The first thing that hits you when you step off the airplane in Maraba is the smoke. It stings your mouth, throat, and eyes. At 6:30 a.m. it’s quite a poignant olfactory indication that you’re in the Amazon. The drive from Maraba to Eldorado das Carajas is equally sobering: environmental devastation and social inequality could simply not be written larger into the landscape. One passes giant gated fazendas (cattle ranches-think Ted Turner scale), eucalyptus plantations, and encampments of MST activists and other social movements literally along the side of the road. Against this social backdrop, or perhaps the environmental context of it, is sprawling cattle ranches, fragments of secondary forest succession and the occasional live castanha tree, a remnant from a Dr. Seuss story of long ago.
Upon reaching Eldorado das Carajas (a 1.5 hour drive from Maraba) it’s time for some excitement! Banjo across my knees (don’t call me Susannah), and backpack on, I climb on the back of a motorcycle (a moto-taxi) and head up the hour-long rutted dirt road to the settlement. It’s equally as sobering as the section from Maraba, but harder on the body…it took two days for my back to feel normal (something about holding on to the motorcycle, banjo and backpack wasn’t quite natural). And then, when you don’t think you can hold on any longer..one reaches the 17 de Abril settlement.
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