Green hell brazil nut4/9/2023 I ask Ricardo Scoles, one of the biologists, why this is so. Now and again, we spot a jacaré (caiman) sunning on exposed rocks. The sun breaks through the clouds and we see storks, red and blue parrots ( arara) and the occasional kingfisher winging its way along the bank. The Iriri is low, for the rains have only just begun - they came very late this year - and our pilot has to pick his way carefully around the rocky patches. The next morning our team heads upriver in our voadeira (canoe with outboard motor). We sling our hammocks on one of the verandas and spend a restful night. “It’s so unsettling not knowing what is happening”, complains one settler. So no one has been moved out of the indigenous reserve yet, and that is generating a great deal of uncertainty. The long process of setting up the reserve is well underway but officials appear reluctant to take the final step - the (almost) irreversible creation of the new indigenous territory. The government has just completed the long process of sorting out the genuine early settlers from the grileiros (the land thieves), who moved in after the reserve proposal was made to scam a quick buck. But, not unreasonably, they want the government to respect the law and resettle them on equally good plots of land and to pay them compensation for the house and crops they lose. The locals even add that they’re prepared to move out. Some had settled in the past on lands that are now being included within the recently designated 750,000-hectare (2,896-square mile) reserve - not knowing they would one day be asked to move.īut the locals show little resentment toward the Indians, which is very unusual in this type of conflict, and they readily recognise the Indians’ right to the land. The conversation turns next to the nearby Indigenous Territory of Cachoeira Seca and the locals’ land claims there. Biologist Ricardo Scoles explained why one rarely sees large animals along Amazon rivers, but plenty of small ones, such as mosquitos. “We can’t take a single fish out of the area to take to relatives in Altamira.” Although when pushed, the men do admit that the situation has improved over the last two years - though the constant monitoring still irks them. “It’s only us, who can’t fight back”, the locals complain. The authorities don’t go after the real culprits, they say, the illegal loggers, big farmers and commercial fishermen who flout the regulations and clean the river out with their nets. The early evening talkers move on to another popular topic: the restrictions imposed by the conservation authority, ICMBio (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservaçāo da Biodiversidade). More fishermen are moving in all the time, they explain, and encroaching on other people’s fishing areas, something that never happened in the old days. Each establishment has a palm roof and large veranda, where people gather to eat, talk, drink and sling their hammocks.Īs night falls in that sudden tropical way, locals chat easily with our research team about the growing scarcity of fish, caused, they say, by the increasing demand of Altamira - an Amazon basin boom town swollen to over 100,000 with the coming of workers to build the gigantic Belo Monte Dam. The town consists of a central square, surrounded by bars painted in bright colors: blue, pink, purple, turquoise. Maribel is a small, pleasant river port, situated in the Indigenous Territory of Cachoeira Seca on the opposite side of the Iriri River from the Terra do Meio Ecological Station (ESEC-TM). Today’s small family-run Brazil nut processing center prospers, while Henry Ford’s rubber plantation and Julio Vito Pentagna Guimarāes’s mega-cattle ranch have been reclaimed by the jungle.
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