In the 1980s, however, technological advances made it far quicker and easier for outsiders to cut through the jungle for logging, ranching, industrial agriculture, and drug production and trafficking. In response, the Ashaninka joined Indigenous alliances to fight off the invaders or fled into ever deeper forests to escape them. Remote as it is, the region has been threatened for centuries by colonizers who sought its riches. The nearest large town, Pucallpa in Peru, is more than 200 kilometers away over dense forest as the macaw flies and is almost unreachable the tiny town of Marechal Thaumaturgo on the Amônia River in Brazil can, however, be accessed by chartered flight from Cruzeiro do Sul, the second-largest city in Acre state, and is a three-hour boat ride downstream of Apiwtxa. Its protected landscapes include two national parks, two reserves for Indigenous people in voluntary isolation and more than 26 Indigenous territories. It is home to the jaguar ( Panthera onca) and the woolly monkey (genus Lagothrix), as well as to several Indigenous groups. This borderland between Brazil and Peru, where the lowland Amazon rain forest slopes gently toward the Andes foothills, is rich with biological and cultural diversity. Place, Yunuen Reygadas Langarica and Elizabeth Zizzamia, Amazon Borderlands Spatial Analysis Team, 2021 Atlas de las Carreteras Propuestas en la Zona Transfronteriza Ucayali Perú-Acre, Brasil, by Spatial Analysis Lab, University of Richmond ( map reference) The road would bring, in a word, devastation.Ĭredit: Mapping Specialists Sources: David S. Drug traffickers would clear swaths of forest, establish coca plantations and try to recruit local youths as drug couriers. Indigenous peoples would face lethal danger both from violent encounters with the newcomers as well as from casual interactions, which would spread germs to which forest peoples often have little immunity. The birds and animals the workers didn't shoot for food would be scared away by the screech of chain saws. Once the road reached the river, loggers would use the waterway to penetrate the rain forest and fell mahogany, cedar and other trees. Logging companies had moved heavy equipment from mainland Peru to a village at the Amazon forest's edge to cut an illegal road through to the Amônia. ![]() There, in the manner of their ancestors, the Ashaninka spent a week camping, hunting, fishing, sharing stories, and imbibing all the joy, beauty and serenity they could.Ī month later the Ashaninka got the news they had been dreading-a road-building project they'd heard about months earlier was moving forward. It was the dry season, when the river waters were clear and safe for the children to splash in and the night sky starry for the spirit to soar in. Divining that this could be their last chance to enjoy peace and tranquility, more than 200 Ashaninka from the Sawawo and Apiwtxa villages alongside the Amônia River in Peru and Brazil, respectively, boated upstream to pristine headwaters deep in the forest. Last July a premonition persuaded the Ashaninka Indigenous people of the western Amazon basin to undertake a great traditional expedition.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |