The Pan-Amazon Synod that will take place in Rome this October, requires a better knowledge of the Amazon ecosystem. Myths must be ferreted out.

The first myth: the Indigenous people as wild, genuinely natural, and therefore, in perfect harmony with nature. The Indigenous are regulated not by cultural but by natural criteria. The Indigenous are in a sort of a biological siesta with nature, in a perfect, passive, adaptation to its rhythms and logic.

This ecologization of the Indigenous is a fantasy, resulting from the fatigue of urban life, with its excessive technology and artificiality.

What we can say is that the Amazon Indigenous are as human any other, and as such, they are in constant interaction with the environment. More and more, research reveals the interaction between the Indigenous and nature, and their mutual affects on each other. The relationships are not “natural,” but cultural, like ours, in an intricate web of reciprocity. Perhaps the Indigenous have something unique that sets them apart from modern man: they experience and understand nature as part of their society and culture, an extension of their personal and social body. For them, nature is not, as it is for the modern man, a mute and neutral object. Nature speaks and the Indigenous listen and understand her voice and her message. Nature is part of society and society is part of nature, in a constant process of reciprocal adaptation. For that reason the Indigenous are much better integrated than we are. We have much to learn from the relationship the Indigenous maintain with nature.

The second myth: The Amazon is the lungs of the world.Specialists affirm that the Amazon jungle is in a state of climax. That is, the Amazon is in an optimal state of life, a dynamic equilibrium in which everything is well utilized and therefore everything is in balance. The energy captured by plants is put to good use through the interactions of the food chain. The oxygen they liberate during the day through photosynthesis is utilized at night by the plants themselves, and other living organisms. Therefore, the Amazon is not the world’s lungs.

But the Amazon does function as a great fixer of carbon dioxide. In the process of photosynthesis great quantities of carbon are absorbed. And carbon dioxide is a principal cause of the greenhouse effect that warms the Earth (in the last 100 years it grew by 25%). If one day the Amazon were totally deforested, nearly 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year would be launched into the atmosphere. That would cause a massive extinction of living organisms.

The third myth: the Amazon as the world’s bread basket. That is what the first explorers thought, such as von Humboldt and Bonpland and the Brazilians planners while the military was in power (1964-1983). That is not true. Research has shown that “the jungle lives by herself” and in great part “for herself” (cf. Baum, V., Das Ökosystem der tropischen Regenswälder, Giessen 1986, 39). The jungle is luxuriant but the soil is poor in humus. This sounds paradoxical. Harald Sioli, the great specialist in the Amazon, put it clearly: “the jungle actually grows on the soil and not from the soil” (A Amazônia, Vozes 1985, 60). And he explains: the soil is only the physical support for an intricate web of roots. The trees’ roots are intertwined and mutually support each other at the base. An immense balance and rhythm is formed. All the jungle moves and dances. This is why, when one tree falls it drags several other trees down as well.

The jungle maintains her exuberant character because it is a closed chain of nutrients. Aided by the water that drips from the leaves and runs down the tree trunks, a bio-layer of leaves, fruits, small roots, and wild animal droppings decomposes into the soil. It is not the soil that nourishes the trees. It is the trees that nourish the soil. Those two sources of water wash down, carrying the excrement of tree dwelling animals and of the larger species, such as birds, coatis, macaques, sloths and others, as well as the myriad of insects that live in the tree tops. An enormous quantity of fungi and countless micro-organisms make these nutrients available to the roots. Through the roots, the plants absorb them, guaranteeing the captivating exuberance of the Amazon Hileia. But it is a closed system, with a complex and fragile equilibrium. Any small deviation can have disastrous consequences.

The humus commonly is not more than 30-40 centimeters deep, and can be washed away by torrential rains. In a short time, sand would appear. The Amazon without the jungle would be transformed into an immense sabana or even a desert. That is why the Amazon never can be the granary of the world, but will continue being the temple of the greatest biodiversity.

The specialist of the Amazon, Shelton H. Davis, noted in 1978 a truth that is still valid in 2019: “A silent war is presently being waged against the Aboriginal peoples, against innocent peasants and against the ecosystem of the jungle in the Amazon basin” (Victims of the miracle, Saar 1978, 202). Until 1968 the jungle was practically intact. Ever since, with the great hydroelectric projects and agribusiness; and now with the anti-ecologism of the Bolsonaro government, the brutalization and devastation of the Amazon continues.

Leonardo Boff  is Eco-Theologian-Philosopher and of theEarthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

 

In my understanding, two basic tendencies can be seen in the current globalization process: monopolar globalization, with the supremacy of the United States, backed by the large economic-financial corporations, and marked by how everything is homogenized. In pedestrian language, it would be the hamburgerization of the world: the same hamburger, made from the same recipe, and consumed in the U.S., Russia, Japan, China; and Brazil.

The other tendency is multipolar. It foresees several poles of power, with different decision centers, but all within the same Common Home, unique, complex, and threatened with ruin. China leads this tendency..

The monopolar tendency predominates. Trump’s “America first” means “only America”. The claim is that only the U.S. has global interests. It abrogates to itself the right to intervene where ever those interests are threatened or could be extended, either through direct war or delegated, as Trump attempted with Brazil during the crisis in Venezuela, ignoring treaties and international law.

The Northamerican strategy, radicalized after the attack on the Twin Towers, is to guarantee its world hegemony: first, through weapons of mass destruction, (the U.S. could kill the whole world), the capitalist economy and ideology (Hollywood plays a principal role in that), that is a form of soft war (hybrid War), but effective in conquering hearts and minds through symbolism and imaginary, with a facade of democracy and human rights.

But the primary means of domination is the neoliberal capitalist economy. It must be imposed on the whole world (China adopted it to fortify herself economically). This is accomplished through the huge global corporations and their internal national allies. It is a great weapon, because the alternative, war, functions as a deterrent, like a scarecrow, because it can destroy everyone, including those who invoke it.

Those who win the race for technological innovation, especially the military but also the economic, will acquire world hegemony.

What does this have to do with Brazil’s current political and economic situation? Everything. President Jair Bolsonaro accepted, with no compensation, an unconditional alignment with the strategies for world hegemony of the United States.

In the highest military levels and moneyed elites one hears the following argument: we have no possibility of becoming a great nation, even though we have all the necessary objective conditions. We arrived late and do not participate in the small group that decides the world’s path. We were a colony and recolonization has been imposed on us, in order to supply raw materials (commodities) to the developed countries. It is inevitable that the strongest, in this case the United States, offers economic advantages in order to incorporate as aggregated members the select transnational group that sustains this option. Missing was the wisdom to seek their own paths, in a dialectic relationship with the current powers.

The huge destitute majorities do not count. They are economic zeros. They produce less and consume almost nothing. From dependency they sink into non-participation.

What change has occurred in Brazil in the last years? The highest leading members of the army, the generals who have troops under their command (they are those who really matter) may have embraced this thesis. They may have left in second place a project of an autonomous nation. The security for which they are responsible may be now guaranteed by the United Sates with its military apparatus and more than 800 military bases spread all over the world. This adhesion also implies incorporation into the liberal economy (among us, ultra-liberal economy) and representative democracy, even though this democracy will be a low intensity one.

With the current President, Brazil has been taken over by the military. The former captain, made chief of State, is the visible head of this project, abruptly adopted in Brazil. Diligence is required to weaken everything that makes us a country-nation: industry must be diminished and replaced by imports; institutions with a democratic and nationalist taint, will be maintained, but rendered inefficient, public universities, undermined, will give way to private universities associated with large enterprises, because these enterprises need educated teams to function.

The minor internal fights between the astrologer from Virginia, Olavo de Carvalho, the extreme right Brazilian intellectual who lives in the United States and is the ideological mentor of President Bolsonaro, and the military, are irrelevant. Both accept the basic principle of adhesion to the United States and neo-liberalism, but with a difference. The Olavistas are crude, rough, with vulgar language. The military displays airs of education and civility in hopes of inspiring trust, but both have the same basic goal. And the same adhesion to the United States. Resigned, they admit that in the new cold war between the United States and China we must either opt for the United States or be devoured by China, thus renouncing a sovereign path through the tensions between the great powers.

I see two paths of confrontation, among others:

The ecological path: we are within the anthropocene, the age when human beings are rapidly destabilizing all the life-systems and the Earth-system. Wise people and scientists warn that if we do not change, we could experience a socio-ecological disaster that could destroy a great part of the biosphere and our civilization. This way, the very capitalist system and its culture would lose their base of support. The survivors would have to devise a global Marshall Plan to rescue what remained of civilization and restore the vitality of Mother Earth.

The political path: a massive popular uprising, a human tsunami in the streets, protesting and rejecting the anti-people, anti-life model. The generals would feel trapped by accusations of being unpatriotic, causing a divide between those who supported the streets and those who resisted. Politicians would slowly come around, because they would see no alternative. This way an alternative movement, opposing the current order,could arise.

There could be great violence on both sides. A Northamerican intervention could not be ruled out, because her interests are global, especially since control of the Amazon is an objective. But would Russia and China tolerate such intervention? The worst case could be if a sort of Syria were created in our territory. The scene is somber but not impossible. It is known there are hawks in the security organs who do not discard that possibility.

We are called to follow the political path, with all the risks it entails. We must not forego the opportunity to trust in our capabilities, especially with respect to our ecological wealth, and our role in determining the future of humanity and the living planet, the Earth.

The most important thing is to present a viable alternative, for a different type of Brazil: sovereign, with a representative democracy, just, open to the world and ready, with our natural resources, to set the table for the hungry human beings of the whole world.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher, of the Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.