Beautiful But Savage
Looking at the development problem geographically, the Sea-river is too long, too broad, too gigantic, too forbidding, too unpredictable, too dangerous, too powerful, too inhospitable to yield up the fabulous "El Dorado" hopes of politicians to feed the world. The Amazon Sea-river is a GREEN HELL. That's what the Spaniards called it.
That's what I thought it was, trapped in a twelve-foot launch, forty miles from Iquitos. With rain splattering in my face, I thought of the one-hundred inch annual rainfall which drives most farmers mad. And even though the rainfall reaches two hundred inches a year in some places, the summer is a near drought.
Typically as with tropical storms, the fog cleared around our launch, the rain stopped and the shore appeared! We made the final twenty-five miles to the Maniti Hotel — a stilt-supported, open-walled, grass-covered hut called a malocca — safely and uneventfully. Behind my partition in the exotic malocca, I began jotting down notes in flickering lamplight on the important lessons I was learning.
Learn a Lesson
If you have never personally seen Amazonia — as the Sea-river and its giant basin are called — then perhaps you would accept this lesson on geography from an eyewitness.
First, get the picture in mind. In mind, because the picture will not fit in your eye. The green, flat wilderness stretches for tiring, monotonous hours as your plane wings its way over a seemingly interminable jungle. Amazonia is overpowering. Amazonia is unbelievable!
Then think about that newspaper report touting hundreds of road miles and a few million dollars.
Here is the lesson.
When you hear about optimistic programs of development, take a hard, realistic look at it before you jump on a bandwagon. When you hear of 500 paved road miles in the Amazon wilderness, try not to laugh! You may find it hard not to laugh — especially if you've been in this jungle, or if you have the picture in mind. A road has to go somewhere, and for some purpose. May I remind you there is nowhere to go in Amazonia?
When you hear about hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars, don't be impressed. These figures should read in the hundreds of millions, and in the BILLIONS! Otherwise, neither dollars nor roads will be noticed. They will melt away into this green hell . . . without a trace.
So much for the geographical problem. If everything counts on geography, the Amazon will not be developed in the next 100 years. In fairness, however, to any starry-eyed armchair philosophers, there is more to the story.
The Population Story
Take population for example. Unfortunately, Brazil's population is a real puzzle.
On the one hand, Brazil's famous industrial city, Sao Paulo, is the fastest-growing city on earth. Brazil's national population increase alone threatens to outstrip the entire nation's natural resources. This country's total population, at the present rate, will probably reach two hundred million by the end of the century!
Yet on the other hand, the entire vast region of Amazonia contains barely five million people — most of them crowded into three or four cities, and the rest thinly strung along the Amazon's banks. That leaves two and one-half million square miles (conservatively estimated) to populate.
Now just try to talk a Brazilian into coming here! As Bowen Northrup reports, "Brazilians elsewhere who routinely recite the wonders of the Amazon would be horrified at the prospect of living there" (Wall Street Journal, December 3, 1968).
Naturally, there are already people in Amazonia. They create one of the terrors of jungle life — rude, savage natives who wander through large areas of jungle and savannah. My visit to the Yaguas Indians (tame cousins of wilder groups) proved a valuable but heartrending experience. In some ways cute and childish as Kewpie dolls, the Yaguas are ignorant, degenerate and malnourished. They have also gone to stupefying, mind-dulling drugs. While "hopped up" on some drug, the chief and his warriors beg the tourists for sindi, sindi — cigarettes. Though these harmless savages would not discourage all settlers or colonists, neither could they nor most of their cousins help civilize Amazonia. Most natives (indigenes) are a liability — a financial drain — on the government.
Attempting to solve the problem, the government of Brazil is offering land to people who will go deep into Amazonia. So far three fantastically remote wilderness areas with exotic-sounding names — Amapa., Rondonia and Roraima — have been "colonized" by the government Ministry of Interior. These three areas have a combined total of 247,000 colonists (government estimate) clustered in a total area of 613,424 km2 — sparse settlements at best.
These "colonists" are very hard to come by; they are still too few to conquer the jungle. Millions more are needed. Where will the needed myriads and millions come from? Will the Brazilian government force its teeming population into the green outback? Suppose then the green hell is penetrated by forced labor, or forced colonization. How will the colonizers survive against vast distance, unmapped wilderness, stifling heat, hostile jungle, cruel loneliness, deadly diseases, destructive rains, destroying insects, savage Indians, lack of food, lack of a chance for economic success? If excess population moved into this lost world right now, without superhuman help, chances are they would not survive. Amazonia would win again.
Conclusion
Possibly those problems could be solved if enough money were spent. How much would it take? No one knows. We do know it won't be done in this century, as the Personal Advisor to Brazil's Minister of the Interior, Mr. Jose Wady Abuyaghi, told me in a personal interview. He said, speaking of developing Amazonia, "We cannot accomplish much without significant (he meant "massive") foreign aid." Such foreign aid would have to mount into BILLIONS to make a dent in this dense green carpet of death. No countries have yet offered Brazil these said billions.
So Amazonia will not be opened soon. The Sea-river and its sprawling basin is not feeding the starving millions of Brazil, much less the starving hundreds of millions of the world. And it will not feed the world's starving if everything counts on communications, or counts on geography, or counts on population. Amazonia cannot be cultivated without someone "conquering" the geography, without more transportation, without an increased and able population. Those three factors are crucial factors.
However, not everything counts on those three. Science and agriculture are out to hurdle these "barriers."
New and potent insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and vermicides, new giant pieces of earth-moving equipment, new and marvelous fertilizers and soil additives. "The Amazon will yet feed the world.". . . or so we hear.
What are the real facts behind these glowing and optimistic slogans of science? What are the real soil conditions? What are the chances of significant agriculture advances in Amazonia? Will promised advances come in time? Can food be produced in Brazil before the famine scientists say will come in 1975 does strike?
These questions will all be answered in the April PLAIN TRUTH — The Amazing Amazon — Will Amazonia feed the World?
Don't miss it!