This is one way the rainforest is being destroyed in Loreto, Perú: not with fire, not with bulldozers, not a clear-cut but a crude swath, pushing through the jungle with nothing but chainsaws, gravity and the bone-crunching labor of its campesinos.
***
As my first trip with Project Amazonas drew to a close, I had a free day. The day before I had met Abraham Guevara, the president of the villages we visited. We talked extensively about the various challenges facing the people of the region: the drought, the depredation of resources, and the government’s refusal to help in any meaningful way. We made plans for Friday to go up the Mazán river and see some of the devastation created by the madareros (loggers).
Abraham is a short, silver-haired man who wears a tattered dress shirt and trousers and is always carrying his sandals rather than wearing them. He walks quickly, purposefully, his back erect. From the shade under his hat, you see his eyes squint and peer out, his chiseled features betraying an extra dose of Old World blood. Father Abraham has seven offspring: Isaac, Esau, Jacob, Rachel, Caleb, Moses and Abraham Junior.
After the distribution of mosquito nets, he invited me to come speak with him in the shade of his open-air house, littered about with children’s toys and daily utensils. We made minute-long video recordings of him talking about Project Amazonas, the pains of this extraordinary dry season, waterborne and insectborne illnesses.
“Have you ever had malaria?” I asked him.
“I’ve had it five times,” he said. “But that’s because I take care of myself. Most people here have had it ten, fifteen, maybe twenty times. I take care of myself. For example, I boil my water. Most people just drink it straight from the river.”
Abraham insists that all levels of Peruvian government, from district to region and nation, have no interest in the suffering of his people. Not only that, but local people are not receiving their share of the wealth that Perú and its business partners are harvesting from the jungle's resources: mainly lumber, gold and petroleum.
I started to understand why Abraham’s politics are so sharpened when I learned that he’s from Bagua, a town in western Peru’s higher jungle, a notorious battleground between police and indigenous protestors in the summer of 2009. It fits the man. Ask him a simple question about his area, then try to ingest the impassioned analysis that flows rapidly, confidently and earnestly from his mouth, and you’ll know that he must have grown up in a tradition of radicalism.
We got a late start on Friday. Boats, fuel, trips, miscalculations, overlooked obligations, etc. Finally Abraham, Alex and another man showed up at the field station. I got my things we hiked to the casita by the river where we moor out pecky-pecky boats. I looked down in the water: no boat.
“We’re going to walk,” Abraham said.
“How long will it take?”
“Twenty minutes,” he said.
***
For the next hour we are hiking in single file.Like I care how long it'll take us. I came to Perú, to Iquitos, to Mazán for stuff like this. And there's nothing for me to do at that field station but try to read, try to nap, and, in frustration, try to enjoy a beer, but at every turn be thwarted by the stifling heat.
Abraham and I periodically to pick each other’s brains about life in Loreto, life in America. Like other locals men I've talked to here, Abraham simply cannot or will not slow down his Spanish (which is more elegant than most) to a point where I can more easily understand it. He talks fast or he doesn't talk at all. I have to be in front of him or run up and lean over his shoulder to get the gist of what he’s saying. Eventually this tires both of us and we talk sparingly. Alex and our other companion are silent, occasionally mumbling three or four-word quips to one another that I’m hopeless to comprehend.
We come to another house in the woods, an open-air wooden casita like all the rest. A woman lays in hammock, an infant held up to her disproportionately, massively swollen breast. She squints at me, or grimaces, or stares blankly. Children, playing in the dirt, look at me and freeze. The only one not paying too much attention is the man, a boy really, younger than his wife, in his early twenties, hacking away at something with a machete.
Abraham tells him what we’re doing, asks him to accompany us. Without looking at me the boy literally drops what he’s doing and we follow his bare, dusty feet into the woods. Behind me, Alex coughs and hacks phlegm. Hacking is as acceptable here as whistling outside. I hear that nasty sound everywhere: here, in the street, in every public bathroom, even in the lobby of my building when I'm waking up in the morning. I catch myself holding my breath whenever Alex gets going with his cough. I am going to catch that, I said to myself. And once again, my gringo paranoia proves warranted: immediately after I return from the jungle I’m sick. I cough up tons of phlegm, I jerk awake at night trying to expel butterflies from my throat. For several days my voice is a rasp, absolutely pathetic....
Finally we come to a kind of clearing, a path that at places is 20, at places is 40 feet wide, which winds around corners in both directions. It is not so much an old, beaten trail; here and there is fresh vegetation, chopped or crumpled or knocked over. Paths like these are created by madereros. After felling massive tumalu trees, they size down the trunks to about 15, 20 feet. Using these logs or other means, they push and cut a trail through the surrounding jungle. Two parallel lines of long skinny trunks are laid out like a railway. Then workers roll the logs along the rails until they reach a creek bed, which, this time of year, will be dry. The logs will be stored there until the creek floods and carries them to the river, which in turn carries them to Mazán, where they will be sold.
As we walk up the trail we see a man and some boys resting on a trunk, the width of which is waist-high. They are quiet, enjoying a break, appearing unthreatened by our presence. Abraham asks them to give us a demonstration, if they’re ready. They go to their places behind the log and start pushing. One of the boys climbs over the log to get it unjammed--"Cuidate, hijo!" Abraham shouts--the trunk starts rolling and he jumps back to the other side. It could easy roll over him. Alex and another boy wedge thick sticks under the trunk to ensure it moves along from rail to rail. After a complete roll or two, the trunk starts to gain momentum, and the pack chases it down the rail. No one is wearing shoes.
“Ten Soles a day?” I confirmed with Abraham.
“Yeah."
“And the kids? Do the kids get paid?”
“No. They are usually with their parents. They say, the parents are getting paid, so why do the kids need to?”
Ten Soles comes out roughly to a little less than four US dollars. It’s pretty normal for manual labor in this part of the country. To put it in a daily living perspective, ten Soles is the price of one quarter chicken with a side of french fries in most pollerías in Iquitos.
We walk over a cue of trunks all waiting to be rolled down the trail. At the top of a hill is a gyrating contraption with four pillars sticking outward. Men push these pillars around to drag logs up the hill. I realize it’s the same kind of machine Werner Herzog used to drag the boat up the mountain while making Fitzcarraldo.
Up the next hill we come across some kind of overseer. He amiable, more mestizo, more completely dressed. Abraham asks him a few questions and I record but do not understand his answers. The impression I get is that the abuses that happen are out of his control, that he pays someone who pays these workers. At the very top of the pyramid, far above him, people sell these log for $2,500 a pop.
So is this illegal? Well, it depends on who you ask. The Ecological Police here have a reputation for being very ineffective: some say because of laziness, some say for corruption. I've heard from others that the entire department consists of two people and they never leave Iquitos. Every time someone wants to cut down wood in Loreto, they're required to have a permit. In fact, there's this fabulous law in Perú which states that you're supposed to be able to trace every log with GPS back to the very spot it came from. Take a boat down the Mazán river, see the hundreds of yards of logs floating by the pier, and you'll get a good laugh out that little bit of magical thinking. GPS, that's rich. If you should be able to get a permit for the land you'd like to decimate, it still costs money. So most loggers get one permit and use it over and over again, on whatever land they happen upon, because all they have to do it show to the Ecological Police--if they actually show up--and they'll be sent on their way.
“It’s a Mexican-Peruvian arrangement,” Abraham told me earlier. “They sell this wood to Mexican companies who sell it to the United States, who are forbidden by law from buying it themselves. The companies are owned by narcotraffikers, who use these businesses to launder their money."
***
My guides decide that we’re going to cut a crosscountry trail back home, straight through bush. I wave my hat in front of me to destroy spiderwebs. Three times I almost have an accident. Once, while shuffling down a hill, I grab onto a massive vine for balance. The vine is hanging from a hundred-foot tall tree, with a powerful crack it snaps--bloody dry season!--breaks into four or five large heavy pieces that rain down on us but fortunately no one is hurt. Twice, we are crossing a little gorge, and while I’m walking across the designated log bridge, it cracks and snaps and gives way under my feet and it’s only jumpy adrenaline reflexes that keep me from breaking my leg.
At one point we part ways with our other two guides and Alex, Abraham and I continue on. Soon the woods clear and we have arrived at an isolated piece of property.
“Where are the owners?” I ask Abraham.
“I’m the owner.”
A big chakra, two casitas, one with rounded walls and artwork, a towering guimba tree filled with weaverbirds like the ones at our station. We take a seat in the shade and eat some sweet plantains. At my feet are chickens and a bag of ayahuasca sticks. I’m out of water and glistening with sweat. “You ready to go?” he asks me. “Yes...no, wait just a minute.” And we sit to enjoy another two minutes of shade, breeze, those sweet moments of relief from the heat that remind me of growing up in the South, hiking in the summer, cross-country practice.
On the last stretch of the hike, we come across a massive tree. Its trunk has to be between 20 and 30 feet around. I can’t see it’s crown through the canopy. “This tree is a little older than Project Amazonas,” Abraham says and Alex and I laugh.
“It’s older than Pizarro.”
“It’s older than Christ.”
When we make it back to the field station, I insist that they drink more than one glass of water before heading home. As dismayed as I am by the hardships and the destruction we've witnessed, I’m grateful that there are still grown men in this world who--for whatever reason: politics, love of nature, boredom--will not hesitate to spend several hours hiking through woods with a new friend.
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