Amazonas by Mads Nissen

mads nissen Amazonas Gyldendal

AMAZONAS

mads nissen Amazonas Âť Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only insofar as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity.ÂŤ G.W.F. Hegel

Gyldendal

To the Amazon that I Admire, Fear and Fear For I had been walking through the rainforest for several days, when I reached a glade, and a dense, green wall closed around me. From top to bottom the plants competed for light and nourishment. Thick lianas, razor-sharp thorns and delicate flowers. The underside of every leaf teemed with crawling insects. That was how the rainforest was. I had seen it all before. And then again, perhaps not.

At that very moment the humid air hushed all sounds; absorbed and encapsulated them so that they never reached my ears. I stood bare-chested at the center of silence, at the center of the organism. In a state of disintegration, I sat down on a tree stump, remained there, and let go. I was no longer anything, and if I died right there in the glade it would be fine. Even beautiful.

That was fourteen years ago. I have revisited the Amazon rainforest many times since, arriving from different countries, but mostly just travelling in my mind. All I need to do is close my eyes and hold my breath and I can taste the warm, heavy air as I float above my great green friend.

To me nothing can surpass the Amazon rainforest. On its long voyage from the Andes Mountains in Peru to the Atlantic Ocean, the Amazon River drains a region the size of Australia. The river is the largest on the planet. The same is true of the rainforest where 40,000 plant species are home to over 30 million insect species. In no other place on earth is nature so present. In no other place can such an abundance of life be found. In the air, on the ground, in the water of the rivers. So overwhelming. So irrepressive. So secretive.

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And just as irrepressible, just as overwhelming, is the human culture that encounters, confronts and attempts to control this primeval wilderness. Civilization pushes the boundaries of this virgin territory; tests it, conquers it, only to finally succumb to it, time and time again. Taming only in order to praise the untamed. And so raw nature and the human compulsion towards mastery continue their eternal pas de deux.

The first humans came here approximately 12,000 years ago, but with the arrival of the Spaniards things began to change quickly. In 1542, Francisco de Orellana conquered the jungle by successfully completing the first voyage along the Amazon River from the Andes Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. He and other explorers who survived the trip returned from »The Green Hell« with horror stories of starvation, disease and man-eating indigenous tribes. Nonetheless, more and more people were drawn to the wilderness.

A greedy chase had begun. A hunt for natural rubber, timber, oil and the legendary »El Dorado,« supposedly abounding in gold. The diseases brought over by the Europeans killed many of the indigenous peoples, while hundreds of thousands more died as slaves on rubber plantations. Once they numbered 7 million; today, less than a million indigenous Amazonians remain. Less than 400 of the original 2000 tribes still exist. As they ran out of indigenous peoples, they shipped in African slaves, and the Amazon today comprises a population of 26 million spread over nine different countries. A few indigenous tribes live isolatedly in protected areas; many more are drawn

to the cities, tempted by dreams of security, prosperity and the many possibilities that civilization dangles in front of them.

Escapists, fortune hunters, nomads, warriors, gold-diggers and homosexuals in exile. In the humid air of the Amazon, they all collide.

Here, the enormous green organism envelops a riot of life. Unpredictable frictions between nature and culture, instinct and reason, predator and prey. Our origin and our future.

Every single time I return to the Amazon, I look for a small path to guide me in, till the forest envelops me. I try not to worry that humans are destroying nature; I know that it will win out in the end.

I have seen plants shoot up through oil slicks and I know that cockroaches can survive more plutonium than humans. That eases my mind.

This book is my personal trip to the Amazon Basin. I have taken the liberty of assembling photographs from different years, countries and cultures throughout the book, because that is how I have always experienced the Amazon. Not as static or fragmented, but fluid and coherent.

To the Amazon that enthralled my heart in that glade. To the Amazon I admire, fear and fear for.

Mads Nissen

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Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible Ecuador Inside

We jump down from the truck, brush off the dust and look at the metal sign indicating where the Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible starts. The Intangible Zone. Ahead of us flows the peaceful, brown river that leads to it.

A couple of armed soldiers approach us and examine my papers. »Do you have any kind of flu that could kill isolated Indian tribes?« »No,« I reply.

The soldier hands me back my papers. »Aren’t you afraid of getting killed and butchered yourself in there?« he asks and concludes with a »Cuídate« – take care of yourself – whereupon he points towards the river with his lips.

My new friend Mario rigs the boat. The forest and everything it conceals draws us both to it. Mario is always in a good mood and I enjoy his company, even though I can’t always read him. Mario’s mother is a Waorani Indian and his father is a mestizo, a mix of different ethnicities, like many others in this region. Perhaps that is why he moves so smoothly in both worlds; in the city and out in the raw nature of the rainforest.

Oil pipes from nearby drillings wend their way through the landscape, along the riverbank and overhead. We are in oil country, but until now the Intangible Zone has held its own. After Texaco’s colossal oil spills in the 1970’s and ’80’s, 6000 square kilometers of the Ecuador Rainforest was designated as protected and untouchable.

Today the Intangible Zone is somewhat better protected than most

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other rainforest areas, not least out of consideration for the isolated indigenous tribes still living in here.

In the farthest outpost of modern civilization, El Coca, where I met Mario, he and his Waorani friends always move in small groups; they run errands, hugging the walls with conspicuous discreetness. Mario is always going on small, clandestine errands. Or else he just hangs out with a wry smile, as though he were anticipating something big.

We often just stare at the slow moving water of the Río Napo or people as they trudge by el malecón. We are both outsiders here; perhaps that is what brings us together.

Mario and his friends have invited me to their village, Bameno, which is located a ways into the Intangible Zone. The Waorani are a proud warrior people, and although they behave meekly here in the city, I can sense the resilience of the jungle in Mario, his friend Olga and the others in the small group. Because one thing is being Afuera – outside – but now we are heading Adentro – inside.

Adentro, I savor the word on my lips. To Mario, the rainforest is the point of departure for everything. Anything else is »outside.« Roles shift diametrically as we move along the river from the outside world to the inside world. The knowledge I acquired in schoolbooks, at work, in the traffic, becomes all meaningless. Everything is so fundamentally different here that it suddenly seems as though it is the outside world, and not the forest, that is monotonous. Here in Adentro one dies if one does not listen to Mario’s advice.

But I feel completely safe. Soon we will step »inside,« and everything will unfold. The boat lets go of the sandy riverbank and the view of oil pipelines. The outboard motor pushes us in the right direction up the river. Mario straightens his back and feels the sun. Olga, his friend, does the same thing while ripping off her yellow cardigan.

I suddenly see how tall the trees are as they reach across the riverbank towards the light, leaving only a narrow strip of sky visible. All light disappears in the undergrowth as my eyes plunge into the secretive darkness. Millions of spicy aromas come forward to meet me, the temperature falls. Time stands still.

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Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami, Río Siapa Venezuela Snow-white Tennis Shoes

They have heard me approaching from miles away. The metal hull, moving at a snail’s pace through the warm river water, the humming motor that for almost a week now has pushed this boat through water systems, rivers, lakes and streams. The sound has preceded us through the thick vegetation and has long since reached the alert ears of the small South Venezuelan Yanomami village of Maraca.

The entire community of about 50 men, women and children stand on a muddy riverbank gazing towards the closest approximation of a horizon. The point where the river bends and we, the visitors, finally become visible. The Yanomami of Maraca could perhaps be expecting to see the small group of illegal gold-diggers that have been operating further up the river. Or Colombian FARC-guerilla fighters that use the forest as a hiding place. But otherwise, visitors seldom come.

Maraca is too far away. Too far away from civilization. Too far away for anyone to ever guess that people ever actually lived here. Ironically, the inhabitants of this small Yanomami village used to live even further away. They moved here in order to get closer.

Korenawe Kaika Wetoma, or Rafael, as he prefers to be called, tells me about Cunnakapi, their former village. About better drinking water, more fish and game and far fewer mosquitoes. Here there are mosquitoes everywhere. Really everywhere. Nevertheless, Rafael’s group decided to move down here, closer to the rest of the world, to the small mestizo Klondyke settlements and their metal, cotton and nylon products. However, all of that is still at a distance of several days’ travel, even in a boat with a motor.

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Rafael is a young man with modern, snow-white tennis shoes, but his stories come from another era. By the fireplace in the evenings he shares his stories of the Yanomami’s many battles, of their sense of pride, honor and family. Approximately 18,000 Yanomami live in some of the most impenetrable parts of the Southern Venezuelan and Brazilian jungles. We’re lying in the hammocks of the palm hut, and in the dim light of the burning embers Rafael tells of spiritual journeys, totem animals and yopo powder trances. Of revenge killings. Of women stolen from each other’s groups. Of foreign diseases that obliterated whole societies. And of constant hunger. For seldom can the rainforest provide for everyone.

One day under the midday sun we sit down to watch a man in a yopo trance. His body is being slung back and forth. Like an animal. One moment he is moving in hectic jerks, the next he is swaying. Dangling from a fading pink plastic necklace is a tiny crucifix. The equatorial sun is burning and small beads of sweat appear upon his sinewy torso. His medium-length, ebony hair sticks to his face and eyes, eyes that are swimming farther and farther away. He foams at the mouth and two dark green trails run from his nostrils. Yopo. The powder that has been blown into his nose, into his soul, has taken control and surrendered his body to the spiritual world. »It’s especially good if you mix it with alcohol. Do you have any alcohol?« Rafael asks me as we watch the entranced man.

I am too foreign here. I admit that to myself one day as hundreds of small flies and mosquitoes ceaselessly bite, tear and sup from me.

Everyone can see the foreignness and inadequacy of my pale, vulnerable body. »Like a baby,« a woman says as she strokes the inside of my hand with fascination. »Give me your shirt,« a young man says to me one day. »I’m using it myself.« »Yes, but I need it. There are so many mosquitoes here,« he complains. »Tell me about it,« I answer and show him my hands and wrists that are already covered in hundreds of insect bites. »I’m sorry, but that’s why I need it myself,« I try to explain. »Give me five pesos, then.« The young man sits on the dirt floor of the hut, leafing through the New Testament, most probably a gift from the type of missionary who makes a virtue of pushing further and further into the forest to make first contact with an undiscovered tribe. Whereupon the interest usually fades.

The words of an American missionary, Lisa Holloway, who works in the area, come to mind. »The darkness is deeper here« she once said. »Just as some people live closer to God than others do, the Yanomami live closer to Satan.« I understand if some Yanomami have a strained relationship with outsiders after all they have seen and heard.

It’s time to leave, I think to myself. The young man probably thinks the same thing. It’s time to leave.

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Iquitos Peru Conquer or Die

The boat carries us against the current further up the Amazon River, casting anchor every now and then at small settlements that seem like lonely pockets in time consisting of wood and hot tin roofs. The boat’s destination is the jungle city of Iquitos and although we are moving at a slow pace, the scenery along the Amazon River reveals that we are approaching the big city. For every kilometer that we sail, the landscape is dotted with fewer tall trees, more plastic waste in the water and more billboards.

Iquitos finally manifests itself to me through a red and white metal structure, perhaps a transmission tower, rising proudly above the treetops in the horizon. Shortly afterwards I can hear the hum of the city. The sound of vehicles, rackety crowds and tinkling Cokes.

A permanent state of emergency arises when half a million people are stuck in a city that is way too hot and cut off from the rest of the world. A kind of eternal vacuum; this place develops and follows its own logic, becoming an evolutionary eccentric. Always entirely its own. That is the charm of Iquitos, the world’s biggest city with no road to the outside.

We tie up the boat, and I find a cheap room and go walking in the streets. Hundreds of thousands have died here, working as slaves on the rubber plantations and from the diseases the Europeans brought. Today the rubber boom of the 19th century is over, and the rubber trees are pretty much gone, but the descendants of the first slaves still live here. And like their forefathers, they too labor to sup-

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ply the hungry outside world. From the run-down promenade of the city I watch the heavily laden ships set out for civilization. The sylvan harvest consists of lumber, crude oil and fruit.

Just as people reach into the forest, so the forest reaches for us here on the concrete. Iquitos symbolizes the dream of a better life. An effective magnet that pulls impoverished hopefuls through the dense undergrowth of the jungle, luring them on a journey of hundreds of kilometers with empty promises of work, modernity and security.

The last generation of proud and shy indigenous tribes ends here.

Evanesces here. In nylon clothes and with sugar-cane booze – aguardiente – and malaria in the blood. The tradition of millennia, shamanic medicine, is reduced to little doses available in shabby plastic bags at the street market. The sacred animals of the forest are hawked about at the market, in chains or in jam-jars.

Over time Iquitos has become a place of exile for homosexuals in macho South America. This is ascribed to the heat, humidity and the fruit aguaje that reportedly renders both women and men more sensual and feminine. It started in the 1980’s when homosexuals fled from harassment, murder and violence in the deeply Catholic mountain regions of Peru. Iquitos is isolated and, as in most other jungle cities, the rules and norms of the outside world are not yet followed so zealously.

The discotheque Papillon – The Butterfly – is located in a suburb, and is no larger than a garage, still, over a hundred men and transvestites

have managed to squeeze themselves in here tonight. Torsos and lower bodies dripping with sweat take advantage of the tightness of the space; lips meet in the flickering disco lights and quench their thirst with Inca Kola, ice cubes and cheap aguardiente.

One early morning a half-naked young man sleeps off his hangover, bathed in the sharp rays of the equatorial sun. On his torso, sown with pitch-black hair and old scars, three words are tattooed:

»VENCER O MORIR,« – Conquer or die.

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Estado Amazonas Venezuela Fable and Fairy Vision

»Rivers fall on you like birds, you are covered with pistils the color of conflagration, the great dead trunks populate you with perfume, the moon cannot watch over nor measure you.« – Pablo Neruda, from the poem ’Amazonas’

We are flying head-on into a dark, seething thundercloud in a small Cessna four-seater. The pilot laughs foolishly as he keeps texting the message he hopes to get off as we pass a military outpost with a cell tower.

Outside the window the forest spreads like an infinite green ocean.

The holy tepuy mountain, Autana, where legend has it Mother Earth was created, breaks the horizon on our right. Beneath the airplane, the reddish brown waters of Río Orinoco carve their way through the landscape. »Above the Great Cataracts of the Orinoco a mythical land begins,« wrote the legendary German explorer Alexander von Humboldt of the place beneath us, »…the soil of fable and fairy vision.« This is how I choose to think of the Amazon. As its own tremendous being. A cohesive, living organism. A primordial force with a beating heart, tortuous arteries and vast oceans of green, in which unknown myriads of life forms are preserved, alluring and terrifying all at once.

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And then the landscape changes diametrically. Streets and rooftops.

Cars, people and a paved runway. Puerto Ayacucho – Venezuela’s largest city on the edge of the rain forest. The place where it all began for me in 1999. I was nineteen years old and stranded in Puerto Ayacucho, volunteering for a charity project that was constantly being put off until »mañana« – tomorrow.

Now I’ve returned. I remember how I was drawn to the streets of the city, where I caught little glimpses of the pith and marrow of the forest. Like breaths deep down from the pit of its stomach. I recall shy Yanomami who sold their wares much too cheaply. A fat man who showed me his pistol. An intense sorceress with African blood and a puma-like beast on a chain, waving her Tarot cards. A young man, Elvis was his name, tricked me into paying hundreds of dollars for a trip that never happened.

Puerta Ayacucho, swaddled in heat waves and the sweet, rotten smell of fallen mangos. Civilization has gotten the upper hand in the city now. But beyond the city limits everything is still throbbing.

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Belén Bajo Peru The Venice of the Rainforest

They call it the Venice of the Rainforest, but the Iquitos quarter Belén Bajo has more edge to it than its Italian sister. The place is a stinking slum on stilts, a community of rafts partially submerged in muddy water for four months of the year, due to the fluctuating water levels of the Amazon River.

A diverse palette of Indian groups has ended up here, but most are indigent mestizos, people with a mixture of South American, European and African blood running in their veins. They all vie for the same day-labor jobs like dragging heavy bags of coal or bananas off the boats and onto land to the waiting cars.

Salsa music throbs from the floating houses. We paddle around in the twilight in my local friend John Willer’s fragile wooden boat. The wind cools my body, as I reach out my hand to feel the soft, dirty water between my fingers. John admonishes me to sit still; the bottom of the boat consists of a hollow tree trunk, and there is nothing to keep out the water along the sides but wooden planks. Without a sound, we glide through the small canals, the streets meters beneath us. The inhabitants prefer the dry season, when they can quickly get from house to house without getting dirty or wet, to shop at the market, hang out beneath the street lights and play ball. But I love Belén Bajo when the river is in spate. When normal city life is hidden beneath us. When everything is turned upside down and we are trapped inside one another’s houses and in one another’s company until you can catch a ride with a boat. When people bring their chickens and pigs into their floating houses so that they won’t drown and you can

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see the prostitutes ferrying their customers out onto the river so that they can do it with them in the bottom of the canoes. When normal is on standby.

One night we see a one-meter long anaconda that has slithered from the water up into the attic of a house. The rotund homeowner strives to maintain a macho façade as he drives the animal out with a broom. The neighbors soon crowd around enthusiastically, cheering the man on in his struggle against the beast. And so another day vanishes into thin air.

It often rains quite violently at the close of the day. As though the clouds arise within the unspoiled rain forest surrounding us and seek with all of nature’s strength and cleanliness to wash all the dirt out of Belén Bajo.

Tonight the sky is a deep azure blue, and a warm light radiates from the cracks and the open doors of the houses. On a floor above us an elegant woman in her mid-twenties wearing a tight red dress is regarding herself in the mirror, making faces – now tough, now charming – at her reflection. Darkness descends and Belén Bajo wakes up.

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KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia Keeping Your Head Clear

I have risen early from my hammock to go fishing with my long-time friend Walter Morales and his two oldest sons Manuel and Giovany.

Walter is a Huitoto Indian and lives in a small village, KM.11, isolated in the southwest corner of Colombia’s jungle.

The village got its name because it is located eleven kilometers outside the town of Leticia. The village before KM.11 is called KM.9 and the one after, KM.16. At KM. 32 the road dead-ends in the rainforest.

Walter rolls greenish, toxic leaves into little balls between his rough palms. He throws the balls into the brown river water. For one minute all is still and then the surface is suddenly broken by brownish-black fish in the throes of death. They have eaten Walter’s poison.

Manuel and Giovany plunge into the water to gather the fish before the piranhas get them. Giovany loses one of his rubber boots in the river, the current takes it, and now it is completely gone. Walter scolds him, »a boot like that is expensive!« But the two brothers stick together and Walter is too soft hearted to bear a grudge for long. On the way home in the afternoon rain, Giovany limps along in only one boot. His foot is pierced by a black thorn, which Walter picks out gently with a small needle.

Walter’s wife, Cassia, and their daughter, Katy, greet us with heartwarming laughter when we finally reach the hut. Wet and tired, Giovany with only one boot, but his arms filled with the delicious catch.

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Cassia and Katy gut the fish, removing intestines and poison. While waiting for the dinner, we men prepare mambe, a powder made of jibina vai – the coca leaf.

The small green leaves are toasted until they are bone-dry, then crushed and stomped with a mortar until they are pulverized. Jibina vai is a cornerstone of Huitoto culture. The plant helps you to work harder, satisfies your hunger and as Walter says,

»Helps you keep your head clear when times are tough.«

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Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil Fever, Gold Fever

»In Christian Faith I swear, King and lord, that if a hundred thousand men come none will escape, because the stories are false and in this river there is nothing but despair.« – Conquistador Lope de Aguirre, on the search for El Dorado, in a letter to King Felipe II of Spain in 1561

»If we arrive weak, we’ll remain weak. If we arrive strong, we’ll become strong,« my new best buddy Whermason Amorín advises me.

We met each other the day before on an 18-hour insufferable bus ride on a dilapidated dirt road that cuts through the Brazilian rain forest.

We’re both on our way to Eldorado do Juma, the largest illegal goldmine in South America.

Whermason’s advice carries a certain amount of weight. Just a few months ago he was sharing a prison cell with a group of Mexican gangsters after having been caught red-handed working illegally in the U.S. The months in the cell taught him that vigilance and alliances are the keys to survival.

Whermason has no experience as a gold miner, but he needs money and is tired of poorly paid farm labor. So when a friend came back from a trip to the goldmine with money in his pocket, able to afford the sweet life with lots of parties, girls and a brand new car, he decided to go there himself.

The last stop is a small town called Apuí, where we strike up a conversation with El Cheiro and his associate who owns a brothel at the goldmine. Both of them are top dogs out here. We drink some

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beer. They bid us welcome and we can stay at the brothel, they say.

Two days later El Cheiro needs to pick up a kilo of gold at the mine, so we get a lift from him and Whermason is delighted with our new.

After a few hours the road ends and we are surrounded by the rainforest. On a simple raft of wood and empty oil barrels we cross the Rio Juma. Just on the opposite side of the river-bank lies the dream and the hope.

a mud hole of mine pits when a host of poor Brazilians arrived in the thousands. The first ones came in 2006, and since then primitive wooden houses, bars and brothels have been shooting up. At its peak, 3 to 400 kilos of gold were hosed up from the red soil every week. Back then there were approximately 8000 gold-diggers or garimpeiros as they are called in Brazil. Today, just a few years later, the output is about 10 kilos per week.

Perhaps there are riches here, but if so, they are well concealed under the surface of primitive wooden huts, open out-houses and the rows of drowsy bars, from which thin, full-bearded men look us over with suspicious eyes. This is Eldorado do Juma, named after the fabled El Dorado in the Amazon, the secret city of the purest gold that thousands of adventurers have lost their lives trying to find throughout history.

Whermason and I decide to move out of the brothel and into one of the camps so he can start working. Each in our own way we work in the mines during the day, and in the evening we drink cachaça with his new gang. The leader is 160 cm tall, has only one eye and a voice as high pitched as a child’s. An amiable middle-aged woman cooks food and keeps an eye on the camp while we’re gone. The best man in the group has sun-scorched skin, Indian blood running in his veins and eyes in the back of his head that prove useful later on at a bar. The third member of the group is a boy no more than 14 years of age, but as the son of a gold-digger he knows the rules of the game, working just as hard and rolling cigarettes alongside the adults.

I meet the 44-year-old Ursulino Loobes de Souza during one of his short breaks. A sharp stone has cut open his artery. He stops the bleeding, and one dirty bandage later he is back to work. Despite the pain in his wrist he continues to dig, lift and push. Little by little mountains and hills are destroyed, washed down to sticky mud with fire hoses. The mud is sorted, sifted and rinsed with quicksilver.

Since gold is the heaviest of metals, it’ll be the last thing left. If there is anything left, that is.

Eldorado do Juma was once covered by untouched rainforest; what is known as virgin rainforest. But the virgin was transformed into

But gold is scarce and with time the group disintegrates. Whermason’s body is marked and after the next pay day he too goes home. For the rest of the group there is no plan B. Hunting for gold is what they do. All they know and who they are.

The question is where in the rainforest El Dorado is hiding.

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Departamento del Beni Bolivia Eternal Wandering

Luisa Oro Caris’ bare feet force her body forwards with firm steps in a heavy rhythm while the two youngest children sleep soundly on her body, her few-month-old son in a sling on her back and the slightly heavier Susana in Luisa’s arms.

The dirt road seems endless. A few trucks and busses have driven by us, but who in these parts stops to take twenty-two dirty and underfed nomadic Indians on board?

We walk. Walk, walk and walk. After a couple of hours yet another run-down vehicle passes us, this time a bus. The men stick out their arms half-heartedly as the bus approaches. Even the children try, but just as despondently. The bus rushes by, unaffected by us, bouncing over deep holes in the road at full speed, the radio blaring.

I look at Luisa dragging her children along. At her two sisters, Lucía and Virginia. At Luisa’s husband, Alberto, and his two brothers, Luis and Pedro. At all the children, brushing off the dust and continuing down the dirt road on bare feet.

We met by chance just a few days ago in the small town of San Ignacio de Moxos when it was drowning in its annual celebration with 96% alcohol and wild fireworks. In a farmyard a drunken band was playing on flutes made of bones. People danced lewdly while a cow, the soonto-be midnight snack, stared from a pole in the corner of the yard.

It took a little while before I noticed them. Five men, three women and fourteen children with bright faces sitting a little ways off on the ground under an open shed. Silently observing the festivities with curious but shy eyes. We agreed that I could join them. The name of

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their tribe is Chimane and they are forever wandering nomads whose ancestors survived in the rainforest as hunters and gatherers.

We collapse at the roadside, share some of the food I still have left while the men tie yet another knot in their stomachs with a swig of booze. The children do not cry, neither from cold nor hunger.

There is a tropical thunderstorm the next day and for the first time we seek shelter at a farm. We make a bonfire, warm our bodies and the children plunder the farmer’s grapefruit tree. I fall into a heavy sleep and don’t awaken until the storm has subsided, only to realize that everyone’s left already. The Chimane always leave without waking those who are sleeping. As if everyone instinctively knows the way, and as a matter of course will be able to get by on their own in the landscape. I can’t do that yet, so I hustle to catch up.

Despite the children’s short legs the group has gone far. We finally turn away from the road and follow a small path into the ever-denser jungle. After yet another two days of walking, first through forest, then swamp and finally rainforest again, I see their camp; a few simple, open huts with thatched roofs on a scorched piece of soil encircled by a wall of scrub and trees. A ten-meter wide river runs at the foot of a muddy slope. Here is where we bathe, wash and quench our thirst. Just like their forefathers, these Chimane are nomads. But the rainforest has receded, they now live on the outskirts of the rainforest and on the outskirts of the rest of the world. The men work as day laborers cutting down and clearing the trees for a local landowner, and while they do so, this spot is their home.

One day the landowner comes by with a few provisions; salt, sugar, rice, spaghetti and even cash for the tree cutting. He has also remembered to bring coca leaves, 96% alcohol and new batteries to resurrect the ghetto blaster. »I know what you’re thinking. That I’m a mean slave owner, but they choose it themselves; they choose it themselves. They choose to work for me themselves, and no one else wants them around,« he yells drunkenly to me through the music an hour later.

I don’t know what I think. Or what I feel. This stuff is complicated.

And it’s been many days since I switched off rationality. Walter Morales in KM.11, Mario and his friends in the Intangible Zone of Ecuador and many others have taught me to let it go. Let go. Let go and give in. We penetrate deep into the wilderness here, but the wilderness can also penetrate us. Its whispers awakened something within me, something that was dormant those 14 years ago in the middle of the glade, but the damn thing is that I am having a hard time hearing and decoding its voice. And thinking too conventionally merely sets up barriers between the forest, its people and me.

The bottle and the bag of coca leaves change hands constantly and I get to thinking that the others must also have something or other that they can’t stand to think through.

When I wake up the next day, shivering and sick from the river water and straight liquor, I find that the Chimane have done it again.

Abandoned me. Sleeping. Alone, in the middle of the Amazon.

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Index

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Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible Colombia, Departamento del Amazonas Venezuela, Estado Amazonas

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 28

Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Noñeno – pueblo indígena Waorani Venezuela, Río Orinoco, Guachapana Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Ecuador, El Coca Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Negro

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Venezuela, Río Casiquiare Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Ecuador, Río Napo Venezuela, Río Casiquiare, Capihuare Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Orinoco Colombia, Isla de La Fantasia Colombia, Departamento del Amazonas

50 51

Peru, Belén Bajo Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani

52 53 54 55 56 57 59 60 61 62 63 65 66 67 68 69 71 72

Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Bolivia, San Ignacio de Moxos Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Venezuela, Río Siapa, Maraca – pueblo indígena Yanomami Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Brazil, Tabatinga Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Bameno – pueblo indígena Waorani Venezuela, Estado Amazonas

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 85 86 87 88 89 91 92 93 94 95 96

Peru, Iquitos Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Peru, Iquitos Brazil, Tabatinga Brazil, Apuí Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Ecuador, El Coca Peru, Iquitos Peru, Iquitos Peru, Iquitos Bolivia, San Ignacio de Moxos Brazil, Apuí Peru, Iquitos Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Venezuela, San Carlos de Rio Negro Peru, Iquitos Colombia, Departamento del Amazonas

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 109 110

Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Brazil, Estado do Amazonas Venezuela, Estado Amazonas Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Brazil, Estado do Amazonas Brazil, Estado do Amazonas Brazil, Estado do Amazonas Brazil, Estado do Amazonas Venezuela, Río Negro

115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 129 130

Peru, Belén Bajo Ecuador, Nuevo Rocafuerte Peru, Belén Bajo Brazil, Humaitá Peru, Belén Bajo Peru, Belén Bajo Ecuador, Parque Nacional Yasuní – Zona Intangible, Noñeno – pueblo indígena Waorani Peru, Iquitos Peru, Belén Bajo Peru, Iquitos Peru, Iquitos Peru, Belén Bajo Peru, Belén Bajo Colombia, Leticia Colombia, Departamento del Amazonas

135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 145 146

Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Colombia, KM.11 – pueblo indígena Huitoto Brazil, Estado do Amazonas

150 151 152 153 155 156 157 158 159 161 162

Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Brazil, Garimpo Eldorado do Juma Bolivia, Departamento del Beni

167 168 169 170 171 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 181

Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni Bolivia, Departamento del Beni

182 Colombia, Departamento del Amazonas 184 Colombia, Departamento del Amazonas 186 Venezuela, Estado Amazonas

192

Acknowledgements Photography is both the loneliest and the most sociable activity I know of. I wish to thank from the bottom of my heart all of those who greeted me warmly, with an open door, a motorboat, medicine, food and shelter. Generous insight and patience. Your protection and forbearance… Thank you.

A very special thank you In my family To Lene Winther, for joy, for bringing out the best in me, and for our son, Thor. To my mother, Margit Knudsen, her husband, Kim Dyrholm, and my sister, Marie Nissen.

In the Amazon To Walter Morales and your lovely family; for opening your arms to me while I was still defensive, and for the evenings in La Maloka where you gave me insight and confusion enough to know what to look for. To Whermason, for your company and good advice. To John Willer, the karate king of Belén Bajo. To Mario and Olga in La Zona Intangible; I often think of you. Zoila Junuma Cobepeteri. And to Los Chimanes, for letting »La Mosca« wander with you.

In working on this book To Per Folkver; I, my photography, and this book would not be the same without you.

To Line Holm Nielsen and Ole Sønnichsen for your incisive assistance with the essays of this book. To Christian Als, Casper Balslev, Anders Birch, Philip Blenkinsop, Sofia Busk, Jeppe Carlsen, Troels Hven, Miriam Dalsgaard, Ullrich Fichtner, Jan Grarup, David Høgsholt, Camilla Jørgensen, Thomas Lekfeldt, Søren Lorenzen, Niels Ahlmann Olesen, Søren Pagter, Charlotte Præstegaard Schwartz and Birgitte Vogelius. To Adrian Evans, Francesca Sears, Josh Lustig, Michael Regnier and the rest of Panos Pictures. To Peter Bitzer and LAIF, and last – but decidedly not least – to Samuele Pellecchia and Prospekt.

194

Amazonas © Mads Nissen and Gyldendal A/S Graphic Design: Camilla Jørgensen, Trefold Photographs and essays: Mads Nissen Editing and concept: Mads Nissen and Per Folkver Translated by Karen MacLean and Nina Sokol Prepress: Narayana Press Map: Per Jørgensen Typeset with Capitolium and Gotham and printed by Narayana Press Printed in Denmark 2013 First edition, first printing ISBN: 978-87-00-79096-4 This book has been published with financial support from Forlaget Palle Fogtdal, Konsul George Jorck og Hustru Emma Jorck’s Fond, Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond as well as Berlingskes Chefredaktion.

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Gyldendal.

Gyldendal Fakta Klareboderne 3 1001 Copenhagen K Denmark

AMAZONAS is a raw and lyrical journey into the world’s largest rainforest.

Mads Nissen’s intense documentary photographs lure you inside the uncanny wilderness, where gold-diggers, warriors, homosexuals in exile and isolated indigenous tribes collide on the threshold between nature and culture, instinct and reason, our origin and our future.