Сhapter SEVEN
WHEN I WAS A BOY, I would sneak a peek at Dad's adventure magazines, which carried tales of true-life adventures in exotic places. The ones that would make my heart beat wildly described the Amazon, a place I yearned to visit.
I loved reading about the Indians who wore feather headdresses, their bodies painted in patterns blending with the dappled light beneath the tree canopy as they hunted for game with blowpipes and arrows tipped with deadly poisons. In the 1940s there were still many parts of the globe that had not been explored by people from the industrialized world; the Amazon rain forest remained a vast and mysterious ecosystem, rife, according to the magazines, with terrifying diseases and parasites. Piranhas and giant anacondas filled the rivers; jaguars and armies of deadly ants lurked in the forest. These terrors were balanced by the spectacles of colorful parrots and dazzling butterflies and, most of all, beetles. I had fallen madly in love with insects, but beetles especially held me in thrall.
In 1988, at the age of fifty-two, I had my chance to realize my boyhood dreams. In August, The Nature of Things with David Suzuki crew traveled to Brazil to begin filming for a special program on the rain forest's ecosystem. A month later, filled with anticipation, I flew to the outpost of Pôrto Velho, capital of the state of Rondônia, to hook up with the crew. But my first glimpse of the legendary forests was bittersweet: we were there to bear witness to its destruction.
For years, Brazil's urban poor had been promised opportunities in the Amazon under the slogan “Land without people, for people without land.” They had flooded into remote villages in the rain forest, cutting trees to make into charcoal as fuel for factories and to clear land to cultivate crops, which grew for only a year or two in the meager soil. Then the peasants were forced to leave their plots and move on, taking their poverty and malaria with them, as they continued the cycle of burn and cut to plant crops for another year or two.
When I caught up with the crew in Rondônia, they had not been able to take aerial shots because smoke from the burning forest was so thick it was too hazardous for airplanes to take off. I was excited to be there, depressing as the scene was, but the team was demoralized by what they had filmed—poverty, malnutrition, malaria, and children so painfully thin the crew ended up giving them money for medicine and food.
The red soil that had so recently been cloaked with an ancient forest was now exposed in fields that barely supported a pitiful crop of vegetables inadequate for the needs of the large families. Immense trees were cut down without a thought for their ecological role or the organisms they supported (Harvard's E.O. Wilson records that he found more genera of ants on a single tree in the Amazon than are found in the entire United Kingdom).
One of the most destructive activities in the Amazon is the cutting of huge trees to be burned anoxically in sealed ovens to produce charcoal. We filmed dozens of domes in which the wood smoldered to be rendered into lightweight, high-energy fuel, which was then piled in sacks. Magnificent trees were reduced to skeletal pieces of charcoal in pile after pile. I found this devastating. I knew I was witnessing an ecological holocaust, a crime against future generations who would never know the full wonder of this magnificent ecosystem.
We filmed endless scenes of burning—trees, fields, whole forests going up in smoke. At one point we were searching a burn and drove down a narrow road, which suddenly ended in a pond. Rudi Kovanic and the crew lugged their gear around the pond to film the fire on the other side. Since I had plenty of time before I had to appear on-camera, I pulled out my fishing rod and cast toward some logs in the water. On shoots like this, where we were filming scenics rather than interviews with scientists, I might do only one or two stand-ups in a day, so I had a lot of time to stand around and watch. That's why, when we encountered water, I often would pull out my rod and reel and see what might be caught. This time, surrounded by the desolation of burning, I did not expect to catch anything, but at least I had something to do.
I felt a strike on my first cast and watched a beautiful tucunare, a peacock bass that is green and has a characteristic spot on its tail, hit the lure and leap into the air. Tucunare are aggressive predators and attack a lure violently, then fight like mad. They are also one of the most exquisite-tasting freshwater fish I've eaten. When the crew got back to the car, I could promise them a wonderful meal of fresh fish. But I was sure there would be no tucunare left a year or two later, even if there was still water, because the forest cover and the water cycle were being so disrupted by the destruction going on. It was with mixed feelings that I fed the crew—I love fishing and eating fresh fish, but here I was part of a “terminal fishery.”
A crew member who liked to fish was Terry Zazulak, the camera assistant. One night, when we were ensconced in a shack for the night near the Amazon River, we decided to hike to the river and try fishing. It gets dark suddenly and early—6:00 PM—near the equator, and we soon found ourselves squinting in the fading light. The river was flowing very fast, and our gear was too light to sink far enough below the surface to attract a fish. I couldn't see where my lure landed and the river was too noisy to hear it plunk into the water. I began retrieving my lure, then realized the line wasn't coming up out of the water toward me but seemed to be floating in the air. I reeled in faster, wondering whether I had snagged a branch, and felt a klunk. Reaching to the tip of the rod, I felt something furry. It was a bat! It must have swooped in on my lure and been hooked. As a young man, in 1957, I had caught a bat in the same way while fishing in the evening on a canoe trip in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario.
I thought back to the enchanting books Animal Treasure and Caribbean Treasure by Ivan Terence Sanderson, then curator of the St. Louis Zoo, about collecting specimens in exotic places, and the daydreams I had had of emulating those field trips when I grew up. According to Sanderson, the people on those expeditions would fire bb pellets into the air, and bats would nail the pellets in flight, knocking themselves out. Sanderson could simply pick them up to add to their collection. Here I had done the same thing with a fishing lure.
Over my decades in television, I've learned that filming in another country can be a huge hassle. No one wants to welcome into their community, or country, a crew that intends to portray them in a bad way. People want to know the purpose of the film, what we intend to show, who we will interview, and so on. Often we have to tiptoe our way through government bureaucracy, red tape, demands for baksheesh, and exchange of money in the black market. We usually have to operate in the local language to make arrangements for planes, hotels, cars, porters, and so forth. When the crew comprises host, producer, researcher/writer, cameraperson, camera assistant, soundperson, and lighting person, along with forty heavy bags of luggage (some metal trunks), a tough and savvy local agent is required to organize it all.
In Brazil, that individual was Juneia Mallus, who was as opinionated and tough as anyone I've ever met. She clashed frequently with members of the crew, but she did a fabulous job. When we said we needed to film an indigenous person who could articulate the importance of the forest and show us through his or her community, Juneia knew who it should be: an extraordinary man she had worked with before—Paiakan, a Kaiapo Indian.
Paiakan
We were to meet Paiakan in the Kaiapo village of Gorotire, which was once reachable only by trails but now had a road from the outside. But “road” is a misnomer. The Amazon is a rain forest, and as we were driving our large truck in, rain converted the road into a slimy red slash through the forest. What was supposed to be an all-day drive turned into an agonizing day and night of grinding our way, slipping and spinning and slumping. John Crawford, our longtime soundman, turned into a heroic figure, driving during the entire ordeal.
I remember clambering out of the back in utter darkness and, scared stiff, creeping on hands and knees along the trunk of a tree, one of two tire tracks across a deep gorge. Somehow John guided that truck on those two thin trunks without slipping into certain death below. Horrific as the road was, it was nevertheless the opening for the influx of “civilized” products—white bread, candy, beer, liquor, tobacco—that pollute the community we were approaching.
Disgusted with what that road had done to this village, Paiakan pulled out and moved far into the forest to establish a new village where his people could continue to live traditionally. After a long search, Paiakan had found the perfect place on a low bluff overlooking a river filled with fish. He called the community Aucre (Ah-oo-cray), apparently named after the sound a certain fish makes when caught. About two hundred people had decided to follow Paiakan and live in Aucre. But he was to meet us in Gorotire.
It was early evening and we were relaxing in a hut in the village when Paiakan came by. He was husky, of medium height, with Prince Valiant–style, jet-black hair. He was controlled when he met us—not suspicious, but curious. Who were we and what did we want? All of our conversation had to be funneled through Juneia in Portuguese, the official language of Brazil, which Paiakan had acquired as a teenager and now spoke fluently. Juneia introduced him to all of us, but when he looked at me and heard my name, David, his face brightened in a broad smile. Perhaps he was showing respect because I was the host of the program? I learned later there was a more compelling reason.
While a teenager living at a Catholic mission, Paiakan was befriended by a Brazilian Japanese medical doctor named David, or “Davi” in Portuguese. This doctor went out of his way to help the Kaiapo and became a trusted friend. Paiakan said that encountering a second “Japanese” with the same name as his early mentor and friend seemed auspicious and more than coincidental. The Brazilian David had exhibited a great affection for the Kaiapo Indians; because of him, Paiakan trusted me. I have always felt grateful to Dr. David for making my entry into Paiakan's life so straightforward.
Juneia told us Paiakan's story, and it was remarkable. Paiakan's father, Chikiri, is a chief. For his first fourteen years, Paiakan had lived a totally traditional life, as his ancestors had done for thousands of years, hunting and gathering according to knowledge acquired and passed on for many generations.
But even the immensity of the Amazon rain forest was not enough to protect the Kaiapo from the encroachments of the brancos (Europeans). The Kaiapo could smell the fires and were beginning to see extensive gold-mining pollution in some of the big rivers. Paiakan realized he had to learn more about the encroachers. At seventeen, he went to the Catholic mission, where he learned Portuguese and some Brazilian culture. After he learned to write, he promptly wrote a book about the forest as his home. Paiakan could have moved to a city and become an urban Indian, but he had no desire to be assimilated. He wanted to learn enough to protect the traditional ways, and he moved back to his village.
Not long afterward, in 1985, the Kaiapo learned that a giant gold-mining operation had opened in their territory. I have heard many versions of what followed. Most agree on this story: Paiakan led a party of warriors to find out what was happening. For days the dozens of men traveled on foot, and finally they came to an immense clearing where thousands of miners were housed. Daunted at first, the warriors waited till late at night. They decided that one group would take control of the airstrip, where several light planes were parked; another group would take over the guard tower, which held men armed with machine guns.
The signal was given. Attack! Most of the guards were fast asleep, confident they had nothing to fear deep in the Amazon. The battle was brief. Shocked, confused, confronted with Indians in war paint, the guards surrendered. The Kaiapo turned on the floodlights and ran along the barracks, pounding on the walls to call on the workers to gather. Once the men assembled, the Kaiapo fired the guards' machine guns over their heads and told them to leave Kaiapo territory. I cannot imagine the turmoil those miners felt that night as they fled into the dark forest.
Kaiapo warrior policing the gold mine
The next day, some miners returned to try to retake the camp but were severely beaten by the Kaiapo, who held the camp for months. The Brazilian government was helpless, since the Kaiapo-controlled airstrip was the only access to the camp. Paiakan was invited to Brasília to negotiate with the government. Finally, he brokered a deal. The government desperately wanted to get the planes back but refused to shut down the gold mine.
It was a placer mine; the sandy soil was blasted with pressure hoses and filtered through screens, and then mercury was added to capture the gold. It is an ecologically invasive process that pollutes rivers with toxic mercury. Since the river was already polluted and spoiled, the Kaiapo decided they would permit the mining to continue on the conditions that they would receive a royalty of 5 percent on all gold recovered, that warriors would police the camp, that they would examine all goods flying in and out, and that there would be no women, firearms, or alcohol on the site.
We later filmed the mining site, and it was quite remarkable to see the warriors police the site, clad only in shorts, with bows and arrows as their weapons. There I met an elder whose hair was still jet-black. I was fifty-two and my hair had started to turn gray, but it was clear he was a lot older than me. He asked me how old I was, and I responded with a question, “How old do you think I am?” Back came his humbling answer: “Seventy?”
Paiakan had achieved an incredible victory. He became the acknowledged leader of the community; when he decided to move to Aucre, many people went with him. Paiakan had noticed that when he negotiated with government officials or miners, they would say one thing to him in private but another to the press or the public. This discrepancy angered him, so he bought a video camera to film all encounters with officials. Initially I thought it weird that this traditional Indian was fussing with a video camera, but soon I realized it was his insurance against the forked tongue of the brancos.
DARRELL POSEY WAS AN American professor at Oxford University and a leading cultural anthropologist who had lived with and studied the Kaiapo for years and was accepted by them. In January 1987, he invited Paiakan and his cousin, Kube-i, to attend a scientific conference in Florida. It was at that conference and on their first trip to a foreign country that Paiakan and Kube-i learned of Plano 2010, Brazil's grand scheme to build a series of dozens of massive dams in the Amazon rain forest, including several on the Xingu River. At a cost of US$10.6 billion, they would flood 18.7 million acres of forest, 85 percent of it Indian land. Paiakan's accidental discovery of Brazilian plans for his territory was reminiscent of what First Nations have experienced in Canada.
After the Florida meeting, Posey took the two Kaiapo to Washington, where they met American politicians to describe the new threat to their lands, looking for advice and support. The World Bank was considering a loan of $500 million to Brazil to build the dams, so Posey took Paiakan and Kube-i to World Bank headquarters to discuss the implications of the first dam, at Altamira, on the Kaiapo people. The media loved the two exotic Indians and gave them a lot of coverage.
Not surprisingly, the Brazilian government was enraged, and when Paiakan and Kube-i returned to Brazil, they were arrested for “criticizing Brazilian Indian policy” and for “denigrating the country's image abroad.” The excuse used to arrest them was a Brazilian law that forbids foreigners from getting involved in issues of Brazilian interest. Here were two aboriginal people, whose ancestors had inhabited the forests long before there was a Brazil, being arrested as aliens.
Paiakan and Kube-i were arraigned for trial in the fall of 1988 in Belém. Meanwhile, Paiakan developed a plan to fight the dams. He decided that the Indian tribes who lived in the area to be flooded had to be informed and galvanized into protest. But how could this be done? They lived in some of the most isolated areas of Brazil, and many tribes were hostile to their neighbors.
Ironically, in a serious faux pas, Brazilians had chosen a Kaiapo war cry, Kararao, as the name of the first dam. It must have steeled the opposition. Paiakan wanted a motorboat to travel up the river to contact people and unite them in a fight to stop the dams. He wanted to coax those people out of the forest to roads and buses and transport them to the very site of the proposed dam near Altamira. There they would build a traditional village for the first gathering of the indigenous people of the Amazon. He had conceived of an event that would attract the world media and embarrass Brazil. It was a brilliant strategy, worthy of the most savvy Greenpeace stunt. This is what he had already cooked up when I met him in Gorotire.
THAT NIGHT, AS WE exchanged thoughts through Juneia, Paiakan was sizing me up.
The camera crew were to fly into Aucre in a couple of days, but Paiakan wanted to fly back to Aucre with his wife, Irekran, before the rest of the team. The extra flight would cost several hundred dollars. Nancy Archibald as the producer was worried about the cost overruns we were already racking up and refused to pay. I could see Paiakan and Irekran were anxious to go early, so I offered to pay the money and asked if I could go in with them. Nancy agreed, and the meeting broke up.
The next day, after some of the dancing staged by the women in Gorotire had been filmed, Paiakan, Irekran, and I took off for Aucre. As the plane leveled off, I had a moment of panic as I realized I would be spending the next days in a village where only Paiakan spoke any language other than Kaiapo and that was Portuguese, which I didn't understand. He had learned one English phrase: “Let's go, Dave.” What if something happened and I couldn't communicate with anyone? I would be in the middle of an immense wilderness with no way to communicate with the outside world.
My panic quickly passed, however, as I was swept up in the wonder of the adventure, my childhood dream come true. After an hour's flight over endless, pristine forest, a clearing came into view. I saw an oval ring of huts by a stream, the Rio Zinho, “little river.” A thin cleared track was our runway. We bounced along the stubble to a halt, and the plane was mobbed by what seemed like the entire village.
The women were naked except for beaded necklaces and bracelets, their bodies were painted with black patterns, and their faces were bright red with dyes from plants. Their eyebrows had been plucked, and a triangular area from their foreheads to the crown of their heads was shaved clean. Many of the men, whose bodies were also painted, wore flip-flops, shorts, and headdresses of brilliantly colored feathers. The naked children were painted and bore large holes in their earlobes from wooden plugs. None wore labrets (wooden disks inserted into the lower lip), but many adult men sported holes below their lower lips through which drool dripped. The women wailed in a high-pitched keening, eyes weeping and noses running, to let the arrivals know how much they had been missed. It was astounding to see people like the ones in Dad's magazines. Those had fueled my childhood dreams; these were the real thing.
I was an object of great interest, especially to the children, who had no inhibitions. They jostled about, pushing each other away and bumping into me as they tried to keep a frontline eye on me. Adolescent boys picked up the gear without being told, and we walked in the blazing sun toward Paiakan's hut. The inside of the hut was dark, enclosed by walls of sticks sealed with mud and covered with a thatched roof. A half partition divided the hut, with one side used for hammocks and the other for cooking and eating, and there we hung out.
Paiakan knew I was hot and sweaty. First things first—we walked along a path for a hundred yards until it fell steeply to the river. There women sat on the bank in the shade, putting dough balls onto hooks,
Kaiapo woman in Gorotire prepared to dance
which they threw out into the pool as bait to catch coarse-looking chublike fish called piau. Children dived into the same pool; others dipped metal pots into collecting pools, where clear water seeped out of the riverbank. The girls and women plunged into the pool and, cupping their hands, chanted and slapped the water in a rhythmic song.
It was overwhelmingly idyllic to my North American eye. The water was warm, but it was a wonderful relief from the humid heat. I did wonder about piranhas and learned the next day that people caught them in this same pool. The horrifying tales of piranhas attacking and consuming horses, reducing men to bone in a matter of minutes, turned out to be jazzed-up stories for the adventure magazines I'd loved. I'd also heard about the candiru, the tiny, parasitic catfish that homes in on urea leaking from fish and swims right into the unsuspecting anal pores. I knew the rumor that candiru may follow a trail of urine dribbling from human orifices and swim up urethras. Catfish have sharp spines on their pectoral and dorsal fins, and it is said that the pain of a candiru is beyond belief. Somehow I managed to suppress all such thoughts and just enjoy the scene.
Once my hammock was hung in Paiakan's hut, I wandered around the village circle, looking in doorways and waving at people lying in hammocks or working on chores. On some of the thatched roofs were tethered parrots that I suspect were the source of some of the feathers in headdresses. In the center of the clearing was a covered, wall-less structure where the men gathered to gossip, smoke, weave shoulder bands in which women carried infants, and create the feather ornaments. Their pipes were wicked-looking structures carved out of wood, with a straight stem opening out into a wider bowl where the tobacco was placed. The smoke must have rushed right into the lungs of the smoker. I was glad I had given up smoking a long time ago.
All around the village was forest. In the understory, useful plants such as bananas, pineapples, and cassava could be seen. Agroforestry is the deliberate modification of the forest by people, a practice that has gone on for thousands of years. When Europeans arrived in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, they found what they assumed were pristine wild forests. But it turns out these apparently natural forests had been modified. Villages would be built at the perimeter of wild forests. Over time, plants and trees would be gathered from the wild regions, taken to the villages, and deliberately planted in a perimeter zone to be used as needed. There could be hundreds of species in this zone, and that's why the diversity appeared to Europeans to reflect its wildness. Animals, too, came into the perimeter and were hunted for food. But the villagers knew it was the wild heartland that was the true source of their food.
I returned to Paiakan's hut as the sun approached the horizon. Inside, Irekran was cooking rice and beans in metal pots on the open fire, and in the center of the fire was a dead turtle just plopped on its back onto the coals. Irekran ladled rice and beans onto a tin plate as Paiakan grabbed a leg of the turtle, wrenched it off, and offered it to me. Clearly, it was considered the best part, as everyone watched me, anxiously anticipating an expression of gratitude appropriate to the honor. I smiled and bobbed my head, hoping they could see how happy I was. I had eaten snapping turtle before, when Dad had caught one and we killed and cooked it. As I remembered, the meat was very dark and . . . well, it was meat and it hadn't been too bad.
In the middle of the Amazon, I was hungry and any meat seemed fine. The only problem was that this leg was still pretty bloody and hardly cooked at all. Now, I'm Japanese and eat raw fish all the time, yet I couldn't help wondering what kind of parasites might be in a turtle in a tropical rain forest. But what really made it hard for me was the skin, which was covered in bumps and wrinkles that looked so . . . alive. And the claws, for some reason, really bothered me.
Nevertheless, I grabbed the leg by the claws and bit into the other end. Mmm, not bad. I really was hungry, and with the rice and beans it was great, but as soon as I finished the leg, a second one was plopped onto my plate—a real honor. I tried to attack this leg with the same gusto, only to have a third leg appear when I finished the second. That was it—I ate three legs and begged off the last one.
That night I lay in my hammock, listening to the steady thrum of insects and the chirps of frogs from the surrounding forest, the gentle snores and breathing of Paiakan's family all around me. I felt so far away from anything I knew. This was the realization of dreams I had held for forty years.
It had still been warm when we crawled into the hammocks, so I'd stretched out the thin sleeping bag I brought and lay on top of it. I fell asleep but woke up surprised to be shivering. The night had cooled right down, and I was so grateful to climb into the bag for the rest of the night.
The next morning, using sign language and gestures honed from playing charades, I found the latrine. It was a narrow, open pit that one straddled, partially hidden behind a woven screen. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, don't look into the open pit—the image of a mass of writhing maggots will sear your brain.
That morning we ate rice and beans, and a fish someone had dropped off. Here in as remote a part of the Amazon as you could find, the impact of contact was obvious, from the shorts, T-shirts, and flipflops to pots, knives, and fishhooks. Paiakan's hut contained the detritus of his trips to the outside world—plastic toys and his video camera. Still, this was as self-sufficient a way of life as one can imagine. A fractured limb, infected cut, or illness would have to be treated according to traditional knowledge and the medical skills available in the village. Without refrigeration, food had to be gathered daily; but that was a satisfying activity, and the food was fresh and chemical free.
It was frustrating to be so isolated by the barrier of language. Hand signals and smiles transmit only the most basic of information. I love charades as a game, but not as a way of life. I couldn't even ask important questions like “How is the fishing?” or “Are there jaguars?” I was happy finally to hear a plane in the distance. Now one of the arrival committee, I scampered along with the other villagers to the airstrip and welcomed the crew.
After the CBC gang arrived, I had to write and memorize a couple of stand-ups while Juneia arranged for the Kaiapo women to perform a dance sequence in the clearing. It was a spectacular sight as the women, naked and painted from head to foot, chanted and danced in unison. At one point I looked over at Paiakan and realized he was directing them with hand signals. We interviewed Paiakan on-camera, asking him why he had moved his people here and what the forest meant to him, as Juneia translated his Portuguese for us. He was eloquent, and it was a very productive shoot.
Then Paiakan sat down with Juneia to talk to me about his plans to fight the dams. He asked me for help in raising money to take different tribe members to Altamira and to build the traditional village on the dam site. I had no choice but to promise I'd do the best I could. But if I were to raise funds, I realized a key question was: would he be willing to come to Canada himself? His presence would make all the difference. Si: he would come.
Soon we were on our way out of the village, crossing a sea of green that extended as far as we could see on both sides of the plane. I vowed I would return for a longer stay. After nearly an hour, we began to see thin wisps of smoke, clearings, and huts and eventually landed near Redenção, the nearest settlement, which would have taken thirteen days to reach if we had canoed.
As soon as I could, I phoned Tara. She says I had a catch in my throat as I related the threats to the forest. “You have to do something!” I told her. When she asked what, I told her about the Kaiapo and their charismatic leader, describing Paiakan's plan, his need for funds, and his promise to come to Canada to help raise money and the profile of the issues.
Kaiapo girls in Aucre before a festa
As I continued on my way for the remaining five weeks of the shoot, Tara sprang into action in Canada, organizing events in Toronto and Ottawa. In 1988, the Amazon was a hot topic. The scale of its destruction was on everyone's lips. With luck, Paiakan's visit would fuel public and press interest.
People were quick to lend a hand. In Toronto, Monte Hummel and the World Wildlife Fund offered support for a fund-raising event, and in Ottawa, Elizabeth May, who was now with the Sierra Club and had first rocketed into prominence fighting logging in Cape Breton, promised the same. Soon great plans were afoot.
The Amazon rain forest is immense. Although the ecosystem has been assaulted for decades by gold miners, loggers, peasants, and ranchers, most of it remains intact. As roads increase, however, at some point the integrity of the forest may become so diminished that it will no longer support its biodiversity.
On our shoot, we visited immense coal-mining operations where huge holes appeared in the forest. We visited the Balbina dam, which had flooded eight hundred square miles of forest and driven two tribes close to extinction, drowning untold numbers of animals and plants, yet silted up so rapidly that it was soon abandoned. A road through the forest is the greatest threat because it brings with it a flood of the landless poor, desperate to make a living and willing to destroy the forest to gain it. We interviewed representatives of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, who justified the need for roads to carry economic development into remote parts of Brazil.
After I left Brazil to return to Canada, our crew remained to interview Chico Mendes, the charismatic rubber tapper who had galvanized his cohorts to fight to protect the forest. Two weeks after we interviewed him, he was murdered. During the 1980s, over a thousand activists, including Mendes, Indians, and many Catholic priests, had been murdered in Brazil with impunity. But the murder of Chico Mendes backfired. In death, Mendes's fame grew: he became a martyr, a worldwide symbol of the consequences of corruption underlying the destruction of the Amazon.
ON OCTOBER 14, 1988, Paiakan and Kube-i were to be tried for their visit to Washington. I flew down to Belém to witness the trial. The courthouse was ringed with young soldiers armed with rifles, pistols, shields, bulletproof vests, and clubs. Buses rolled up and out stepped hundreds of Kaiapo warriors in feathers and paint, carrying sticks, clubs, and bows and arrows. These men lined up in rows six abreast and advanced on the courthouse, beating the sticks rhythmically, marching in unison to their chants and periodic grunts. When they reached the soldiers, they lined up. Each warrior faced a soldier, menacingly staring him in the eye. The soldiers looked straight ahead, but if I had been one of them, I would have wet my pants.
Paiakan and Kube-i then gave speeches outside the courthouse, as the warriors gathered round them and sat down. An old Kaiapo woman began to scream at the warriors. Darrell Posey translated some of what she said: “I call upon you to take up arms, to kill the whites, slaughter them! I'm coming here to speak to you, to call upon you in the name of your mothers and your fathers, all of us older people. I'm calling upon you! I throw my words in your faces. Have I come in vain? You sit here while the whites are crushing us.” The men sat there with their heads bowed. The same woman then turned to the soldiers ringing the courthouse and told them: “I am here to speak my anger at you! I am enraged with you. You sit there drawing maps of our land to steal it. But I tell you, we're going to beat you soundly in defence of our land!” Kaiapo women are truly ferocious.
Paiakan and Kube-i mounted the steps to enter the courthouse but were blocked for being “seminude.” The judge ruled that they must dress to show respect for Brazilian law. When Kubei-i replied that they were dressed in respectful traditional attire, which gave them power, the judge said they must follow Brazilian formalities and should strive to become Brazilians. Darrell Posey muttered to me, “That would be genocide.”
When the court wouldn't budge, Paiakan simply told the warriors they were leaving. He said that if the government wanted to try them, it would have to go to Aucre and get them. The Kaiapo men threw their drumming sticks onto the road, boarded the buses, and left without any interference from the soldiers. I picked up two sticks, which I still have as souvenirs of that encounter.
But no government officials would dare try to fly into the remote village, where they would be completely vulnerable. The case was eventually dropped because of the absurdity of the original charges.