The Bolivian Amazon is burning once again, as it does every year around these months when slash-and-burn practices begin and some get out of control, devouring forests, animals, and lately even homes of indigenous communities, putting human lives at risk—those fleeing from the fire and those combating it, locals, and also outsiders who have come to provide assistance.
However, some believe that the fire is intentional, part of a dark and sinister plan designed to destroy the jungle and its crucial biodiversity, an obstacle to those who wish to carry out extractive activities in these areas, such as mining, oil exploration, or mechanized agriculture.
The truth is that among the indigenous people who have been living amidst the smoke and fire for the past 40 days in San Buenaventura, there is fear: What will we eat now that our crops have been reduced to ashes? Where will we sleep now that our homes have disappeared? And perhaps the most unsettling question: What will happen when our forests, everything around us, have vanished?
Every year there is fire, and the jungle in this region is rapidly advancing towards its end.
«There are people who want to clear the land, who want our gold, extract our wood, and establish large monocultures,» says the head of the community called Bella Altura, Darío Mamio, pointing directly at the national government with anger and helplessness, as if Luis Arce’s administration would have ignited the match for this entire disaster. «It is very difficult to fight against a big enemy that should be our protector. The same State that is supposed to protect us is harming us.»
Bella Altura is a community in the municipality of San Buenaventura that is suffering from the fires. Its inhabitants have gone from breathing «the purest air» every day to the most suffocating smoke. They watch with desperation what has happened to their neighbors in Buena Vista, where properties burned down the day before (today is Sunday), and they had to evacuate children and the elderly for fear that the fire might take human lives.
«We have seen how they want to suffocate us because they want to plant coca, because they want our gold, because they want our oil,» Mamio continues, with red eyes not from the smoke but from the anger inside him, as if it were seeking a way out, as if words alone are not enough for him. «It seems that the government wants to say, ‘Well, these forests are no longer useful, let’s change their land use, now it’s for agriculture, for biodiesel.’ Once our territory is burned, what will it be good for? It’s a helplessness and rage that one feels! In one way or another, they try to force us, the indigenous people, to say, ‘Well, here is my territory, I can’t do anything more with it, or here is Madidi Park, it really serves no purpose, it has burned, now let the miners in.»
Mamio holds back tears, as if he wants to transcend the screens of the mobile phones that a group of journalists have placed in front of him to record his words.
Buena Vista
It’s Sunday, midday. Less than 24 hours ago, the fire dealt a new blow to the community. It didn’t seem possible; the enemy was 500 meters away, but suddenly, it was just around the corner. And the nightmare began. Smoke surrounded the entire village, and flames reached the houses. One of the houses on a corner of the dirt field was reduced to ashes, leaving only shreds of a melted shower and a charred vehicle that seems like a decoration from a post-apocalyptic movie.
Another house has its entire backyard burned; the coop where they had chickens and the trees around it are blackened. A child with a backpack full of water squirts a black spot on the ground from which flames still emerge, and it smokes and smokes, as if the tree roots were also burning. The child’s mother explains that they hurriedly took all the furniture out of the house yesterday, sensing that they wouldn’t save the house.
«We’ve been asking for help from the authorities for over 40 days, but they turn a deaf ear,» says Jorge Canamari, president of the Indigenous Council of the Tacana People (CIPTA). «Or are they seeking the extinction of indigenous peoples? Whether they like it or not, we will fight with our lives so that indigenous peoples do not go extinct, so that our protected areas do not disappear, nor our territory.
Canamari has been sacrificing days of effort, combating the fires as best he can, complaining about the apparent inaction of the government and local authorities. He travels back and forth between towns in a blue truck, along with his wife, his son, a man who drives and also rants against the authorities, and a thirsty parrot that seems to be missing feathers on its head, tiny, like a tender morsel for the scrawny dogs that roam around.
They are delivering supplies and some essentials to another community, Altamarani, besieged by fire, about 30 minutes north and still part of the municipality of San Buenaventura. But their journey is interrupted when they spot another house on fire.
«That house is burning!» Canamari shouts, while the driver honks like crazy.
The women inside come out carrying dirty dishes. Soldiers dressed in camouflage emerge from behind the trees and other houses as if they had been waiting there for the worst. They carry buckets of water that they fill from barrels a few meters away. They throw it from below. They climb on the motacú roof to quell the flames. It becomes a commotion, and within seconds, dozens of people join the effort.
«Water! Water!» everyone shouts, but there is no water. The tap next to the house is dry. The water supply is not continuous, and the drought hits the entire area hard. It hasn’t rained for weeks.
By the time a rustic cistern (a rusty metal tank) pulled by a tractor arrives, the fire has already been brought under control, and the experienced alarm among the population has subsided. Two volunteer firefighters who have just arrived at the scene are lying under a small tree, panting in the intense and stifling heat.
On the way to Altamarani, the driver of the blue truck laments, «Damn, it seems like it’s raining fire,» as he sees columns of smoke rising from one side and the other on the horizon. He is right; it seems like hotspots have spread everywhere, like an uncontrolled infection in the suffering jungle. «It’s like God is punishing us. He’s really punishing us. Damn, there’s no desire to live, really.»
The scene is devastating. Beyond words description. Smoke everywhere, fire along the road. Black and white columns rising in all directions. Unbearable heat above 40 degrees. Dry, parched vegetation without water. The brown and yellow colors replacing the green of the trees and plants. And near Altamarani, more deforestation: hectares and hectares of jungle destroyed to plant sugarcane for the San Buenaventura mill.
Drought
The heat is infernal in this community. Roxana Añez, 52, recalls that when she arrived as a teenager in this settlement to start a family with her husband, gigantic trees provided shade in a dense forest where food could be easily found. But that’s in the past, and now the vegetation is dry and thirsty, suffocated by the smoke.
«I would like President Arce to remember us, because we are very concerned about these fires. I don’t know what is happening. We want the government to remember the La Paz department, San Buenaventura; we need support to extinguish the fires.», she said.
Añez is sitting in a room with a flattened dirt floor, a corrugated metal roof, and walls of blue and white painted wood. Outside, community members have arranged jerry cans and buckets of water to act quickly in case of any eventuality. Canamari brought them several packages of bottled water (formerly their main source of drinking water was the Beni River, now completely contaminated), work gloves, hoes, chicken meat, rice, sugar, and noodles. These supplies will help alleviate hunger a bit, and Añez is grateful, «even if it only lasts a few days,» as they have not received any other support from local or national governments.
The mayor does not come here, and they don’t even know who the governor will be.
The residents have neglected their food production to fight the fires, but also because they can no longer harvest as before—there simply is no water.
«It saddened me a lot to see a woman whose entire production burned after working on it for three years. She fell to her knees crying. It’s a pain that one experiences every day,» says Darío Mamio, from Bella Altura.
«Here, it hasn’t rained, and the crops haven’t sprouted. We have no rice, yucca, corn—nothing related to agriculture. We have nothing,» adds Delmira Mamio, from the same community.
A few hours ago, as these lines are being written, President Arce urged the population to stop slash-and-burn practices and to implement «clean technologies» to «prevent the continued devastation of our forests and irreversible environmental damage.»
However, the indigenous people in this region are skeptical. Despite all the evidence pointing to uncontrolled slash-and-burn as the cause of the fire, they insist that there is something more behind this catastrophe. They point to the government’s already announced plans to expand oil exploration in the Amazon and produce biofuels. They also point to the relaxation of regulations in favor of gold mining cooperatives, which have been devastating the northern La Paz region, leaving destruction and pollution in their wake, and extracting natural resources for the benefit of a few and the detriment of many.
