2013 South American Saunters
February 2013
Wilman
stops, listens intently, glances up towards the treetops, waits a few seconds,
and then slowly continues on along the barely visible jungle trail. He repeats
this routine every few minutes as we amble down one of the numerous trails
around the Caquiahuara eco-lodge in Tacana land, Madidi National Park, Bolivia,
South America, Earth. After four or five silent pauses, he suddenly urges
us to quickly come forward and look up at the distant tree branches… there we
spot a Howler Monkey 100 feet above, almost invisible to the naked eye.
Wilman’s finely tuned vision grasps any movement in these jungle trees and
quickly directs us city folks toward a whole array of Amazon birds, plants, and
animals. I could spend weeks out here studying trees, plants, wildlife,
listening to this brother’s knowledge of his land. It feels like I’ve been here
before, like I’m re-living something from a past not so long ago.
We’ve spent three days wandering up the
Beni and Tuichi Rivers and along various trails within the territory of the
Tacana people, some of which is now within the boundary of Bolivia’s Madidi
National Park, arguably the most bio-diverse national park anywhere on the
planet. This Amazon heat is a bit stifling at times, but welcome after the
frigid temperatures and sorocho headaches of La Paz, Oruro, and the
Altiplano altitudes. A couple of our new Bolivian amigas who work with
the communities in and around the park had sent us to visit the folks of San
Miguel del Bala, where a 100% Indigenous owned and operated “eco-lodge” sits in
the Bolivian Amazon basin. I am quite intrigued by the idea of a government, a
national park, working with Native communities to preserve the land, the
water, the culture, rather than representing the beginning of the end of yet
another Indian village, as many “national” parks actually do (who did they take
the land from to create “our” parks?) Quite a change from business as usual. A
sign of something fundamentally changing, something coming full circle.
Perhaps.
Damage has been done, of course. It seems that Spanish and not Tacana is the
primary language here. Western clothes and junk food have made their way into
San Miguel. A bit disheartening, but it is clear that most people here are
living on their terms, using the park and the conservation movement to their
benefit in perhaps a model-for-the-world Indigenous run business. One senses a
stability, maybe; a calm here, at least, in the midst of the continued 21st century assault upon Native land and Native peoples.
The constant hum of the jungle is hypnotizing. Birds of a thousand sorts
whistle and sing, insects buzz as evening approaches, wild pigs grunt, a
distant monkey howls, enormous frogs croak in the nearby swamp, wind and rain
echo in the trees – all amidst our super amable hosts’ constant laughter
and joking across the small compound that makes up the lodge area. I am quickly
enthralled by the noises of this place. It is my first Amazon experience, and
not something I shall soon forget. In two short 2-hour hikes with Wilman, I
have learned more than in two years of science classes. His knowledge of the forest
is as deep as the constant hum of life here. Every twenty or thirty meters he
would stop and a explain a new plant or tree and its medicinal or practical use
– Uña de Gato, Ebanta, Sangre de Toro, Papaya, Iridia, Mata Palo, Nui, Wembé
root, Clave de Olor, Arbol del Ajo, Miti root, the delicious raw Cacao, the
deadly Ocho’o tree, and the gargantuan grandpa Mapajo tree, the king of this
forest.
His impromptu ecology lessons got me thinking. The knowledge held within these
places is far beyond invaluable. It is vital to our very survival. Something
tells me that whether or not those of us with city-hazed vision see this
clearly or not has no effect whatsoever on the profoundness of its truth. Get
back to me in fifty years or so if you doubt this. Yet even today, those of
“civilization” would destroy this knowledge; these places; these people. Dams,
mining, logging, neo-colonization, “development”, “westernization”… they all
continue to bring both spiritual and physical ills just about everywhere they
touch. I’ve come to believe that there is a sickness inherent to industrial
civilization, and more industrial civilization will certainly never cure it. I
remember reading how native people would exclaim that white people had
"sick minds" and “sick hearts”, an illness that seemingly made them
do all those awful, awful things in the pursuit of material wealth and cultural
domination. I think I finally understand what they meant. It is indeed a mental
and spiritual illness that allows humans to plunder the Earth. Today, we
continue to deny this unending 500-year old war against the Earth and all of
those communities that still defend the Earth at our peril. Call it whatever -ism
you will, but methinks this war is and has always been against the Earth.
But you know what else I feel like I’m beginning to understand sauntering
through all these forests? Maybe these late pleas to “save the Earth” from
those of us inside the belly of the Empire hardly matter, and have even started
to seem arrogant themselves. Some people have been issuing these urgent warning
for centuries. The Empire’s refusal to heed them is its own damn fault. Some
people have been waiting for this shift in consciousness for centuries. Our
late arrival to this consciousness is our own damn fault. So, other than the
inherent sadness of a mother watching some of her children go very
astray, perhaps Earth does not really care if we don’t listen to her. For we are not the
center of the universe; there is much more at play here than our own little
realities. Probably within our lifetimes those who refused to heed her warnings
(and many who did but are stuck in the jaws of civilization) are doomed to
every sort of tragic ending imaginable. We are already seeing it, are we not?
After witnessing the weakened fringes of a hurricane knock out the city of New
York for a week, my advice to those of us living in coastal concrete jungles is
simple: move now! Mother Earth has a way of cleansing. Today, modern
civilization more resembles suicide than “progress”.
But back in San Miguel, deep in the jungle, far from civilization, our hosts
are still smiling and joking. It’s ironic that city pharmacies and hospitals
are hardly even needed – the ills of the city have not completely taken over.
Here, at your doorstep, are all the cures for all the curable ills. In a few
hours out on the trail, our humble guide showed us no less than a dozen cures
for a dozen different sicknesses. Laughing, he tells us how horribly it hurts
to be bitten by these huge jungle ants! But one dose of the right medicine and
24 hours later all is well. Out here, away from all the –isms - capitalism,
socialism, communism, fascism, -ism, -ism, -ism - they don’t try to sell any of
this, they don’t advertise it to the world. 500 years later they just live,
they just survive, they just laugh (very soon I will expand upon this theme of
laughter).
One thing perhaps The Bible did get
correct was that the meek shall inherit the Earth. Because it seems that once
we give ourselves to industrial technology and to the inherent neurosis of it,
many of our ills become incurable. It’s striking how those non-meek among us
seem utterly unable to manage even the smallest inconveniences in any sort of
healthy, happy way. In our “civilized” concrete jungles, we spend our lives
seeking and inventing temporary cures for permanent ills. But out here in the
“wild” jungle, many of those ills still do not exist, and the humble people
residing in these places have survived for centuries with less than most of us
can even fathom. Who do you suppose will be just fine when all the power goes
out for good?
At the end of our trip, after sailing through a fierce tropical rainstorm up
the river (“Ooo, va a thlegar una thluvia!” exclaims Wilman with his
wonderful Bolivian accent), we dock and unload back in the little port town of
Rurrenabaque. Wilman comments that he cannot spend more than a few hours in
even the smallest “civilized” town – he begins to feel ill, the smell is bad,
the air is dirty, the water impure, he simply wants to return to the jungle, to
return home. He has no interest in the things of the city. Whether or not we
learn to identify the true cause of it, to quote the book by Jerry Mander, ‘in
the absence of the sacred’, of the Earth, we all begin to feel ill; our minds
begin to feel sick. I believe many of us feel this sickness – something is just
wrong – but we remain unable to
identify the cause. Maybe we’re all seeking the sacred, the “Great Mystery”, as
it is often called by the First Nations. That magic and mystery present in all
so-called wild places. That which industrial civilization has vainly attempted
to scientifically explain, quantify, objectify, control, dominate.
But some of us do wander far and wide (internally and externally) in search of
this esoteric essence. Out on these Bolivian jungle hikes this week, Wilman
leads us curious foreigners back to a fine example of the sacred, of the
mystery: the king of this region of the Amazon Basin, the aforementioned giant
Mapajo tree, ceremonial center of the Tacana elders. Mapajos grow in isolation,
one every few kilometers. The first time we sauntered up to this majestic tree
my first comment to our guide was, “Wow, aquí está el Abuelo.” He
laughed and replied, “Sí, aquí está.” He is grand, this South American
grandpa of the forest. Roots spread out thick, several meters in every
direction, sort of like a giant Cypress, soaking up all the moisture of the wet
ground. Giant crevices form at the base, large enough to hold five or six
people inside. And then up, up, up he soars, perhaps 50-60 meters. Few other
jungle trees I saw come close to his size, and his mystery. After months among the Giant Sequoias of California, I am
impressed.
Wilman explains that in Winter a red flower usually blossoms, a sacred sign for
the elders, who still come to the giant trees to perform their ancient
ceremonies honoring Chibute - the Spirit of the Trees. If the flower
does not appear, it is a very bad sign meaning that the year will not be
fruitful or prosperous, leading some elders to refuse to even try to farm
because they already know the outcome! Grandpa Mapajo seems like a slightly
smaller cousin of Sequoia. And this is indeed why I came to the Amazon… to meet
these grand trees, to simply stand in awe for a moment in the face of this
mystery, and to remind myself of, quoting brother Martin Luther King, “the
fierce urgency of now.”
We must defend these places,
and these people. Some days I feel like this
is indeed the final battle; that we are indeed in an era that was spoken of
long, long ago. Another century of exploitation and destruction of the Earth
will not pass, because it will likely be the end of us, the “civilized”,
this time, and the assault upon the Earth will end. Though not as we
arrogantly presumed it would: with Earth destroyed and those who disgraced her
somehow lingering on in some violent Mad Max fantasy world. I would wager that
this scenario will never come to pass. It is indeed the simple, the humble,
“the meek”, who shall inherit the Earth, once again. And Earth shall blossom,
once again. As some of us wanderers have learned, this was prophesized long,
long ago, after all.
As children of the Empire, maybe the completion of another old prophecy is our
only task: that we will finally turn to the First Nations for guidance; that we
will reject the Empire from whence we came; that we will seek out hermanos
like Wilman; that we will seek to understand the essence of abuelos like
Mapajo; that we will once again stand in awe of the Great Mystery… and that,
amidst of all of this, we will remember how to laugh and live like we really mean
it. Maybe this is indeed our only task today. Maybe this is the true
(r)evolution that so many of us wish would take place. Imagine what might
happen if we actually started to live with the respect and humility inherent in
such a worldview! Some communities have been saying this day would come. It was
prophesized long, long ago, after all.
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