Leftwards across Latin America

Through these travels i realised that i had always been going left on a huge loop from São Paulo on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, through the centre of Brazil to the state of Acre deep in the Amazon, before carrying on out on the other side to emerge in the high Andes and on to the Pacific coast of Lima... then looping back around to Bolivia and Brazil´s capital, Brasilia, once more.

Meanwhile i seem to have been cutting straight across the blistering moment of the revolution- all across South America Leftist movements are boiling to the surface, with deep-seated social demands erupting across the continent. When i arrived in Peru the talk was all of Ollanta Humalla, the tough ex-military man who talks about re-building national pride and does not hide his admiration for Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. Although his personal background is ambiguous as he has strong military connections, a win for him would cement the growing Leftist consensus across Latin America and he is clearly in favour of a more robust independent Latin American foreign policy...

Less ambiguous is Bolivia´s president, Evo Morales- as an indigenous Aymara and coca-growers´ union leader, he is a more authentic representative of the excluded majority of Latin America. Just as i arrived in Bolivia 2 weeks ago, he marked Labour Day on May 1st with the nationalisation of hydrocarbons (oil and gas) across Bolivia... the country was out on the streets to celebrate but a certain feeling of chaos was in the air! Military occupation of gas fields and a high police presence could not reduce the feeling that suddenly all the rules are changing and outsiders were definitely in a more tenuous position. There is no doubt that Morales has been bold in his first hundred days in office and further reform is likely, as the Bolivians are about to vote for a constituent assembly to draw up the new constitution to combat the legacy of a long history of exploitiation and poverty. Afterall the country still has the lowest GDP per capita of South America, so there is a clear need to provide for the population. There is great wealth in terms of natural resources but ever since Spanish colonial times, these have been providing a very low return for the majority of the country, so there is a case for greater national ownership and the need to channel profits towards social programmes inside the country.

What has been surprising is the hard line Morales has taken in relation to Brazil, while I was in Bolivia, my plans were delayed as the land border to Brazil was closed by civilian action!! The Bolivian government had expelled a Brazilian steel firm, EBX, for environmental and constitutional irregularities but the local Bolivians were on the streets in favour of the Brazilian firm and in disagreement with the national government. However, it is on the issue of the nationalisation of hydrocarbon resources that Bolivia has taken the firmest line, accusing the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras of breaking the Bolivan constitution and threstening to refuse to pay compensation to them for loss of investment. It is true that Petrobras has in the past couple of years made record profits and there is little sympathy for oil barons, however it is surprising that Morales is so tough on Brazil, as this seems to go against his stated aim of bringing South America closer together.

As I just got back into Brazil, have been interested to notice how much more moderate the Brazilian Left seems to be... here people are unsure of Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez, they seem unwillling to take the same leap towards a full nationalist Left agenda and instead Lula´s government has been keen to maintain economic austerity and keep international investor confidence. This may be due to the fact that President Lula lacks a majority in the legislature so he is forced to adopt a position of national unity rather than a strong social reform agenda.
In a similar mode, Argentina and Chile also have moderate Left leaders who seem keen to focus on economic growth but are unwilling to adopt postures that may weaken international trade and investment.

What is nevertheless clear is that Morales has brought a new focus to the action of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the first to bring hydrocarbons under national control for a social reform agenda and has created a link through to Cuba´s Fidel Castro and his revolution with Che Guevara. Venezuela and Bolivia signed a free trade agreement with Cuba to counter the highly controversial US plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, exchanging hydrocarbons for highly skilled Cuban doctors.

As Brazil is just catching fire in São Paulo´s prisons and the social inequality gap continues to rage in this the largest country in South America, the need for more bold reforms across the board seems to be increasingly present... perhaps this is a continuation of the revolution that was begun by Che Guevara and frozen by the military dictatorships, a chance for greater integration and a new independent consensus in South America- the Brazilians would be foolish to give up their role as leaders of this movement and would be better off embracing the moment to shape the future of all South Americans.

Inca Heart

Machu Picchu














The Inca sites of Peru are hard to describe... Having come up into the mountains from the state of Acre which is barely a hundred years old (official founding 1902 after revolution and separation from Bolivia) the first thing that strikes you when you arrive in the valley of Cuzco is the sheer density of tradition. Although the centre of the old Inca capital itself has now been taken over by international tourism, there is still a clear sense of the independent history and the depth of the pre-western tradition. We explored Cuzco from a base in the ancient Temple of the Sun Virgins, ´acclahuasi´(now contained in the Hotel Loreto) and loved the Koriqancha, the
ancient Temple of the Sun (converted into the Spanish church of Santo Domingo) that was apparently once lined with sheets of gold...


We soon ventured up to the classic Valley of the Urubamba river, known as the Sacred Valley of the Incas, this is the location of many of the great
Inca ritual sites and fortresses. We headed straight up to the town of Ollantaytambo, on a good tip from my sister! There you can see a massive head carved into the cliff face (on left
of 2nd image, just in the sunlight) said to represent the messenger of the creator God Viracocha hanging above the magnificent terraces and gazing across at the fortress.

From Ollantaytambo we took the backpacker train on up to Aguas Calientes, below the great site of Machu Picchu...
Although this has been so widely described and so deeply overtaken by mass tourism, we were able to get an independent feel for the place by getting up at 4:30 and walking up from Aguas Calientes to catch the dawn on the classic peak- still an awe-inspiring experience due to the spectacular setting and the light of the Andean dawn. One thing really stood out- the way the terraces are cut directly out of cliff-like drops on both sides... apparently the Incas had a profound sense of the natural energies of a place, often dedicating their ritual sites on a natural
rock formation or near a sacred water spring. There were said to be lines of power connecting the sacred points know as Huacas and ritual sites have a strong connection to these lines. Machu Picchu is therefore situated between two peaks and surrounded by a loop in the river on both sides.

Within it, one of the most influential spots, with spectacular views is the Intihuatana or ´hitching post of the sun´- this is an intricately carved stone, something like a sun-dial, that was used to calculate the winter solstice (June 21st in the Southern hemisphere) by a change in the direction of shadow as the suns shifts to the South. This way the seasons could be accurately charted for successful agricultural production. In the Inca mind, ritual and sacred practice was totally connected to practical every-day situations, so the need to understand the movement of the sun was linked to offers of gifts and sacrifices of maize beer, coca leaves or llama blood to the
sun god, known as Inti, in order to guarantee a good year and a successful harvest. Machu Picchu, for example, may have had experimental plantations for medicinal plants, as well as temple structures The sacred was present in the practical and so human activitiy was entirely caught up in a universal pattern, humanity was not outside the natural world but deeply embedded in its processes.
Rather than dominate the sacred cycles, the Incas felt they should respect and be
shaped by them...

Intihuatana in Machu Picchu

Passage to the Andes

It was the journey from Acre in the Amazon up to Cuzco in the Andes that was most extreme. Moving from hot humid tropical conditions, crossing the border from Brazil, with an English friend, Dom, we met a Quechua speaker from Cuzco, called Henry, and left Puerto Maldonado at 6pm to spend 24 hours climbing the worst roads in Peru...

It was an earth road all the way from the border up to the valley of Cuzco, through swollen rivers, past waterfalls, along cliff edges and climbing up over passes that reached over 4500 metres within 500 km distance of the rainforest. An unbelievable contrast, we were able to feel the edge of the Andes as it plunges into the steaming jungle and as we climbed, the climate got colder and vegetation got thinner. After passing an area of small thatched stone houses with scrubby fields, sheer drops surround the road as it passes the peak of Ausangate (over 6000m) and a tongue of glacier...

I was shivering as I had only a T-shirt and light jacket from the rainforest but luckily our driver knew the road and he leant me a thick coat until we made it to a remote community in a high valley were we were received thanks to Henry, our Quechua speaker, for a breakfast of herbal tea and boiled local potatoes in the tiny communal house, made up of one single long room. There are hundreds of types of potatoes in the Andes, they originated here and still provide the basic staple of most mountain communities.

Eventually the road continued up towards the valley of Cuzco but as the morning progressed we were held up by a group of trucks carrying tropical hard-woods and fuel that were stopped in the middle of the road... they refused to let us pass by rolling a little to the side of the road on the hand-break and our driver began to fume in Spanish- so I stepped forward, wearing the official badge of the government in Acre and tried to negotiate our passage through. The local truck drivers took me for an official road engineer and acknowledged my concern, they even appeared to agree to move so i returned triumphant to our 4 wheel drive pick-up truck... nothing happened. A little later, a genuine engineer arrived and had the same experience, there was a clear disregard for authority in the mountains!! Then suddenly when we were no longer expecting anything, there was a flurry of movement by people carrying stones and wooden beams. The driver of the truck with the broken gearbox decided that he would roll his truck off the road and down to the next bend 20m below rather than simple pulling aside!

Seringueiros - Rubber tappers

The most classic rainforest product in Ace is natural latex, rubber. The tree that produces rubber is native to the western Amazon and was responsible for a major economic boom in the late 1800s that led to a significant influx of new residents to Acre from the arid North East of Brazil to work on the Seringais - areas of wild rubber trees. The process is to cut the rubber tree every other week to extract the leite da seringa - latex (or literally `milk´ of the rubber tree), this does not require felling any trees and in fact the forest is maintained for shade to allow the rubber trees to produce a constant harvest. This boom also led to the construction of the magnificent Teatro Amazonas (Opera House) in Manaus... At the turn of the twentieth century, the British took rubber to Malaysia and began industrial production with large-scale monoculture plantations, as a result the price fell and the artesenal production of the Amazon could not compete on world markets. During the 2nd World War there was a short-lived return to production for western military needs, as the Japanese occupied the rubber plantations of Asia but since that time the producers have lived at subsistence level, in tune with natural cycles, without clearing the forest.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, new settlers arrived from the South of Brazil, supported by the military dictatorship, with the intention of clearing the forest and creating cattle grazing lands in the heart of the Amazon! The local population often lacked the official documents to the land they had lived on for generations and had few resources to counter this new threat so they organised rural movements to physically resist the takeover of their land. One of the most well-known leaders of these rural unions was Chico Mendes, who received a number of international prizes for his work in defence of the natural environment. In 1989, he was assasinated by gunmen hired by a local landlord for his outspoken views and refusal to stop the campaign.

Many of the people involved in the rural movements of the 1980s are now in government positions both in the state of Acre and in the Federal Government of Brazil, such as the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva. As for the natural rubber: many people still rate it as much stronger than synthetic products and the native Amazonian variety as more resistant than others, for this reason there is now a plan to build a factory for condoms made of natural rubber in Acre!

House of Chico Mendes, where he lived and died

Tropical markets

Was loving those tropical markets, all the fruit you can imagine and more...

Acre- forest state

The journey took off from Acre, the forest state at the extreme west of Brazil. It was great to contribute to a sustainable future of the Brazilian Amazon through work with the state government on Ecological and Economic Zoning. According to the thinker Antonio Alves, in the reality of Acre, the natural cycles must be respected and democracy should include a view of the needs of all living beings... witnessing some of the most devastating flooding for years i got a good impression of how government stops if nature makes demands! (30 000 people were homeless in the month of February 2006)

For up to the minute views from Acre, check out the links of Antonio Alves and Altino Machado, two good friends who are full time journalists, thinkers and government commentators on Acre and the Amazon region:
(written in Portuguese)
altino.blogspot.com
oespiritodacoisa.blog.uol.com.br