É complicado. This was one of the first full sentences I had understood in Marechal Thaumaturgo, a Brazilian town nestled deep within the Amazon rainforest a few miles from the Peru border.
This is a place that deserves the title “outpost of civilisation”. Almost everything about Marechal Thaumaturgo accentuates the contrast between the man-made and natural worlds: pharmacies abound despite a surrounding forest teeming with medicinal plants, and cars cruise through town at all hours blasting music or ads through megaphones, competing in volume with the birds and insects of the forest.
It’s as though Marechal Thaumaturgo must loudly proclaim its place in urban civilisation rather than accept the reality of its location; 12 hours by (fast) boat up the Juruá river from Cruzeiro do Sul, itself pretty remote.
Almost every thing that sustains this town – from food, clothing and bottled water to diesel for boats and the town’s own power plant – is shipped in during the rainy season when the water is high enough to carry large vessels.
But that’s not what’s complicated. My hosts were discussing local politics. As in so many places, it’s factional.
There are three groups of people in and around Marechal Thaumaturgo. First there is the urban community (townies they’d be called back home), which supports itself through commerce and services, many financed by the regional government.
Then there are the traditional communities scattered along the Juruá and its tributaries. Most of these people are descendants of seringueiros, those Brazilians from the east coast who spread out into Amazonia in the late 19th century to harvest the sap of Hevea brasiliensis, the rubber tree.
Rubber monopoly
At that time, Brazil held a worldwide monopoly on the production of rubber. When cheap plantation rubber from the British colonies put an end to the Amazonian rubber boom, the “rubber barons” moved their investments elsewhere, while the rubber tappers remained, supplementing the now less lucrative rubber with whatever else the forest could yield: fruit, nuts and meat.
The third group is the indigenous people, who have populated Amazonia for millennia, and most of whom now live in (nominally) protected “reserves” held in perpetual trust by the Brazilian government.
The Asháninka and Kaxinawá are the two main indigenous peoples living along the upper Juruá.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the indigenous and traditional communities came together in a struggle for land rights under the leadership of Chico Mendes. Despite the murders of Mendes and other activists, the struggle achieved its main aims: protection of indigenous lands and creation of what are known as extractive reserves, public lands in which traditional communities may extract resources sustainably.
These days the indigenous and traditional communities no longer work as closely together. This may be due to a perception that the indigenous got a better deal – more protection and more financial support from the state. That protection can be pretty flimsy though.
Murder
In September 2014 the Asháninka leader Edwin Chota and three others were murdered not far from here, just across the border in Peru.
The four men were on their way to meet the Asháninka community in Brazil to discuss ways to prevent illegal logging and potentially greater threats, such as cross- border road and rail links.
Roads are the thin end of the wedge here. They allow machines in and timber out. That these infrastructure projects are likely to be funded by China is even worse: it’s oil and gas the Chinese want, not timber.
These were some of the issues being discussed at a meeting I attended last September of about 40 representatives of indigenous communities from both sides of the border. The venue was impressive: the auditorium of Yorenka Atame, an institution established by the Asháninka seven years ago to share their knowledge with the wider community.
Though Yorenka Atame is located just across the river from Marechal Thaumaturgo, not many townspeople were present. Speaker after speaker talked about encroachments by illegal loggers, of inaction by state authorities, of trees not flourishing because weather patterns have changed, of rain during the dry and drought during the rainy season.
There was no grandstanding or sophistry, just people taking turns with a microphone to discuss problems and possible solutions. There was frustration and sadness in the room, but also hope. It was one year since the murders of the four Asháninka.
If the death of Mendes could galvanise the land rights movement of 30 years ago, maybe what I witnessed here was the birth of a new indigenous alliance.
It’s badly needed. The townies won’t protect the rainforest, nor ultimately, I fear, can activism in Paris, London or New York. It needs to happen here, by the people who live in the forest and understand it.
Stephen Roche works for Unesco. His book The Renaissance of Renewable Energy, co-authored with Gian Andrea Pagnoni, was published in April 2015 by Cambridge University Press
