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In Amazonas - 1998
In Amazonas - 1998
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-18 22:36:03
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riding a noisy Yamaha. I was astounded, but immediately remembered the words of my friend Charles Brewer Carias, a former minister in the Venezuelan government and a great expert on conditions in the Amazon basin: "Within a couple of generations, there will be no Indians left. White civilization will have absorbed them. When the last tribe leaves the forest for the town the Indian race will die out and the world will lose part of its history".
One man I met in Puerto Ayacucho was Manuel. He is a nurse who works in the town, but his father was the valiant chief of a Yanomami tribe. His mother, Helena Valero, was a European, who was kidnapped when she was a baby and lived with the Indians for 24 years. Now she has returned to civilization, she finds the behaviour of the whites more incomprehensible than the laws of the jungle. The Governor of the province describes the Indians as noble, cooperative and cautious. He rarely does use the word "nobles") I thought this was a fine act of esteem in the natives' regard.
From Puerto Ayacucho we departed for an encounter with the tribes who still dwell in the rain forest. It is believed that the more impenetrable stretches of forest continue to conceal tribes which have never set eyes on white men. Our intention was to travel through this inhospitable, and for Europeans, unsuitable climate in the same way as the Indians, using their traditional means of transport, the "curiara", a boat made from a tree trunk which has been dug out by fire. Wherever boats were impracticable, we would go on foot with rucksacks on our backs, machetes in hands and heavy boots to protect us from snakes. We would drink river water and sleep in hammocks under the shelter of mosquito nets, which are indispensable in the forest.
On our first day, the river broadened and split into several, equally wide branches. The banks were covered with dense foliage which tumbled down to the water. We were in the midst of an endless procession
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