Tapajós

Abstract

“Tapajós” narrates the field campaign of two researchers studying forest fragmentation in the Brazilian Amazon. It addresses a contemporary conflict in the region, where an Indigenous people, the Munduruku, are resisting efforts by the Brazilian State to channelize the Tapajós River and exploit its hydropower potential. Development here represents an existential threat to the Munduruku, whose homeland resides in the river valley. It also represents an ecological threat to the global community. Although the rate of deforestation dropped after the turn of the millennium, it has begun to climb again and would no doubt accelerate with development in the Tapajós watershed and the opening of Central Amazonia to colonization and resource extraction. This would push the forest past its tipping point, a magnitude of deforestation capable of compromising rainfall recycling, and thus precipitating the transformation of the Amazonian forest into a patchwork of fireadapted shrubs and grasses. “Tapajós” describes how such an ecological catastrophe would occur. It also argues that the assertion of Indigenous territorial rights is key to the conservation of Amazonian biodiversity. The account unfolds against a background of conflict between Amazonia’s Indigenous peoples and the Brazilian State. In so doing, it brings to life the realities of frontier violence involving both land conflict and the unrestrained behaviors of individuals living outside the institutional constraints of law. Such violence complicates the execution of field research in the region and contributes to its gathering ecological crisis.