetening them through their eyes. This was my impression of the Amazon, that I met through Porto Velho, a city marked, as the name suggests, by ancient exploration: during the rubber cycle came foreigners and people from Ceará, during the gold rush came adventurers from all over and now with soy monocultures and cattle raising, southern landowners arrive. The Madeira River, named forbeing used to carry indigenous logs in its waters, now carries floating soybeans, brought in giant barges from Mato Grosso; the waterway, very well organized, has a two-way path and flows into the sea in Belém. But despite all the metamorphosis it suffered I vividly remember the color of its waters, so woody... On my trip I met two traders who work side by side at the Public Market, selling native fruits and flours of all kinds. They have known each other for many years, so many they can’t point to a number, and they are simple and kind, like the people of Northern Brazil. So kind, they soon became friends with me, we talked for so long, it seems that I already know their families and their stories, they are so transparent, they are so different from those that I got used to getting used to. The topics are the same everywhere: football, politics, religion, family, climate, and beloved mildness. Attentive experts, they told me that in the place where they built the hydroelectric plant there was a waterfall that was visible throughout the city, that the abundance of fish was much greater and that the river dolphins will migrate, especially the gray one, that is able to reach the sea. The riverside communities were expelled, most of the residents were transferred to the city built on the other side of the bridge. Deluded by the prospect of alienating the descendants of Akuanduba, the return to the banks of the river is a constant, and some fishermen decided to continue life in floating houses by the river. The floating “red light” districts even started working again. The people of the North have a lot to tell, contemporary stories bathed in superficial anachronies. The exploitation of the land and the exploitation of the people are visible, but at the same time euphemized by the forest, which seems to be able to nurture everyone who needs it, hunger and thirst cannot exist there, just like the cold. The forest is hot, it is humid, it is abundant - it is lovely. Few fail to understand it, as those who want to just explore it: the gold and earth-sucking dredgers are unhealthy for the body and spirit (of men forest); the powerplant - greed in disguise - seems to be much more linked to mineral wealth than to the region's energy potential. Madeira's gold is fine, it is in small particles, “it is liquid, it is dust”, asI was told by a former gold miner saved by the river who is now a boatman. The river wanted to hide its wealth so much that it was named Madeira, so much simpler of a name. The golden one, however, swallowed his discretion; but isn't gold a derivation of brown? Both are equally sparkling.