[00:00:03] Speaker A: This episode is supported by Cool Earth, a charity that gives cash and data directly to indigenous communities to protect rainforests and fight the climate crisis. Learn
[email protected] or click the link in the episode's description.
Before we begin, I want to be direct with you about the content of this episode.
This story covers violence against indigenous and tribal people and environmental defenders. You will hear accounts of people who have lost colleagues and loved ones defending their land, and from people who continue to do so at personal risk.
If you need to step away at any point, please do. This story will be here when you are ready to return.
Around 2000, two men arrived and Cesar Carrasco's village in the Peruvian Amazon. Saying they were papaya farmers looking to rent land.
Cesar and his father turned them away, but his brother and a few others in the village said yes and the men moved in.
They came with a lot of money and threw big parties and slowly worked their way into the community.
They stayed for years, and when the community finally pieced together that cocaine was being grown under the guise of a papaya plantation, Cesar and the community tried to evict the men.
When the police came, the group disappeared north, taking Cesar's 13 year old niece with them.
She had her first child when she was around 15.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: They took one of my niece and she was 13 years old and they took her to the north when they left. So that's why I seen Papa Nevermore.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: That's what pressure looks like in the Amazon.
Not always a bulldozer or a gunman, but disguised as gifts. And by the time you realize what's truly happening, you've already lost something you can't get back.
Welcome to Part six of Rebounding Amazonia. I'm Brooke Mitchell.
Let's go to the Amazonian frontlines.
To understand what's at stake in this episode. I want to start in the Colombian Amazon, in a region Daniel Aristizable knows. And Daniel is the Piasi Process Director at the Amazon Conservation Team and PIASI stands for Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact, and he is also the General Secretary of GTI piasi, an international working group dedicated to protecting the communities that have chosen to disappear into the forest. He explained something to me early in our conversation that is important to establish here because it's one of the most misunderstood aspects of his work.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: All of these people decided to flee and escape deep into the forest because there was contact.
So these are groups, families, clans that decide to flee into the forest, deep into the forest and reject all contact with the outside world. And their decision here is interesting because it's the ultimate decision of self determination.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: They are not uncontacted peoples and a term that implies they've been sheltered from the world by distance or luck. They are people who experienced the world, understood what it was offering them, and chose isolation instead.
That distinction matters because it means their continued isolation is not an accident to be managed, it's a decision to be honored.
Daniel described the decision in a way I immediately understood.
[00:03:36] Speaker C: Think of COVID right?
I think it was less than 1% of the world's population that perished, but it stopped the world. We went into isolation, right? We went into quarantine, cities stopped, the economy crashed, you know, everything happened, governments fell, etc.
Well, the impact of these diseases for these groups were so big that they went into permanent quarantine. So we went into quarantine for six months, a year, two months. They went into quarantine for hundreds of years.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Hundreds of years of quarantine, and the communities that choose it are running out of space.
According to GTI Piassi, 60 groups of indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact have been formally confirmed across South America, with 128 yet to be confirmed by their governments.
Most of their populations are small and fragmented, with no demographic rescue possible from neighboring groups. If something goes wrong, and something is increasingly likely to go wrong.
A peer reviewed analysis of mining requests submitted to Brazil's National Mining agency found that 97% of all requests are concentrated in the lands of just 21 isolated groups. Meaning the people who chose 500 years of quarantine are now sitting on top of the most coveted mineral deposits on the continent.
And yet the solution turns out to be rather straightforward, even if it runs against the instincts of the governments that have tried to implement it.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: For indigenous people in isolation, all you need to do is guarantee territory that is free of threats.
Once you do that, they have livelihoods, they have health, they have access to culture, they have the right to life. So in this sense, it's kind of easier than anything else. Nevertheless, this is quite controversial because it flips the general recipe of development and rights and conservation on its head. It's because you have to accept no knowledge of the group to grant its rights. The best way forward is not to go there and not to know.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Not to go there and not to know.
In Brazil, it took until 1987 for the people causing the most harm to finally recognize the damage they were doing.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: Many of these certainistas, these professional forest contactors, met and proclaimed the declaration. They all said, listen, what we've been doing for the last decades has caused death in the indigenous people that we claim to protect. We should do the opposite. It's just let them be and use all our skills and all our knowledge of the forest that we've learned and our relations with the indigenous people that we have that have contact to protect what's left.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: The moment these professionals stood up and said, what we have been doing is killing people created the policy opening that Daniel and his colleagues have been working through ever since.
In Colombia, that work resulted in a national policy enacted in 2018 after five years of consultation with indigenous communities across the entire Amazon and created something genuinely unusual.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Something interesting of this system is that, for example, there's a commission, a national commission that makes decisions on how to protect. And the commission is 50% indigenous, 50% government.
So there's not one superior power over the other.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: This was a huge policy win. But the threats on the ground are outpacing the protections.
[00:06:59] Speaker C: The demand for gold on uncertain times, luxury jewels and all that in Europe and the us, India and China is driving a lot of illegal mining in the forest. This illegal mining has been married to drug trafficking and armed groups.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: It's not just gold. Daniel pointed to something more troubling still. The minerals the world is counting on to power. The green transition.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: The world is moving towards the so called green transition or the green materials or the electricity, the electric.
For this you need a lot of rare soils, specific strategic minerals, what have been known as transition minerals, like nickel and coltan, gold and others.
And indigenous people in the Amazon and around the world have been raising their voices saying, listen, a lot of these transitional minerals for the green economy are devastating our territories. So they're not so green after all.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Daniel brought that argument directly to COP30 and Belem and came away with something concrete.
[00:08:05] Speaker C: There was an article agreed by all countries saying that the just transition should respect the rights of indigenous people, including those in isolation, and that those territories of people in isolation should be restricted from the mining or the extraction of these minerals.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: It's a significant win. But Daniel was careful not to let it land as a triumph without context because the ground has been shifting in a different direction. At the same time, we celebrate when
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Nepalism is enacted as a triumph. But what we're seeing now is that there's actually even a attacks on the policy itself, legislative attacks, saying, these policies, these national laws that protect isolated peoples, these are just inventions of the left, these are just myths of the forest. We need to get rid of these laws because the forest is ours and is a resource of development. And basically, five naked indigenous persons in the forest are just a burden for the development of our nation.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Five naked indigenous persons in the forest, that's the argument being made in parliaments right now. And the people making it are not on the fringe. They're winning elections.
What Daniel described from the policy world, Cristina Volmar Borelli has been mapping from the outside of a country she can no longer enter safely, documenting not just what the destruction looks like, but who ordered it.
If you recall from episode four, Cristina is the founder of SOS Orinoco and a Venezuelan conservationist who has spen seven years documenting illegal mining across her country while in exile.
What her team uncovered goes beyond monitoring. It's a portrait of what happens when a government doesn't just fail to protect its people, but becomes the engine of its country's destruction.
[00:09:55] Speaker D: People on the ground say, well, you know, it's not just Canaima. You should go check out Yapacana National Park. You should see what's going on in the headwaters of the Orinoco and so forth. And what we realized was that it's a mining policy.
This wasn't by accident. And this is a mining policy that was designed and implemented by the Maduro regime.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: To understand how that policy came about, you have to understand what the regiment
[00:10:22] Speaker D: was facing as Chavez and then Maduro realized that the oil industry was no longer producing the 3 million barrels of oil that it used to produce. They had fired the top 20,000 employees of the oil industry. And so the oil industry was basically imploding.
Desperate for fresh funds, they said, well, why don't we turn to southern Venezuela, which is full of minerals. This is an area, so it's 500,000 square kilometers, 80% of which is protected. And throughout the 20th century, Venezuela was like the beacon of conservation. American, European, Canadian academics used to go to Venezuela to do their field work because it was such a protected and
[00:11:15] Speaker A: pristine region, a beacon of conservation open to indiscriminate extraction.
[00:11:21] Speaker D: Almost overnight, they illegally decree a huge swath of this area, 12% of the national territory. It's bigger than Portugal, and they open it to indiscriminate mining. No previous consultation with indigenous people, no consideration for the environmental laws. They also invite companies to come and bid for concessions. Canadians, Russians, Chinese, Iranians. I mean, they came from all over the African. And when these companies went to take control of their concessions, they realized that all of these concessions, these mining concessions, had been previously occupied by armed criminal groups. None of these companies ever took control of their concessions.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: So the regiment adapted. If the criminal groups were already there, already running the territory, the pragmatic move was to become the financial architecture around them and take a cut of everything.
[00:12:27] Speaker D: Civil and military authorities make money by selling access to the protected areas of the mines. The military have a monopoly over fuel, all the fuel that is required for these mines. They control the fuel, they make money off of it, selling of that fuel.
Most of these mines use mercury, which is illegal in Venezuela. The armed forces swuggles in mercury, and they sell the mercury to the miners. So they also make money off of that. And then lastly, they make money off of the gold. I mean, everybody has to pay.
Miners have to submit part of their their gold to the owners of the mine and to the civil and military authorities who allow the mining to happen. So they're making money off of the whole supply chain.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: What the regiment bill operates with complete impunity. There is no rule of law, no labor protections, and no oversight of any kind.
[00:13:31] Speaker D: It's all controlled by these armed criminal groups that have no respect for labor laws, human rights. They use children and young adolescents to go into these mines. And obviously there are women, prostitution.
Every crime under the sun is basically occurring in this area.
And all of this is happening under the gaze of the civilian and military authorities. They know exactly what's going on.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: And the communities caught in the middle of it had nothing to do with building any of this.
[00:14:09] Speaker D: Most of these indigenous communities have never been involved in mining. You mentioned the iguana. I mean, they have some of the most amazing basketry on the planet. The sophistication of the weaving and the artisanry and everything.
And once the oil stopped flowing and the money stopped flowing, the indigenous communities have been left unassisted, penniless, no education, no medical help, no work.
And their only option, in many cases is to go to the mines.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: And the mines offer a promise that turns out to be a trap.
[00:14:53] Speaker D: Nobody who goes to the mines becomes rich. Let's face it. You mine, you find a little bit of gold, you have to share that gold with the owner of the mine. You have to pay.
Everything in southern Venezuela you pay for in gold. Milk, gas, rice, food. You go on TikTok and you see these little supermarkets in these mining towns, and you see these. These videos of little weight things that people weigh.
So, you know, like milk is x amount of grams and so forth. Basically, whatever you find in the mine, you have to turn it over either to the owner of the mine or to pay for your livelihood.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: That economic Trap is tearing communities apart from the inside, not just financially, but along every fault line they have.
[00:15:44] Speaker D: It is tearing them apart first and foremost, culturally.
The elders, the women are for the most part anti mining because they know that this is not good for young people, not good for the community. It puts indigenous people in very dangerous situations because of human rights abuses, because of the working conditions, because they're using mercury. We're starting to see the effect of mercury on women and babies and so forth. And it's men and young, young people who think we're going to get rich and we're going to go to the mine. So that's driving a huge wedge.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: And that wedge reaches all the way into indigenous leadership.
[00:16:31] Speaker D: A lot of the indigenous leaders have been co opted by local authorities and saying if you allow us into your territory to do mining, you'll get a cut of the profits. And so you're seeing a wedge between these corrupt indigenous leaders and the rest of the community who realize that, you know, this is a scam because people have been going to the mines, they're no longer doing the basketry. There are a few Yecuana leaders who are trying to, you know, maintain that knowledge because it's, it's not written or anything. You know, you pass it on from one generation to another is the danger of losing that tradition.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: The communities that push back face something worse than economic pressure. When Christina's team used satellite imagery to expose an illegal road built from Brazil across an international border into Venezuelan indigenous territory, a road that required both indigenous leaders and military authorities to look the other way, the response was immediate.
[00:17:38] Speaker D: The indigenous leader who partnered with the Brazilian garimpeiro and allowed this to happen, he was so furious that he started threatening indigenous women in the community that had opposed this and accused them of basically snitching to us.
That is an example of how they retaliate, how they treat people who come out and denounce illegal activity.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Cristina's team operates anonymously, using code names and encrypted communications with no public identities for anyone inside Venezuela.
[00:18:20] Speaker D: Everybody in Venezuela is anonymous. They have code names.
They have to be very, very careful with their social media, with their phones, with their computers, etc. There are indigenous people, there are people living in communities who, you know, post information, who send information. They say, you know, there's a, there's a dredge or there are five new dredges on the river. We've become very good and very efficient at doing a very systematic search on information that's out there.
Open source intelligence with that knowledge and whatever information we're able to get from witnesses, from social media, from satellite images, you can deduct a lot.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Seven years of that work from outside a country she cannot go home to.
And still Cristina holds onto something real.
[00:19:17] Speaker D: Venezuela's always looking north because we were selling oil to the north. We didn't pitch ourselves as an Amazonian country.
But I am hopeful because Venezuela has, you know, this cadre of very well educated academics, scientists, experts. And so I'm hopeful that we will be able to go back to a Venezuela that used to be the beacon of conservation and yeah, respecting nature.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: What Christina has been documenting from satellite feeds and anonymous sources. Hugo Jabini lived from the inside. A man whose people have been fighting for their land not in years, but in centuries.
Hugo Jabini was born in a village called Nu Aurora, deep in the interior of Suriname. His mother taught him to farm, and he walked two hours through the forest every weekend to reach the land.
He grew up, as he puts it, in harmony with nature.
At 11 years old, he had to leave his village to attend secondary school. But came home the moment he could. Because in his heart, he had never really left.
What he found on the road back forever changed the direction of his life.
[00:20:31] Speaker E: I noticed that there were logging activities taking place. We met a woman who was crying. Her farm was.
Was destroyed by bulldozer by foreign companies who get permission from our government to do logging in our territory. And they built a route through our farm. So our peanuts, cassava, or crops were destroyed. And they blocked the creek that we use as our water resources. There where we do our dishes, wash our clothes, wash our skin. But also used for drinking water.
And all these creek were blocked just to build the route for this multinational company.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Nobody had asked her if the foreign logging company could use her land. No government person had asked for permission from anyone in her community.
To understand why that pattern of extraction without consent felt so familiar to Hirjo and his community.
We need to go back in time to trace the Samaca people's history and learn how long they have been fighting this.
[00:21:39] Speaker E: The first Samaka people that moved to the forest was in 1690.
Moved from a plantation and went to the forest. Let's not just go. And then, because the colonizer came behind them with a whole army. So there was war. After 100 years of war, the Samarca maintained to sign a peace treaty with the Dutch colonial government in 1762, where the Dutch declared them to be free people to stay where they are in the forest. So from that moment, the territory is ours.
We are the boss. We could decide.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: A hundred years before the abolition of slavery, the Samaka people already fought their way to freedom and legal recognition of the territory.
They built 74 communities along the Suriname river with their own governance structure, and developed a deeply intertwined relationship with the forest. Farming in rotation, hunting and fishing, and taking only what they needed, then leaving the land to recover.
Today, their territory contains 1.4 million hectares of tropical forest, 83% of which is still pristine.
[00:22:49] Speaker E: We don't destroy the nature. We just use what, take what necessary, what we need, and then leave it intact. If we open a farm, we just use a plant there for two to three years, and then we leave it and get to other spots so that this part can recover again. So after 10 to 20 years, we can go back and open a new farm there. We are the forest. The forest is us.
And there's no difference. We are part of the nature.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Most people outside the Amazon have never heard of Afro descendant communities like the Samaca. And that invisibility, as Hiru Ho would later tell researchers, is part of the problem.
A landmark 2025 study published in Communications Earth and Environment, the first to systematically measure the conservation contributions of Afro descendant communities across Ecuador, Suriname, Brazil and Colombia, found that deforestation rates on their lands are as much as 55% lower than in surrounding areas, and that more than half of those territories rank among the most biodiverse regions on earth. Ryuho contributed to that research himself. And what he told scientists was our land management practices combine traditional African knowledge with the Amazon rainforest. The areas where we have lived have become healthier and sustained entire communities, end quote.
For 300 years, the Samaka had been doing exactly that. And then, in the 1960s, while Suriname was still a Dutch colony, an aluminum company called Alcoa was given permission to build a hydroelectric dam.
One third of Samaca territory was flooded, and 9,000 Samaka people were forced to relocate with no prior consultation, consent or meaningful compensation for what they had lost.
[00:24:43] Speaker E: For us, that was the second big violation after the slavery.
The fact that they stole our ancestors from Africa and then they flooded our territory.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: Then the logging concessions came and the same pattern repeated itself.
The government granting multinational companies access to Samaca territory without consultation, consent, or any form of benefit sharing.
Ryuho organized their communities and filed three formal complaints to the Surinamese president.
No response.
So they took it to the Inter American Commission on human rights. The commission found the case admissible and asked to visit Suriname. But Suriname refused.
[00:25:26] Speaker E: If they refused, that was like A sign like do you have something to hide? And after this refusal, they planned a hearing in Washington. So that was the first time our government was willing to sit on table.
In 2007, the intermediate court decided in our favor. Tsunami violate our rights and they were obliged to demarcate our territory, grant us the collective ownership and for major development project that will affect our lives.
FPIC is required free prior informed consent and also environmental assessment.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Seven years of legal work later they had a landmark ruling. The president of Suriname stood up and publicly declared full compliance.
And then almost nothing happened.
[00:26:20] Speaker E: We are now almost 19 years after the adjustment and we are still struggling for fully complete compliance.
They did some small things. They pay like a financial compensation of US$600. That's nothing compared to the loss.
The core of the case of the ruling. That's the amendment of the law to grant us this legal recognition. That's still not happening. They keep violating the judgment. If they grant us the collettish title and the fully ownership right and the fully power to manage our territory, then they cannot simply grant concession to multinational or to their friends sponsors. And that's why we didn't manage to to get this law adopted yet.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Hugho studied law part time while continuing to organize. Even his own professors told him it was impossible to win a case against the state of Suriname. He won anyway and in 2009 was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize.
In 2015, though, the threats against him became serious enough that he was forced to leave Suriname entirely.
[00:27:46] Speaker E: My personal life I faced a lot of threat. And I was forced to leave Suriname in 2015 to be in exile for six years in the Netherlands. Because my life was in threat.
Because they see like I was the one who blocked their economic development.
I managed to come back after the government that was responsible for my threat no longer in office. But from time to time I received threats. A few weeks ago there was a death threat from the man who wanted to do gold mining in our territory and wanted to just to pollute our whole water resources. So we managed to block this gold mining activities. And then the people were like angry.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Hugh ho arrived at COP30 in Belem with a delegation of 25 Samaka people, men, women and youth. Which is as he explains how his people have always done things.
The leader does not go anywhere without witnesses. The women are the backbone of the community and the youth are the next generation of leaders. And all three must have a seat at the table.
[00:29:01] Speaker E: We came to Coptic to go there with the largest delegation of women.
I think we were there with 15 women and Jude and seven of eight men. And they show the audience our team was like with drum and songs. We present the samark to the world everywhere where they come to the Green Zone it's like they still in the
[00:29:26] Speaker A: show but for all that visibility. Hu Ho is clear eyed about what COP and the Global Climate Conversation have and haven't delivered for communities like his.
[00:29:36] Speaker E: We hear all this discussion the solution for climate change is the forest. And they came with all these complicated things like red plots, like climate green fund and all these things, but the money never reached us. If you are not on the table, people cannot hear your voice. We want to be everywhere.
Any discussion, any forum where there's something we want to be there.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: When Juho finally returned from exile, one of the first things he did was organize a trip back to the farm where his mother had taught him to live in harmony with the forest.
The first stretch had been damaged by a tractor trail cut through for logging. But past that point the forest was exactly as he had left it 40 years before.
[00:30:24] Speaker E: While I was walking after a certain part then I could see the same path I used to walk when I was 10 and 12 and 50 years. It never changed. And when I was there, I see like I feel like I'm. I. It's like a recharge of our new energy. Something you cannot describe. I just want to come with me, let's walk all the way this forest to there and just sit and connect with the spirit. Then you will feel what. What I feel, what I cannot describe.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: He is still fighting for full compliance with the 2007 ruling, as well as documenting samica oral knowledge before it disappears, seeking UNESCO recognition for Samuka villages as cultural heritage sites and building a monitoring system that connects satellite technology with people on the ground.
[00:31:14] Speaker E: My next of kin, I don't leave any physical thing for them, but at least there's something they can be proud of.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: Hugo's fight has been measured in decades, court rulings and years in exile. Cesar Carrasco's fight has been more immediate, rooted in the daily economic choices a community makes when the pressure arrives at their doorstep.
When I was planning this series, I knew I wanted to talk to Cesar for two reasons. He's essay ha a member of the native community of Infierno on the Tambopata river in the Peruvian Amazon.
And he's been the lodge manager at Rainforest Expeditions, one of the most celebrated community run ecotourism operations in the region for more than 20 years.
I thought I was going to hear a story about Conservation and tourism.
I was not prepared for his life story that he shared with me.
Cesar was 17 when he first went to work on the gold mines on the Inambari River. Not because he wanted to, but, but because the mines were there and the options in front of him were limited.
He went and lasted three months, then came home. His cousin stayed longer and one day, while working underwater, someone cut his breathing line.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: I lost my cousin in the mining area. He died there. They fight for women and they killed him when he was working inside and they cut the line for breathing.
So it was so hard.
I was lucky to be there just for three months.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: The mines Saysar worked in are part of one of the planet's worst artisanal gold mining crises.
Between 1985 and 2017, illegal and artisanal gold mining deforested nearly 96,000 hectares of rainforest in Mondre de Dios alone, an area roughly 1 1/2 times the size of Chicago. With more than two thirds of that destruction happening. And just the last eight years of that period, as gold prices surged, the forest wasn't just being cleared, it was being poisoned. And Cesar explained how inside you go
[00:33:19] Speaker B: with the pump inside and to move with your hand to SAP the mud.
And they do like two hours and a half inside and there's another person outside. It's condensed solen. The gold is not in pieces, it's a powder.
And they have to use the mercury to get all together. And then it has to burn it to have the. Just the gold to separate and the rest they throw to the. To the river.
Fish can eat that one. So that's why even in the regions we know which fish we are not able to eat because they have more mercury. There's one catfish that we call mota, nobody eats in the region because they have more mercury.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Mercury doesn't break down, it converts into methylmercury, accumulates in fish tissue and moves up the food chain, concentrating two to nearly four times within each trophic level.
And research in that region has found elevated mercury at both mined and unmined sites. Meaning the contamination footprint extends far beyond the mine itself, moving through rivers and food webs into communities nowhere near the mining. When Cesar was in Lima, years later, recovering from a motorcycle accident, the doctors ran a full blood panel.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: When I was in Lima, sick with my broken legs, they analyzed all my blood. They told me one day it's because they find a lot of mercury in my blood. I'm not sure. I've been there just three months and never worked for years. That's why they took a lot of time to recover. But this is the vaccine. They pollute.
Yeah. And they go deep. Fish eat and then die. And human too.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Three months on a mine as a teenager and mercury was still in his blood decades later. Cesar was one of the lucky ones. He left after a few months and had survived. The people who stayed and the communities who fish those rivers every day have had no such luck.
A 2022 study on artisanal gold mining in Monter de Dios found that approximately 78% of adults tested in Puerto Mondinaldo, the regional capital, have mercury levels above safe international standards.
This is not just in mining camps. This is in the city where Cesar's family lives.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: We are not mining. We are not friendly with mining.
I know they make a lot of money, but they will be just for a short time and they destroy the forest. Do a conservation or tourism, because tourism, doing conservation. In the same time you will have the chance to have very nice forests for the future, for your kids, for the next generation.
Before we work with Ryan forest expansion, we used to have more culture. We used to make better celebration with all the local customs, the food, very good organizing with other community. They used to come here to the village to celebrate. But when we started working, I can say now they are not designed and we're losing the culture. That's why now they were focused in recovering the culture. Because we don't want to lose the language and the government, they don't pay for the teacher. We pay for with our own money that we make in this building. We pay to the teachers.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: The research on what decisions like this protect is striking. Between 1985 and 2020, 90% of Amazon deforestation occurred outside indigenous managed lands. In territories where indigenous communities hold legally recognized land rights. Just 1.2% of native vegetation was lost over that entire 35 year period.
The forest around Infierno is standing and the Tambopata river is still clean enough to fish.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: Working with, striking for the fish, they also give at the same time a lot of benefits to the community.
Education, we have better education, we have better life. Electricity, water. We have a lot of people that finish different careers. They are engineers, lawyers, managers, guy.
Everybody's free to decide where they want to work or which career they want to study.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: In a year or two, Cesar plans to retire to his farm, growing citrus, yuca, bananas and raising 70 chickens. He wants to go back to what his father taught him, how to work the land. Take what you need and leave the rest intact.
We will explore what his community built with Rainforest Expeditions and what that model means for communities across the Amazon. In episode seven, I want to end this episode with someone I introduced you to at the beginning of the series. Rosa Espinoza, the chemical biologist from Peru who first made me see the Amazon not as a faraway place, but as something already woven into the fabric of my daily life.
She was the reason I started asking the question that became the basis of this entire series.
When Rosa talked about growing up in Peru, moving between the Amazon, the mountains, and the city, she described a relationship with a natural world that most of us have never had.
[00:38:32] Speaker F: By virtue of me seeing my own family interact with the different natural elements, I just had such an ingrained interest and curiosity and respect, whether that is from asking permission to the river when people are going fishing, or to saying thank you to the land where you're opening, you know, the ground to get potatoes out, to talking to flowers before you grab some leaves or roots to make some sort of medicinal cocktail.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Her grandmother was the center of that world, working with medicinal plants, making remedies, and passing knowledge down the way we humans have always learned by watching, doing, and asking questions.
I asked Rosa what she thought it would mean to lose that, not just for one community, but for all of us.
[00:39:20] Speaker F: Losing a culture. I see it almost as like deleting part of the humanity's memory. How can we better act in terms of future or changing realities if we don't understand the past? We're trying to reinvent the wheel every single time without taking any lessons. It's not just a culture, it's not just a language that we're losing. No, you connect it to something deeper.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: And then she told me about a conversation with an indigenous leader that she wrote about in the first chapter of her book.
He described what it meant for his people to live a harmonious relationship with the natural world.
[00:39:53] Speaker F: For them to honor nature is to live beautifully. To be in sync and happy with everything around them is to live beautifully. That means pausing between the work activities.
That means taking time to put a bonfire in your community and dancing around and let all the kids also sing and dance around. For these specific men that I was talking with, making sure he has time to go fishing, you know, in the mornings when he finds the most peace. Taking care of the self is also a way, how they describe, to live beautifully with nature.
When we are kind to ourselves, we also want to be kind to the trees around into the ocean and to the animals. And so I think we don't often hear about, you know, just being kind to us is something we have forgotten. That I do think is also a way that we will do better for our planet.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: I resonated with that phrase, live beautifully. And it kept coming back to me as I was putting together this episode.
Because it's what everyone is in this story is fighting for, whether they use those words or not.
The right to fish a clean river, to teach children their native language, and to take what is needed from the land while leaving the rest intact. Ryuho is still waiting for full compliance with a ruling that is 19 years old. Christina cannot go home. And the mines and Madre de Dios are still running. But so are the people pushing back against all of the threats, threats we explore today, which is, I think, what Rosa was really describing. To insist on living beautifully in the face of impossible odds.
In the next episode, we ask a different question.
Not how do you stop the destruction, but how do you make the forest worth more standing than gone?
This is rewilding. Amazonia. I'm Brooke Mitchell. See you you in episode 17.
