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The Amazon lives in our imaginations, in literature, and throughout swathes of travel writing. But what is it like to live there? Lale chats with journalist Eliane Brum who's built a house from recycled wood in Altamira, a town in Brazil on the northern fringes of the Amazon, to find out more—and to learn about her new book, Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World. Plus, Condé Nast Traveler editor Megan Spurrell tells us about a life-changing trip to an equally spectacular yet vulnerable place: Antarctica.
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Lale Arikoglu: Hello. I'm Lale Arikoglu and this is Women Who Travel, a podcast for anyone who's curious about the world.
The Amazon lives in our imaginations, and it lives in literature, and throughout swathes of travel writing. Accounts of hiking through thick jungle and trips on waterways from Manaus, the gateway to the forest. But today, we're talking to someone who really knows what it's like to live on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest, journalist Eliane Brum, who has built a house of recycled wood in a town called Alta Mira which lies on the northern fringes of the Amazon.
Eliane Brum: It's in the Amazon forest. It's the center of deforestation in the Amazon. Also the center of the criminal fires. And also the center of the resistance.
LA: The rainforest is known for its incredible, jaw-dropping biodiversity. It's home to innumerable types of animals and plants. But it's also central to the story of climate change, suffering from severe deforestation. Altamira in particular is prey to aggressive logging, gold mining, and recently, a huge new hydroelectric dam. The land is being flooded, dug up, cut down. And the local people's livelihood is being threatened.
Eliane has been documenting this for decades, and much of that work appears in her new book, Banzeiro Òkòtó, or The Amazon as the Center of the World, out on March 7th. It's why we're also talking to Diane Whitty, who's based in Madison, Wisconsin and lived in Brazil before translating Eliane's book. I asked Diane how you'd explain the book to anyone unfamiliar with Brazil.
Diane Whitty: If you would like to take a journey into the Amazon, a world that, um, you know hardly anything about, and in the same time take that trip as a transformational experience of a person who goes from a city dweller to someone who feels herself intermixed with the forest, you will come out with a new understanding of our relationship with the world, where we are at this moment of the world, and how the Amazon is central to our ability to continue to exist on this planet as we have, as we'd like our future generations to live on this planet.
LA: Diane and Eliane have never met in person, but working together to bring the stories within this book to an English-speaking audience has really bonded them.
EB: I'm trying to talk in English and my book was translated into English. And we need to understand that just here in Brazil we have more than 300 indigenous people and more than 200 languages.
LA: Few people get to experience the Amazon during their lifetime. I've certainly yet to make it there. Eliane says even Brazilian readers don't know that much about her area. So I wanted to know what it sounds like, what it feels like to be there.
EB: The forest is unbelievably alive. There are creatures all the time. Th- there are sounds all the time. For me the most beautiful sound in the forest is the sound of a monkey that we call guadebis. Because some moments of the day, the first time I listen many, many, many years ago, I thought it was [laughs]- I was sleeping in a hammock in the middle of the forest, because when you travel in the forest, we stopping in the end of the day because we travel by boat. And we cannot travel during the night because it's too dangerous because there are many stones in the river. And then we stop at around five o'clock. We make our hammocks in the middle of the forest. And we begin- and we, we make a fire to do our food. And then we sleep in the forest.
And the first time I, I listened this guadebis, this monkeys, I was still sleeping around four AM in the morning. And I couldn't understand what was this- that song. And it was the monkeys. And it's so, so beautiful. So beautiful. And there are different sounds. I live in the forest, not the primary forest. It was, uh, deforested area. We are in the forest, in the river. And there are different and amazing sounds all the time. I don't need clock alarm because I know by the sounds what is happening, what time it is. And it's- I'm so alive.
LA: You moved from Sao Paolo in 2017. When was the moment you knew you had fallen in love with living in the forest?
EB: I went to the forest for the first time in 1998. And I went to a trans-Amazonic, that it's a, a big road that was built over with a lot of death of indigenous people. It's a road made by dictac- military dictatorship in Brazil. And I went there to listen the people that live it. It was begin my love because I listen different. It was the same Portuguese language but it wasn't the same. It was other. Other kind of, of language, other kind of written, other kind of words. It's entire other world. And I was totally impassioned, uh, about this.
Djuena Tikuna: [singing]
LA: That was the indigenous singer from Brazil, Djuena Tikuna.
Eliane is a documentary film maker, a novelist, nonfiction writer, and a journalist who's written for publications like Bronte, The Guardian, El Pais, and the New York Times. She spent years covering social issues in Brazilian cities but at some point her interest in the Amazon started to take over.
EB: We were the first journalists to reach a part of the forest called [inaudible 00:07:33]. We went there because the people were threatened, the forests were being burned with the house of the traditional people for the structures of the forests. And they, they lived out of the state. The official Brazil didn't know about them. They didn't exist. They didn't vote. They didn't have, uh, documents. They didn't have any official existence. We needed five days to reach them by boat from here, from Altamira. It was a very difficult trip as usually. We have to cross, to carry the boats across the stones and many things happened.
And when I- we enter in this river, dozens, maybe, maybe thousands of yellow butterflies appeared suddenly. It's like, uh, we are crossing worlds. And immediately a couple of, uh, [Portuguese 00:08:48], I don't know the name the- of this animal in, in English, jump in front of us. It's something so, so, so amazing that, again, I feel myself so alive.
I was, uh, one night in a river, because we have showers in the rivers and we are in the forest, of course. There is a full moon. And the Yanomami were doing a party because they have hunted a big animal. And because we are a- white people, are foreigners, we couldn't participate of the party. But w- I was inside this river in the middle of the forest listen of dozens of people dancing. It's an am- amazing, amazing sound.
LA: That animal, it turns out, was a giant otter. Magical encounters with nature draw people to the Amazon every year. But is there justification for tourists to just show up and intrude? Can tourism help locals? And is there a way to visit one of the planet's most important ecosystems in a thoughtful and conscious way?
Tourists do visit the Amazon and they take Amazon river cruises. And they take tours w- within that habitat. Is it possible to be a responsible visitor to the Amazon?
EB: I can say that the most of tourism is irresponsible and it is fake. But there are some people that are connected with the local communities and work with the local communities, uh, with respect. You need to respect the people. The people are not there for you make pictures or sh- just, uh, enter in their house.
LA: It was after taking a Greenpeace tour to Antarctica that Eliane experienced a revelation about one's impact when visiting an endangered place.
Eliane Brum: I learn this very, very clear when I, I went to Antarctica in a Greenpeace ship with scientists that were researching the impact of the climate crisis in the population of penguins and in the entire continent. And it was very difficult for me to do this question. Can I, I go? Because to put your feet in Antarctica is very delicate. It's a decision very difficult and should be. And should I go? And why I'm going? And I wrote much more because I need to justify my presence.
Lale Arikoglu: Antarctica is a really interesting comparison to make and I think the survival or protection of Antarctica and the traces that we leave behind on it, the global impact that has is comparable to the Amazon.
After the break, Condé Nast Traveler's Senior Editor, Megan Spurrell, reflects on her own trip to Antarctica.
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Megan Spurrell: I'm Megan Spurrell. I'm a Senior Editor at Conde Naste Traveler and a very avid podcast listener and caller in. Um, last winter I had the immense privilege of going to Antarctica on an expedition ship. There is nothing like when you finally see that white looming dramatic continent in the distance. With humpback whales breaching and the hills are covered with penguins. It was incredible.
And I think one of the things that struck me the most was the rules about how you visit. When we were sailing down, we attended a lecture where we learned about all the rules for visiting. So how far do you need to stay from wildlife? What are you allowed to bring on shore? What do you have to leave behind? We had all of our, like, clothing and gear, even the beanies you're gonna wear or the Velcro section of your gloves, was inspected and vacuumed out to make sure that you weren't bringing seeds from where you'd been and maybe going to accidentally deposit that when you landed on Antarctica.
Every day when we would land in places where there- we would go for hikes and there were penguin colonies, when we would come back on the ship we would, you know, stand against a wall and actually have your boots washed down with a high powered hose to make sure that then you wouldn't bring anything from that place to where we went the next day. So it was just this level of care that I had never seen with anywhere I had visited. And it's part of the Antarctic Treaty that was signed in, I think, 1959 where a bunch of countries agreed, like, here's how we're gonna take care of this place that is everyone's and no one's.
You can't help but wonder what would it look like to apply this to other destinations? What would it look like if we were so thoughtful with other natural environments we enter?
At the same time, I couldn't overlook the fact that what I- I thought was most amazing about Antarctica was the complete absence of humans. And I also was aware that I was a person there. You know? It's like you look out and you're like, God, I love how there's no people. And like you're standing in a group of tourists who are now walking onto the land. And that was kind of hard to reckon with. And I, I think the environmental protections made me feel better about it. But I felt this guilt. Like I- how can it stay like this, even with all of this, all these protections? How can this place continue to feel like humans haven't touched it when they are coming more and more every single year, just like me wanting to see it? I know there are limits and restrictions on how many ships can be there and how many people can dock at a landing per day. But what will it look like if that gets pushed to the max?
I've also been to the Amazon which, honestly, I still call the best place I've ever been. I went through Iquitos in Peru and I just- that was another place that was so wild, um, alive, and incredible. The Amazon feels so fragile in so many ways, in very different ways from Antarctica. And I wonder how you protect a place like that where there is so much biodiversity, there are so many important natural resources. The Amazon serves so many functions for every single person on this planet. And yet protecting it, you know, it's not somewhere like Antarctica where there are no humans. Millions of people live inside this rainforest. There is a lot of conflict because of humans interacting with the natural environment. I wonder how you protect a place when there are humans who have basic needs who live there as well.
I think a lot of times we think about tourism as having the potential to be this force that stops other interests from taking priority. So what I mean by that is in the Amazon, you know, there's a hope that, okay, if there is enough money to be made off tourism by me visiting this area, maybe the government will actually crack down on illegal logging for example. Because they know that the value of tourism is greater than either what can be made from logging or the kickbacks from illegal loggers. But I guess as a tourist you always wonder, like, does that math work? It's kinda like Antarctica. It's, you know, by us going are we helping more people learn how to travel responsibly or are we just putting a strain on a delicate environment?
LA: Eliane, you write in your book, "Earth will continue to exist despite the destruction of the forest and the impacts of climate collapse. But our life on it will be much less interesting." I've been thinking about that line a lot. Could you expand on that and describe to listeners what the Amazon means to our planet. It is, as your book says, the center of the world.
EB: The forest is the big regulator of the climate. Imagine that one big tree in the Amazon, just one big tree, tree in the Amazon put one thousand liters of water in the atmosphere every day. And this is one of the wonderful process of the forest. And at this moment, Lale, the forest is- around 17% of the forest, the Amazon forests, are deforested. And the scientists affirm that between 20% and 25% of destruction, the forest reaches the point of no return. And if this happen, we won't be able or at least it will be very, very, very difficult to control the overheating, the global overheating.
If Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro, as the President of Brazil, and Jair Bolsonaro is, uh, far right man, a fascist, and he lead the destruction of the forest. And then in the August, last August, for the first time in my life... Because as journalists, when there- there are fires, criminal fires in the forest, I needed to go to the fires in order to cover the fires as journalist. In the last August, I watch- I testified for the first time the, the forest, uh, burning.
Oh, it's my cat. I, I should-
LA: I was like what- I was like what amazing Amazon animal is that? And then I was like, I think that's a cat-
EB: [laughs] It's a cat! [laughs] I should stop and put him- I expelled him already but then he came- he fa- I have four cats and four dogs. And they always find a way to come here. And I close all the doors. But, but-
LA: I, I welcome the cat.
In August 2022, unprecedented fires in the Brazilian rainforest generated global headlines. They were allegedly started by loggers emboldened by then President Jair Bolsonaro on the eve of the election.
Diane, you lived in Brazil for a long time but you have not visited the Amazon, like you said. What was your path to learning what an important story it was to tell and to work on?
DW: Eliane is addressing an audience in Brazil that many of- who many people are not familiar with the Amazon there either. So for example, she talks about the [Portuguese 00:21:46] in many moments in the book. The [Portuguese 00:21:47] are a group of forest people, traditional forest peoples, that are neither indigenous nor Quilombolas. Quilombolas being the descendants of enslaved Africans. But they're a very specific group. And she talks about the fact that it's hard to explain to Brazilians that [Portuguese 00:22:04] are not simply people who live on the edge of the river, which is the literal translation of the term. But are a people who immigrated from other areas of Brazil into the Amazon and developed their own kind of style of life.
I wanted to say something else about translating Eliane which is really important. Not specific to the Amazon, but to Eliane. Which is that she has an incredibly unique voice and it's a very creative and poetic voice. And that's one of the things I love about translating her. If I may give a small example here, she talks a lot about Belo Monte, which is a hydro power plant. It was a dam that was built and flooded a major area, drove a lot of people out of the area, destroyed their ways of life. The name of it is Belo Monte, which means beautiful mountain. But the people have called it Belo Monstro as well, which means beautiful monster. That- in translation, that is actually- works well because monstro, monster, monte, mountain. We have the alliteration. That works well.
And at one point she refers to Belo Monte as a [Portuguese 00:23:22]. So she takes the word [Portuguese 00:23:24]. [Portuguese 00:23:25] means a showcase, a display case of horrors. She adds the one letter, N, and evokes the word monster in the middle of the word [Portuguese 00:23:35]. She creates a new word, a neologism in Portuguese that the Brazilian reader is going to understand immediately. But how do you capture that in English? And that's the kind of translation challenge I ran into with her all the time, and which is delightful to a translator.
LA: Eliane's book charts both the destruction and the local resistance. And many of the radical leaders of that resistance are indigenous women. Yet despite all the brutality that she's witnessing towards the land and its people, there's also peace and adventure there. And so many transformative experiences to be had in the Amazon.
Djuena Tikuna: [singing]
EB: Last September, I went to a ayahuasca conference in, uh, indigenous territory, in the territory of the Ashaninkas. Ashaninkas, a very interesting indigenous people. And there are many, many of indigenous people. There are the different names. There are the jaguar people. Each people has your, I don't know how it- we can say in English, maybe avatar, your animal that, uh, symbolize each people. And then in the night it happened their ritual. It was in the black. It was dark. It was in the middle of the forest. There were stars and moon. We were in the silence. We had ayahuasca. Little. But we had ayahuasca. And then each people begun to incorporate their animal. Then the jaguar people moved as jaguar and sing as a jaguar. The frog people as frogs. And the snake people as a snake. And it was a symphony. I never seen something so beautiful in my life.
Djuena Tikuna: [singing]
LA: Next week Frances Rings, an indigenous dancer and choreographer who makes work from the stories told to her by elders in Aboriginal communities throughout Australia.
Thank you for listening. I'm Lale Arikoglu and you can find me, as always, on Instagram @lalehannah, and follow along with Women Who Travel on Instagram @womenwhotravel. You can also join the conversation in our Facebook group. Allison Layton Brown is our composer. Jennifer Nelson is our engineer. Jude Kampfner from Corporation for Independent Media is our producer.