O Povo Brasileiro - Capítulo 9 - Brasil caboclo - 2000

BASED ON THE BOOK BY DARCY RIBEIRO "THE BRAZILIAN PEOPLE" A whole other country... is the one in the Amazon region. The native Indians lived there... and the different tribes were all mixed up by the Jesuits... and somewhat crossbred with whites and Blacks. They were all organized as the Caboclos. CHESTNUT TREE CABOCLO BRAZIL The Amazon rain forest has an unique beauty. Only Brazil and its neighboring countries have that in the world. That huge piece of land is what I call "the garden of Earth". Exuberance and mystery caused the Amazon to go down in History... as a kingdom of myths, as the El Dorado... a fabulous place full of gold, silver and precious minerals. It was the home of the legendary Amazon women... of giants and dwarfs, of men whose feet pointed backwards... of fantastic drugs and plants. If I had to tell you what I think about my country... I would start by saying that it still has pre-Historical roots... like where the Yanomamis live, and it also has developed regions... which imitate modernizing schemes around the Western world. I would also say that, in terms of future... my country has the most important water resources in the world. We have black rivers, white rivers, green rivers. Surprisingly enough, because of its old occupation model... which ruled from 1850 until the mid 1920's... the Amazon region remained the largest tropical domain... with its bio-diverse rain forests, in the whole world. The Indians and especially the Caboclos used the term "rios"... to name the largest running water bodies... they used the term "riozinhos" for narrower side rivers... which were bathed by some sunlight. And those little rivers that run into the forest... sometimes hidden by the tree tops... and serve as roads to the canoes, those were called "igarapés"... which means "waterway to canoes". That's so beautiful. There were many Indian tribes living along the banks of the Amazon river. They lived a rich life and built mile-long villages by the riverside. Their glorious days vanished in much less than a century. When the Europeans started to spread around, they were like a plague... killing, destroying... shattering... and festering inside, because they carried with them... their diseases... such as the small pox, warms... dental cavities, the mumps... and so many others... like the flu. Each and every one of them killed a large number of people. Seen as hunting game by Brazilian and Portuguese settlers... or by the Jesuits, the Franciscans and the Carmelites... turned into slaves for the picking of the dry land drugs... the native Indians were erased little by little. "And all those people were gone, maybe by our own hands. In a little over 30 years, the dead among the so-called Indians... were up to more than 2 million. " "Within 500 years, we see the rising and the growth... of a large population of detribalized, uncultured... and crossbred people who are the fruits and the victims... of the European occupation. Today, there are more than 3 million people... who were able to preserve their original adaptive culture... pertaining to the jungle people. In the course of the process of ethical transfiguration... they were converted into generic Indians... with no language or culture of their own... and with no specific cultural identity. Later in time, they were joined by a large number of crossbred people... the children of white fathers and Indian mothers. Since they were not pure Indians nor European... and they spoke Tupi... they melted themselves into the definition of Caboclos." It is formed in the Amazon a new human and cultural reality. The Caboclo was neither Indian nor European. He spoke Tupi because the Jesuits taught him to. They started speaking Tupi in that area because of the Jesuits. In the Amazon region, up to the Second Kingdom... the Portuguese language was not the official language. They didn't speak Portuguese not even in Belém and Manaus. People from the Amazon region communicated among themselves... using Portuguese as a second language... but their first language was what we call modern Tupi-Guarani... or "the good language". The Portuguese language enters the Amazon region... with D. Pedro the 2nd's policy of homogenizing... the region's language. "The basic characteristic of the Caboclo Brazil... is its adaptive technology, Indian in its essence... preserved and passed down for centuries... without great changes." From 1880 on... the Amazon is included in a different economical international context. That region goes through a period of economical boom. The rubber cycle created an extraction culture in that region... which is a very primitive economical system. It also created an import/export scheme... and a social elite connected more to Europe than to Brazil itself. And it also created an economical source... that drained the region dry more than it could replace. Being a rubber harvester was not an easy life. He has to wake up early, set up his collecting bowls... and smoke the rubber. It is a horrible life. The entire interior of Brazil uses the system of vouchers. In other words, the owner of the farm gives you vouchers for food... for fabric, for gun powder, for ammunition... and the worker pays with what he harvests. When the time comes to make it even... the rich side of the scale is always heavier. The worker is always in debt. The rubber cycle put Manaus, the world's capital of rubber... inside the international and the national political picture... and it reaffirmed Belém as the great capital of the Amazon region. The Amazon was occupied... in the late 19th century and the early 20th century... by people coming from Ceará. If you look at the original Caboclo, they use the bow and arrow... they row their boats, and you think they descend from Indians... but they descend from people from Ceará, from Cariri-lndians. For those who appreciate it... it's lovely the way the Northeastern people came to the Amazon. They turned the Amazon man into a river and jungle man... but they're all still named Raimundo. Right after World War I, that region was completely abandoned. Entire families fled from Manaus, business men killed themselves... houses and mansions were invaded by the jungle. The region then went into such a severe crisis... that Manaus... one of the first cities in South America to ever have phone lines... and a trolley system... by 1955 didn't even have electricity. The Transamazonic Highway is way too recent to go down in History... but its construction process is already important as a document. To build its 1,375 mile-long lanes... the workers had to face parts of the jungle... where, for sure, no human had set foot. With the military dictatorship and its typical megalomania... the government decided to start what they called "regional integration"... and bring the less developed regions into modern times. Miles and miles of jungle were sold to international companies. That's when that region starts to suffer. What happens is... the intensification of agricultural conflicts... the assault to Indian territories... the destruction and the access to once isolated Indian tribes. Unfortunately, in the last 30, 40 years... people have adopted various approach techniques for the Amazon... and it's obvious that some areas were negatively influenced... by the hand of destruction... through occasional constructions of highways and railways... and the destruction of "igarapés". Not much was left intact. The crisis between the rioting workers and the new land owners... motivated by the new projects launched by the dictatorship... generated some critical thinking. It generated leaders like Chico Mendes, who lost his life... defending different alternatives for the rubber extraction workers. "Unfortunately, when it comes to the matter of land ownership... Brazil is not only extremely behind... but it is also an extremely regretful and shameful situation. Areas where men have never set foot have been related... as belonging to this or that person. Sooner or later, when and if it is personally convenient... the "land owners" will evict the Indian tribes... who, by the monstrous table-turning hand of History... will be then considered and treated as intruders... and thieves. " "In fact, civilization has not yet proven to be capable... of developing adaptation system which is adequate and fair... to the rain forests... and which is also capable of being multiplied by corporations... so that its economical viability is secured." It is necessary to show the world that Brazil is not only... an economical factor, nor just an emerging economy... pushed over by international competition. Here, we have a different problem. It starts with the Indians... who are still hunted in the jungle... and we have to protect them and demand special measures... so that those who leave their pre-historical environment... and get in touch with our pseudo-civilization... and enter this other Brazil, post-civilization... so that those people are not reduced to poverty... and to an extreme situation once... inside the so-called modern society. The most educated people in Brazil live in that region. If we put the caboclo civilization... who has inherited 10,000 years of wisdom from the native Indians... who know exceptional plants... such as cupuaçu, bacuri... and so many other fruits which can be used in ice cream and juice... if they planted all that in the jungle... the jungle would get richer, and they could have a beautiful life. They could raise alligators for meat, raise fish. The best fish in the world come from the Amazon. They could raise fish up to the million. So, the Amazon can be enormously prosperous. The biggest challenge of the Amazon is finding... its rightful place in the international and national markets... is inventing some technology compatible with the tropics. The technology that rules today is generated in moderate climate. But the Amazon region is essential to many aspects... to the economical, cultural and biological package of Earth. Our biggest advantage here is our infinite extension... of land appropriate for planting, blessed with strong sunlight. That means we have a tremendous amount of energy available to us... even bigger than that of the atomic bomb. That energy is tamed and it blesses our backyard every day. We have to colonize that solar energy... in order to create more green land. There's no country like ours, with the widest rivers on Earth... the longest rivers on Earth. We have a lot of water! One of the future projects in Brazil involves our bio-mass. Have you ever thought... that the most beautiful and richest place on Earth is the Amazon? The Amazon is the incredible garden of the human kind. If someone organizes the tourism in the Amazon... so that people can visit the forest, the garden of the Earth... Think about a boy who invites his girl, saying: "Honey, give me your hand. Let's get naked and cruise the jungle." I lived in the jungle for 10 years and I know how beautiful it is. So you walk through the jungle... carrying a stick to kill an occasional snake... a bag carrying food and your camera... and you just keep walking and walking...