The Brazilian Amazonia: National and International Solidarities Volume 6 - Issue 4

Marcílio de Freitas*

• Professor at the Federal University of Amazonas, Former Secretary of Science and Technology of the State of Amazonas, Brazil

Received:February 01, 2022;   Published: February 17, 2022

Corresponding author: Marcílio de Freitas, Professor at the Federal University of Amazonas, Former Secretary of Science and Technology of the State of Amazonas, Brazil

DOI: 10.32474/JAAS.2022.06.000241

 

Abstract PDF

Abstract

The Amazonia is dying. The author warns people, societies and world governments of the tendency of irreversible destruction of Amazonia. Who will save it?

A requiem for the Amazonia is presented

Amazonia: World Heritage Site or Full Destruction

In this essay, I reaffirm the importance of national and international solidarities to the cultural and ecological protection of the Amazonia. The region spans a total 49,87,247 square kilometers - 58% of Brazil’s total area; 40% of South America’s; and 5% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. Of this area, between 3.5-4 million square kilometers are still covered in primary vegetation or have not yet been significantly disturbed by anthropogenic forces. The Amazonia is home to about 35 million people, around 0.35% of the world’s population, among which 163 indigenous peoples- adding up to 3,42,000 people, or 47% of Brazil’s indigenous population. Just over 22,000 isolated communities live within its forests, which harbor over 400 billion trees and 2,000 rivers. The Amazonia also harbors 33% of the world’s reserves of broadleaf forests; 20% of the Earth’s surface freshwater; and has an important role in the world’s anthropological history, in the planet’s climate stability, and in the mitigation of climate change.

However, specialized literature reveals that deforestation surpassed 22.8% or 1.14 million square kilometers of its territory over the 1970-2021 period. This degradation was intensified over the 2020-2021 period, adding up to more than 13 million hectares and thus generating environmental and social problems that result in regional and global impacts. The impacts of predatory economic projects on the Amazonia’s populations contribute to this dramatic picture. The transmission of covid-19 in the region has been terrifying-and has worsened this situation. By November 30, 2021, the state of Amazonas, the largest state in the Brazilian Amazonia, accounted for 429,944 cases of people infected with covid-19, and 13,803 deaths. This is a dramatic scenario in the case of a Brazilian state that currently has a population of 42,69,995 inhabitants and is home to 70 indigenous peoples. This is an announced tragedy that may ultimately lead to extermination of these indigenous peoples. The omission of governments, businessmen, public and private institutions as to this morbid health and social framework – as well as of economic conglomerates that operate in the region-has already been naturalized. They act as if nothing is happening.

The Amazonia continues to be surrounded and besieged by nature-destroying politicians and financial markets, who consider it a laboratory for testing the strength, power and scope of their perversities and barbarities. This is an inheritance from our colonial past, ignorance and political submission to predatory capital. The windows and filters of history allow us to identify the foundations of this abominable past forged by our colonizers, who appropriated the Amazonia’s peoples and environments from a eugenic and prejudiced perspective. The realities of devastation, famine and plague in their countries were superimposed on the grandeur and complexities of a new world incorporated into European imperial futility. Warlords who crossed the seas to find it, and to imprison its people and the vastness of its territories in an ethnocentric and bloodthirsty cartography-over centuries of physical and cultural domination marked by genocide, ethnocide and expropriation of foreign natures. They ushered in the era of racism and ecological devastation in the new world - a period followed by the emergence of economic progress based on education and on the achievements of science and technology, dissociated from each other, but allied to religions, which proposed to civilize barbarism and humanize the primitive peoples. Forever from the perspective of a better future but marked by the increasing verticalization and concentration of power in the colonizing countries. To a certain extent, it can be said that the prosperity of these countries was very dependent on the colonized countries’ rulers’ political subordination and on their “civilized plundering” in these distant and exotic worlds.

But postmodernity has posed more complex problems for humanity. It has imposed the need to reframe the foundations, meanings and operational mechanisms of economic development models and of the concept of citizenship. This civilizing framework definitely incorporated new symbolic representations in science and education policies, in the forms of work organization, and mainly in the social and ecological protection of the planet-with political and economic powers organizing themselves in horizontal and shared networks. Despite institutional distancing, public instruments have enabled greater media insertion of societies, valuing the daily lives of people and environments. This is a process that enables simultaneous access to short and long-time spans, to the past and to the present, in search of the contours of the memories of our families and ancestors. It offers possibilities for comparisons between before and after, in all social and economic classes. It reveals our habits, preferences, beliefs and ideological affinities. It also identifies the origins of misery and material riches.

Systemic integration between individuals, creative and productive processes, and ecological philosophy marks this era of humanity that proposes new forms of civilizational decompositions – that can unfold in ruptures or vice versa, but certainly based on the affirmation of human existence in its different classes and social conditions, and on the protection of natural environments. Through otherness, imagination and creativity, the Amazonia has taught us to survive during the long periods of the history of civilizations. Chiefdoms, reigns, monarchies and dictatorships have passed and been replaced by republics and democracies, and their destruction continues to be intensified, in a war of occupation and derogatory use – slow and atrocious-against their peoples and natural environments.

The Amazonia’s native peoples continue to resist and build new survival resilience and wisdom aimed at protecting their cultures and territories. Without their obstinate and heroic resistance, there would be no Amazonia. Presently, the full success of these initiatives also depends on our involvement in their cultural and ecological sustainability. The hypocrisy, stupidity and historical irresponsibility of predatory capitalism continue to conspire against the perennity of the Amazonia. The recurring murdering of their indigenous leaders; the flames of hatred that consume their forests, sending them in the form of ash and aerosols to other peoples; and the mercury, fungicides and germicides that poison their waters, flora and fauna continue to irreversibly destroy it.

Amazonia: National and International Solidarities

There are no vaccines to immunize and protect the Amazonia and the planet from the barbarities of predatory capitalism in a single and integrated world. Its sustainable development is one of the prerequisites for its survival in a political environment of great uncertainties and risks. This type of development will present new paths for it, for Brazil and for humanity. In this scenario, the implementation of a science and technology platform in the Amazonia for the construction of its sustainable development, based on its cultures and natural environments, is a complex challenge that needs to be met. The Amazonia is dying. Its transformation into a world heritage site is a historical necessity. Tomorrow may be too late. The cultural and ecological protection of the Amazonia needs all national and international solidarities to come together. Next, a requiem for the Amazonia is presented.

Requiem to the Amazonia

was God who created the World

Heavens and earth

Created the suns, the light

The stars and the planets

Created also rivers

And the seas

The days, the nights and the years

Fauna and flora

It was God who created nature

Winds, rains and climates

The seasons, the fish

The birds and all living beings

It was God who created Man

Woman and the snake

Created scents, tastes

Pleasure and love

It was God who created the World

The Humans and the Amazonia

It was God who created food

Religions and justice

Science and wisdom

Created Humans in his own image

It was God who created immortality

Hope and the belief

Of the blessed

The joy of children

Blessed nature

Man and Woman

Their future descendants

And all creation

Before resting

Called the Woman “Ama”

The Man, “Zona”

And created the Garden of Eden

It was God

It was God who

Put “Ama” and “Zona”

In the Garden of Eden

Called this nature

“Amazonia” and prayed

For they to multiply

It was God who created the World

Humans and the Amazonia

Amazonia that generates lives

More than 250 people

More than 2,000 rivers

More than 15 thousand species of trees

Amazonia, the largest and most beautiful

Forest in the world

With its 400 billion trees

Protector of humanity

It was God who created the World

Humans and the Amazonia

Let’s pray

For the departure and permanent absence

Of its invaders

And for God to forgive its tormentors

Amazonia

Let’s sing your glories

Your virtues and your resistance

To the lords of wars

And to the destroyers of nature

Amazonia,

Queen of sustainability

Your tormentors will rest

In the world of darkness

Of unhappiness and eternal evil

Amazonia

The fires that destroyed you

Burning our dreams

Hopes and cultures

Will not be able to prevent

The birth of a new Amazonia

More exuberant and generous

With its peoples and humanity

It was God who created the World

Humans and the Amazonia

And expelled covid-19

From its guts

It was God who created the World

The Amazonia and the Amazonas River

And its sacred waters

That irrigate our hearts

Amazonia our eternal love

The author thanks Ms. Mary Grace Fighiera Perpetuo for the competent translation of this essay.

a) Marcílio de Freitas is a retired Professor of the Department of Physics at the Federal University of Amazonas. Recent publications: Main author: “Who Will Save Amazonia? World Heritage or Full Destruction”, Nova Science Publishers, NY, 2021; “The Future of Amazonia in Brazil; A Worldwide Tragedy”, Peter Lang Publishing, NY, 2020.