Day 11: Altamira
Okay, you got me, I’m now officially exhausted. Turns out that napping fitfully in the airport lounge between flights doesn’t make up for the fact that Ig ot about an hour of sleep last night. I’m going to have to go to bed right after this if I can, which might be hard because people are straight up partying in this hotel right now.
I really like Altamira! It’s about the same size as SFX but really different. There’s more wealth here, and the riverfront is really gorgeous and well maintained. It’s actually on the same river, so the comparison is apt. Our hosts for this part of the trip are several women as opposed to the men who have been hosting us in SFX, so that changes the vibe quite a bit as well. Despite the different vibe, Altamira is the #2 leading site of deforestation in the province after our friend SFX. So the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Our meetings today seemed really interesting, but I was too tired for my minimal Portuguese to be of much help. Going to have to rely on my translation app tonight. We didn’t really get a chance to interface with the Indigenous communities because the government is currently removing illegal miners and deforesters from their land and they need to be present for that, obviously. But we were able to meet with the TNC staff who are supporting these groups as well as some bigger associations. Really cool stuff. I know so much less about how to support Indigenous peoples than I thought I did going into this. Sure, there’s deforestation and conversion happening on their land, but land seizure is also still very much a reality they have to deal with, as well as developing opportunities to participate in the formal economy.
Despite this, we did get to meet with an Indigenous family whose son runs the association for their tribe in town. We were really late to see them, so the grandmother was extremely mad. I don’t speak Portuguese OR their native language, but I could still tell. So she asked to paint us while we talked which seemed to be a concessional activity. All this to say, I now have an extremely sick graphic tribal tattoo on my forearm that someone’s grandma rage-painted on me. Wobbling back and forth on whether or not to get it permanently tattooed on.
Tomorrow we are going down the river to see the hydroelectric dam they are building on the Xingu river! Back to my roots from the last project I did in the Amazon. I was reading a bit about the dam online and didn’t realize how close we were.
