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The Amazonian Tropics
The Selva, which includes the humid tropics of the Amazon jungle and
rivers, covers about 63 percent of Peru but contains only about 11
percent of the country's population. The region begins high in the
eastern Andean cloud forests, called the
ceja de montaña
(eyebrow of the jungle), or Montaña or Selva Alta, and descends with
the rush of silt-laden Andean rivers--such as the Marañon, Huallaga,
Apurímac, and Urubamba--to the relatively flat, densely forested,
Amazonian plain.
These
torrential rivers unite as they flow, forming the Amazon before
reaching the burgeoning city of Iquitos. Regarded as an exotic land
of mystery and promise throughout much of the twentieth century, the
Selva has been seen in Peru as the great hope for future
development, wealth, and the fulfillment of national destiny. As
such, it became President Fernando Belaúnde Terry's "Holy Grail" as
he devoted the energies of his two administrations (1963-68,
1980-85) to promoting colonization, development schemes, and highway
construction across the Montaña and into the tropical domain.
Human settlements in the Amazonian region are invariably 'riverine',
clustering at the edges of the hundreds of rivers and oxbow lakes
that in natural conditions are virtual fish farms in terms of their
productivity. The streams and rivers constitute a serpentine network
of pathways plied by boats and canoes that provide the basic
transport through the forest. Here, the Shipibo, Asháninka (Campa),
Aguaruna, and other tribes lived in relative independence from the
Peruvian state until the mid twentieth century. Although the native
people have cleverly exploited the extraordinary riverine
environment for at least 5,000 years, both they and the natural
system have been under relentless pressures of population,
extractive industries, and the conversion of forest into farm and
pasture. Amazonian forest resources are enormous but not
inexhaustible. Amazonian timber is prized worldwide, but when the
great cedar, rosewood, and mahogany reserves are cut, they are
rarely replaced.
Peru's tropics are also a fabled source for traditional medicinal
plants, such as the four types of domesticated coca, which are
prized through the entire Andean and upper Amazonian sphere, having
been widely traded and bartered for 4,500 years. Unfortunately,
coca's traditional uses as a beneficial drug for dietary, medical,
and ritual purposes, and, during the twentieth century, as a primary
flavoring for cola drinks have given way to illegal plantings on a
large scale for cocaine production. All of the new, illegal
plantations are located in Peru's upper Amazon drainage and have
seriously deteriorated the forests, soils, and general environment
where they exist. The use of chemical sprays and the widespread
clearing of vegetation to eliminate illegal planting has also
created unfortunate and extensive environmental side-effects.
In the early 1990s, the Selva was still considered an important
potential source for new discoveries in the medicinal, fuel, and
mineral fields. Petroleum and gas reserves have been known to exist
in several areas, but remained difficult to exploit.
All of these intrusions into the fragile Amazon tropics were fraught
with environmental questions and human dilemmas of major scale. In
this poorly understood environment, hopes and development programs
have often gone awry at enormous cost. In their wake, serious
problems of deforestation, population displacement, challenge to the
tribal rights of the native "keepers of the forest," endless
infrastructural costs, and the explosive expansion of cocaine
capitalism have emerged. |
