COLORS MAGAZINE - ISSUE #68 AMAZON:
The Amazon rainforest, the earth's largest remaining tropical wilderness, is disappearing as fast as ever. Despite the cries of alarm that went off in the 1980s, it’s losing a chunk of forest cover the size of Belgium every year. That leaves about 80 percent of forest still standing, but scientists believe that only 58 percent may still be left in 2020 and that within 50 years it could disappear entirely. The Amazon's disappearance has long been a cause for concern. But who really cares about preserving the rainforest? Scientists no longer believe that the Amazon acts as the planet's lungs (the forest absorbs about as much oxygen as it produces), and what the environmental group Greenpeace came up with is that it acts as the “earth's air conditioner.” A nice added feature in these times of global warming, not nearly as essential as lungs. To get a sense of who cares about the Amazon and why we've decided to introduce you to some of the 17 million people who live there. Come and meet Sebastião who is waiting to receive rights over some land in far western Rondônia state where he fled after dealing drugs in São Paulo's favelas. Self-confessed diamond addict Leônidas who risks life and limb looking for diamonds in the Cinta Larga Indian reserve, once held a rock worth a cool million in his hands, only to turn it over to the chiefs of a tribe that practiced cannibalism until recently. Indigenous communities lobby for their rights along with their local representative Armindo a retired soldier. Downstream along the Rio Negro, José knows that he will have to leave his indigenous community if he wants to study in the city of São Gabriele da Cachoeira, where the local diocese is headed by Bishop Don Song, a Chinese-born priest who discovered in the jungle a land of religious freedom and who preaches with music and magic tricks. Five days by boat downstream near the city of Belém, Pascoal went to start a new life, which he did one night by falling in love. Lili tried to cure her broken heart by going to the “end of Brazil.” She now seasons her food with love when there's nothing else to offer the guests at her inn. Almost blind Arthur, who first came to the region to tap rubber during World War II, now relies on his parrot Fofinha to identify bad guests. Welcome to the wild, weird and wonderful world of the Amazon.
Colorsmagazine.com is the online presence of COLORS a quarterly magazine that focuses on cultural topics from around the world.
The Amazon rainforest, the earth's largest remaining tropical wilderness, is disappearing as fast as ever. Despite the cries of alarm that went off in the 1980s, it’s losing a chunk of forest cover the size of Belgium every year. That leaves about 80 percent of forest still standing, but scientists believe that only 58 percent may still be left in 2020 and that within 50 years it could disappear entirely. The Amazon's disappearance has long been a cause for concern. But who really cares about preserving the rainforest? Scientists no longer believe that the Amazon acts as the planet's lungs (the forest absorbs about as much oxygen as it produces), and what the environmental group Greenpeace came up with is that it acts as the “earth's air conditioner.” A nice added feature in these times of global warming, not nearly as essential as lungs. To get a sense of who cares about the Amazon and why we've decided to introduce you to some of the 17 million people who live there. Come and meet Sebastião who is waiting to receive rights over some land in far western Rondônia state where he fled after dealing drugs in São Paulo's favelas. Self-confessed diamond addict Leônidas who risks life and limb looking for diamonds in the Cinta Larga Indian reserve, once held a rock worth a cool million in his hands, only to turn it over to the chiefs of a tribe that practiced cannibalism until recently. Indigenous communities lobby for their rights along with their local representative Armindo a retired soldier. Downstream along the Rio Negro, José knows that he will have to leave his indigenous community if he wants to study in the city of São Gabriele da Cachoeira, where the local diocese is headed by Bishop Don Song, a Chinese-born priest who discovered in the jungle a land of religious freedom and who preaches with music and magic tricks. Five days by boat downstream near the city of Belém, Pascoal went to start a new life, which he did one night by falling in love. Lili tried to cure her broken heart by going to the “end of Brazil.” She now seasons her food with love when there's nothing else to offer the guests at her inn. Almost blind Arthur, who first came to the region to tap rubber during World War II, now relies on his parrot Fofinha to identify bad guests. Welcome to the wild, weird and wonderful world of the Amazon.
Colorsmagazine.com is the online presence of COLORS a quarterly magazine that focuses on cultural topics from around the world.
“Sebastião” –
PAGE 1
“It’s a fine thing to sit on your sofa and talk about preservation, but come here to live and you’ll see...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 2
“It’s not easy to get around in a city that’s connected by bridges for half the year, but I get by. I like it her...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 3
“My disability has allowed me to visit many states: Manaus, Belém do Pará and Brasilia. I even have a souv...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 4
“I grew up in Cachoeira and worked clearing jungle for 11 years. Being a cowboy is better work, but there...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 5
“This isn’t a good place for the younger generation—there’s nothing to do. They have no future. They grow...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 6
Rainforests are the most diverse ecosystems on the planet and are home to millions of indigenous forest people ...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 7
“I’ve chased after rocks all my life. I’m addicted to rocks, all miners are. It really is an addiction. ...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 8
“I got pregnant when I was 10 years old. Since then I’ve worked as a miner, it’s all I know. I prefer not...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 9
“I can’t tell you my real name. The federal police could throw me in jail. We live like bandits. I lost m...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 10
“There’s always a rush before the festival. We prepare 20 songs for a two-and-a-half hour show. I work all...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 11
“I’m from the Karipuna tribe.We live about 500km from here. We can only reach our tribe by boat. We usual...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 12
“A whole city has grown up here since the mine opened. Almost 2,000 people live here now. Some, like myse...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 13
“There’s a story that during World War II Manaus hosted several foreign military bases. The story goes tha...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 14
“My background’s a mixture of Portuguese, Paraguayan, Bare and Tukano Indian. That’s Brazil for you. I’m...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 15
“Things are much better now. Now every city has a state health station. In the rainy season there are a l...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 16
“Working for one of the few air taxi services around, I meet all sorts of people. We carry lots of differ...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 17
“Cucuí is where Brazil begins and ends. It’s not quite a city, but it has the basic infrastructure ...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 18
“I’m from Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais state. I came here as a soldier when I was 18 years old and neve...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 19
The Amazon supports at least 80,000 species of plants, thousands of which have traditionally been used by the...read more
“José” – PAGE 20
“When I’m 18, I want to join the army. My uncle joined the army five years ago. I don’t like living i...read more
“José” – PAGE 21
“Everything that comes from the white man has a positive side and a negative side. TV brings a lot of b...read more
“José” – PAGE 22
“I never learned to read or write, I stopped studying when I was 11. What I understand is nature. I’m i...read more
“José” – PAGE 23
“I’ve been here for less than a year. My job is to communicate with health agents in the city and let p...read more
“José” – PAGE 24
“If you do everything the way you’re supposed to, there are lots of controls, less profit and more costs....read more
“José” – PAGE 25
When rainforest is cut down to make way for cattle pasture, the land owner gets about US$400 per acre for the...read more
“José” – PAGE 26
“To reach this village you have to leave the main river. Only a good boatman knew how to distinguish th...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 27
“We’re having a hard time offering people a new way of looking at life.”
“I was...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 28
“It’s okay around here but I don’t go out at night, it’s too violent. I mean they stab you for no reaso...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 29
“Naked women and saints go well together. Saints offer us protection. We must honor them. Women—I l...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 30
“My life would make a good book. You’d need a lot of pages to get it all down. When I was 13 I left hom...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 31
“Our religion is closely connected with the forest because the drink we prepare comes from an Amazon fo...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 32
“My friends and relatives think I’m crazy. They all say I’m surrounded by killers, rapists and traffick...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 33
“We’re missionaries. There are 196 of us in the Amazon, 5,000 in Brazil and 52,000 throughout the world...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 34
“I’m very proud of being Brazilian. We are very happy people. People here are open and they help you ...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 35
“My name is Mario but I like to be called Maroca, it’s my artistic name. My father wouldn’t accept me w...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 36
“The government has decided to clean up the area, tearing down the houses here. The first who moved got ...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 37
“I decided to live here with my family because it was cheap. I bought this house nine years ago from a ...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 38
”I’ll never forget the first time I saw electricity. To me it was magic that you could have light without...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 39
“We separate different kinds of paper and plastic. . We produce up to four tons of papers in one night. Ou...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 40
Fancy a lunchof pirarucu stew and cupuaç juice? Ecotourism in the Amazon lets you live an...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 41
“ My family migrated when I was a child. We had nothing, so we set up here. Even though there are high-...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 42
“Why did the Americans kill all their Indians and now they want to take care of ours? I’m too ignoran...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 43
“We are trying to rescue our culture, which has been invaded by technobrega. This techno [music] comes ...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 44
“The Portuguese missionaries didn’t know how to respect and value the people who lived on these lands. ...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 45
“Ninety-four percentof the countries in the world are multilingual, but most of them have only one offi...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 46
“The most urgent issue affecting Amazonian tribes relates to the ‘uncontacted’ or otherwise very isolat...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 47
“I’ve been mayor for 14 months. It’s been a real headache. This town has lots of problems: social probl...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 48
“We’re soldiers because we survived the war with the jungle. I’m proud to have done such an important...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 49
“They used to call us arigós, the rubber soldiers. I lost my father and mother early so I l...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 50
Industrial logging is one of the primary reasons why the world’s remaining natural rainforests could disappea...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 51
“I promised Padre Giovanni I would take care of the museum after he died in 2003. For 17 years I worked...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 52
“I arrived here in Brazil in the 1980s when many organizations began looking at the deforestation probl...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 53
“What the agribusiness men are doing is terrible. And they want us to be silent. We are a small movemen...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 54
“We try to draw attentionto the increase in deforestation . There was an average rate of 18,000 sq km p...read more
Editorial – PAGE 55
“It’s a fine thing to sit on your sofa and talk about preservation, but come here to live and you’ll see...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 2
“It’s not easy to get around in a city that’s connected by bridges for half the year, but I get by. I like it her...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 3
“My disability has allowed me to visit many states: Manaus, Belém do Pará and Brasilia. I even have a souv...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 4
“I grew up in Cachoeira and worked clearing jungle for 11 years. Being a cowboy is better work, but there...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 5
“This isn’t a good place for the younger generation—there’s nothing to do. They have no future. They grow...read more
“Sebastião” – PAGE 6
Rainforests are the most diverse ecosystems on the planet and are home to millions of indigenous forest people ...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 7
“I’ve chased after rocks all my life. I’m addicted to rocks, all miners are. It really is an addiction. ...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 8
“I got pregnant when I was 10 years old. Since then I’ve worked as a miner, it’s all I know. I prefer not...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 9
“I can’t tell you my real name. The federal police could throw me in jail. We live like bandits. I lost m...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 10
“There’s always a rush before the festival. We prepare 20 songs for a two-and-a-half hour show. I work all...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 11
“I’m from the Karipuna tribe.We live about 500km from here. We can only reach our tribe by boat. We usual...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 12
“A whole city has grown up here since the mine opened. Almost 2,000 people live here now. Some, like myse...read more
“Leônidas” – PAGE 13
“There’s a story that during World War II Manaus hosted several foreign military bases. The story goes tha...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 14
“My background’s a mixture of Portuguese, Paraguayan, Bare and Tukano Indian. That’s Brazil for you. I’m...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 15
“Things are much better now. Now every city has a state health station. In the rainy season there are a l...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 16
“Working for one of the few air taxi services around, I meet all sorts of people. We carry lots of differ...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 17
“Cucuí is where Brazil begins and ends. It’s not quite a city, but it has the basic infrastructure ...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 18
“I’m from Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais state. I came here as a soldier when I was 18 years old and neve...read more
“Armindo” – PAGE 19
The Amazon supports at least 80,000 species of plants, thousands of which have traditionally been used by the...read more
“José” – PAGE 20
“When I’m 18, I want to join the army. My uncle joined the army five years ago. I don’t like living i...read more
“José” – PAGE 21
“Everything that comes from the white man has a positive side and a negative side. TV brings a lot of b...read more
“José” – PAGE 22
“I never learned to read or write, I stopped studying when I was 11. What I understand is nature. I’m i...read more
“José” – PAGE 23
“I’ve been here for less than a year. My job is to communicate with health agents in the city and let p...read more
“José” – PAGE 24
“If you do everything the way you’re supposed to, there are lots of controls, less profit and more costs....read more
“José” – PAGE 25
When rainforest is cut down to make way for cattle pasture, the land owner gets about US$400 per acre for the...read more
“José” – PAGE 26
“To reach this village you have to leave the main river. Only a good boatman knew how to distinguish th...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 27
“We’re having a hard time offering people a new way of looking at life.”
“I was...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 28
“It’s okay around here but I don’t go out at night, it’s too violent. I mean they stab you for no reaso...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 29
“Naked women and saints go well together. Saints offer us protection. We must honor them. Women—I l...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 30
“My life would make a good book. You’d need a lot of pages to get it all down. When I was 13 I left hom...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 31
“Our religion is closely connected with the forest because the drink we prepare comes from an Amazon fo...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 32
“My friends and relatives think I’m crazy. They all say I’m surrounded by killers, rapists and traffick...read more
“Don Song” – PAGE 33
“We’re missionaries. There are 196 of us in the Amazon, 5,000 in Brazil and 52,000 throughout the world...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 34
“I’m very proud of being Brazilian. We are very happy people. People here are open and they help you ...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 35
“My name is Mario but I like to be called Maroca, it’s my artistic name. My father wouldn’t accept me w...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 36
“The government has decided to clean up the area, tearing down the houses here. The first who moved got ...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 37
“I decided to live here with my family because it was cheap. I bought this house nine years ago from a ...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 38
”I’ll never forget the first time I saw electricity. To me it was magic that you could have light without...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 39
“We separate different kinds of paper and plastic. . We produce up to four tons of papers in one night. Ou...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 40
Fancy a lunchof pirarucu stew and cupuaç juice? Ecotourism in the Amazon lets you live an...read more
“Pascoal” – PAGE 41
“ My family migrated when I was a child. We had nothing, so we set up here. Even though there are high-...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 42
“Why did the Americans kill all their Indians and now they want to take care of ours? I’m too ignoran...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 43
“We are trying to rescue our culture, which has been invaded by technobrega. This techno [music] comes ...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 44
“The Portuguese missionaries didn’t know how to respect and value the people who lived on these lands. ...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 45
“Ninety-four percentof the countries in the world are multilingual, but most of them have only one offi...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 46
“The most urgent issue affecting Amazonian tribes relates to the ‘uncontacted’ or otherwise very isolat...read more
“Lili” – PAGE 47
“I’ve been mayor for 14 months. It’s been a real headache. This town has lots of problems: social probl...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 48
“We’re soldiers because we survived the war with the jungle. I’m proud to have done such an important...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 49
“They used to call us arigós, the rubber soldiers. I lost my father and mother early so I l...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 50
Industrial logging is one of the primary reasons why the world’s remaining natural rainforests could disappea...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 51
“I promised Padre Giovanni I would take care of the museum after he died in 2003. For 17 years I worked...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 52
“I arrived here in Brazil in the 1980s when many organizations began looking at the deforestation probl...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 53
“What the agribusiness men are doing is terrible. And they want us to be silent. We are a small movemen...read more
“Arthur” – PAGE 54
“We try to draw attentionto the increase in deforestation . There was an average rate of 18,000 sq km p...read more
Editorial – PAGE 55
Social debate about the Amazon region takes two
main approaches: One is critical, the other ...read more
Credits and Thanks – PAGE 56
Credits and Thanks – PAGE 56
© COLORS 2006. All rights reserved.