With 50,000 inhabitants, Tefé is the last major city on the Solimões, but still a week’s sail from the border with Peru. At the office of Estaçao Ecológica Mamirauá, scientific research activities are coordinated in the nearby Mamirauá, the largest protected flood forest in the world covering an area of 200,000 hectares. I disturb one of the project leaders during what seems like a phone call with her boyfriend or lover. If I want information about the project, she says I should contact the head office in Belém, in a way that clearly indicates she’d prefer me to leave.
However, Belém is two thousand kilometers downstream. Given my past experiences with both bureaucracy and the phone connections in this part of the country, which offer little reason for optimism, I persist. Eventually, she agrees to give me a map of the project area and lets me watch a video in an adjoining room. I see the main coordinator from Belem, a chubby man who, lying under a canopy like a Roman emperor, lets himself be transported through the jungle by a motorized canoe. I see monkeys. I see fish. I see plants. What I barely see are local residents. Just scientists setting up their own ecological experiment in this area.
As he steers his boat through narrow channels towards the Mamirauá lake, Captain Valdecir complains that the mosquitoes here are “as big as a train carriage”. This might be an exaggeration, but they are numerous. Entire clouds of them swarm around the boat. There must be millions, all driven by bloodlust, trying to find a patch of exposed skin. There’s also a type of bee that targets hair and grazes on my head as if it’s the turf of a soccer stadium. My face begins to swell, and by the time we approach the area where Joaquim Guimares lives, leader of the project sector located at the mouth of the Mamirauá river, I feel like I could audition for a role as The Elephant Man.
Joaquim is a caboclo, a small wiry man of 62 years. Just like his wife Lucia, he has lived his whole life in this area. Until about ten years ago, he was barely disturbed by outsiders. Then they began to arrive, he says, the scientists and missionaries. He had seen the project’s main coordinator pass by many times, and after a few occasions, the coordinator came ashore, introduced himself, and asked Joaquim to look after the meteorological device they wanted to use for measurements in the area. Five years later, the caboclo was appointed as a sort of overseer. He became the point of contact for people in the region and was also responsible for relaying information and checking for hunting. Joaquim appreciated the attention he received from the project team. They brought books and set up a small school. The community received food, and young men could help build houses and map the project area. Most importantly, especially for the area’s residents, the fish population has increased significantly in the seven years since the project began.
However, decisions about the area are made in Belém, a few thousand kilometers downstream. Did the local people have a choice? Joaquim: “Decisions are made by the headquarters in Belém, Manaus, and Tefé, but we oversee the enforcement of the fishing and hunting bans, not the people from Belém. We monitor boats entering the area, and if we don’t trust them, we order them to leave. If they don’t, we have a radio to call the federal police.”
But what if Belém wants something and the people, who have lived here for generations, refuse to cooperate? Arie, Joaquim’s son who is present during the conversation, answers on behalf of his father. “The final decision about whether to do something or not lies with the people here. If someone from the project’s top management or the governor has an idea about economic development, we call a meeting of the sector leaders. A representative is then chosen to go to Belém to discuss the pros and cons we foresee and how we might further develop the project. The main goal of the project is environmental protection, and no one is more suitable for that than a caboclo. We lived here long before the term ‘nature conservation’ was even coined.”
To be continued…
