Guardians of biodiversity
By Diego Cortijo
The jungle is a place too inhospitable to allow large human settlements, or that’s what we have always believed until now. New archaeological discoveries tell of highly developed cultures that have lived in the heart of the jungle. The myths of ancient cultures and places lost deep in the jungle may no longer be myths in light of these new discoveries.
With this proposal I began my second expedition to the Amazon rainforest as a member of the Spanish Geographic Society, to try to learn about and document unknown places in the jungle. Members of native communities I visited in the past had spoken to me about ancient settlements, and now I wanted to locate them.
This was a grueling expedition that began in Brazil and ended up in the Peruvian Amazon. We came across undiscovered archaeological sites that were mystical to the native communities who were their unofficial caretakers, and isolated tribes that received me as a total stranger, but always with a smile. I tried to document their traditions and legends so that they wouldn’t be lost forever with the passing of time.
But through all this, I never imagined that a simple pause in the jungle to visit our good friend Nicolas Flores would initiate a global media frenzy. The good-natured Nicolas, who is a native Matsiguenka Indian we all call by his nickname Shaco, invited us to his humble straw-roofed cabin where he lived alone. He took us downriver the second day to a neighboring community from where we could roam the area. Always in good spirits, he described how his life was so far from everything, far even from his own people.
On the second day in the community, Shaco heard a noise, as if he had been summoned. We left the hut and walked to the river’s edge, and there on the opposite bank of the great Alto Madre de Dios River was a group of natives that Nicolas immediately recognized as from the “Mashco-Piro” tribe. I had heard of their existence as an ‘uncontacted’ tribe that live totally isolated. They had been spotted only a few times by other natives of nearby communities. In fact, Shaco had experienced contact with them previously when tending to his crops on their other side of the river. The Mashco-Piro are in a delicate situation. The activities of lumber and oil companies that encroach illegally on these territories has displaced them. Shaco knew that this wasn’t the first time they had appeared on the river bank. The besiegement that they were suffering made their attitude towards strangers unpredictable.
Riches above, wealth below
I’ve visited different parts of Ecuador’s Amazon jungle many times both as a photographer and as a tourist. I even covered a border war there and always found the jungle to be beautiful, in all situations. But nothing ever impressed me as much as a recent tour of the Yasuni National Park, home of the Waorani people and arguably one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth.
Apart from containing more species of trees than in all of North America, the Yasuni also contains some 20 percent of Ecuador’s oil reserves. For that reason it is also the focus of a novel initiative that the current government has launched to the world: In exchange for not drilling for crude in a 200,000-hectare area of Yasuni National Park, the government is asking wealthy nations, foundations and individuals to give it $3.6 billion. The proposal to the international community is to replace some of the income that Ecuador will not receive by keeping the petroleum underground, and prevent the contamination that comes from exploration, production, and consumption.
They’ve given potential partners until 2024 to pay up, or watch the Yasuni’s oil being exploited. Last September, Chile became the first contributor with $100,000. There are other offers from France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Norway.
Just to reach Tiputini I had to take a 40-minute flight to Coca, travel two hours by boat to Pompeya, 90 minutes by bus to the Tiputini River, and then another four hour boat ride to the Tiputini Biodiversity Station.
-
Resident Photographers Blog Expert
-
The Wall
Such a unique creation of our nature these tribals deserves our respect and reverence. In india they are showcased , exploited and subjugated by a handful few of so called social workers!!!……….
And the westerners instead of understanding the essence of these tribals unwittingly aid these social workers who inturn decimate tribal culture. This article is a wonderful piece of narration and we need a solid protocol while dealing with tribals.