Amazon travel guide

Over the years, these claims of an undiscovered civilisation have been largely talked down to tales of bravado. But more recent research suggests that Orellana wasn’t exaggerating. Contrary to the popular opinion that the Amazon has always been a sparsely populated, untouched wilderness, many millions of people may once have made their homes here.

Orellana wrote about interconnected villages that spanned thousands of miles – hard to imagine when such sights were never talked about again. Although there is still some debate about how many people lived here before the arrival of Europeans, what isn’t up for dispute is the devastation wrought by the invaders: mass genocide and foreign diseases devastated populations. In fact, a study published by University College London in 2019 argues that the combined depopulation of South and Central America, following colonisation, was so great that it led to a change in the Earth's climate.

In subsequent centuries, European explorers delved ever deeper into the rainforest, panning for gold and looking for slaves. Many indigenous people were trapped in the booming rubber trade, forced to work as tappers, while the industry attracted further immigration and expanded colonised areas of South America. The bubble collapsed after rubber trees, originally discovered and used by Amazonian tribes, were smuggled out of Brazil to London. Despite a brief revival in business during World War II, Brazil's days of a rubber monopoly were done. 

Brazil, in particular, has traditionally been afraid of the Amazon falling into foreign hands. One of the official slogans of its 1970s military dictatorship was ‘Integrar para não entregar’ – 'use it or lose it’. Roads, including the enormous and still-unfinished Trans-Amazonian Highway, were cut through the rainforest to conquer its untouched territories, feeding further deforestation and destroying wildlife habitats. The poor fertility of rainforest soil meant that farms established using slash-and-burn methods were forced to constantly clear new areas for crops and eventually pastures for cattle. The discovery of oil only opened the Amazon up to further exploitation.

By the early 2000s, deforestation was taking place on a colossal scale. Over a ten year period, an average of nearly 20,000km2 was disappearing annually, an amount much greater than we see today. In 2004, a combination of government bans, consumer boycotts (lead by the likes of Greenpeace) and agricultural improvements led to a decline in deforestation. Farmers were forced to preserve 80 percent of their land as forest and the government, at the time led by President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, brought in rewards and financial punishments for illegal clearing. Stopping deforestation became a priority and, as a result, it plummeted.

In 2009, Lula called on rich western countries to pay for the protection of the Amazon. He pointed out the hypocrisy of demanding that Amazon nations halt deforestation after already razing their own forests to the ground. An advocate of its preservation, he nonetheless reminded them of the 30 million people who lived in, and whose survival depended on profits from, the rainforest. 

Only Norway, Germany and Petrobras, a Brazilian petrol multinational, donated to the Amazon Fund. Despite this, deforestation remained relatively stable until 2019, when its sharp rise coincided with the election of Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro. 

Many hold the president, and his current policies, responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon. Shortly after his election, he made it known that he planned to exploit the resources of the rainforest and roll back environmental protection and indigenous rights, stating: “not one centimetre will be demarcated for indigenous reserves or quilombolas”. Bolsonaro has regularly dismissed scientific evidence concerning the impact of the fires, he sacked the chief of the research programme investigating deforestation and has rejected global criticism while accusing the west of having a ‘colonial mindset’ and interfering with Brazil’s affairs.

Forest fires affect the Amazon every year; sometimes they’re sparked by natural causes but more commonly they’re started by farmers and loggers looking to quickly clear an area. By August 2019, these fires were so extensive that the smoke, which had travelled 3000km, caused a midday blackout in São Paulo and could be seen from space. Protestors took to the city’s streets, calling for the resignation of Brazil’s environment minister and the boycott of Brazilian beef, while similar protests took place across South America and in major cities worldwide. 

Heavy rain and international pressure had extinguished many of the fires by October 2019 and news coverage waned, yet the Amazon is far from saved. Because while our TV screens focused on burning trees, a much bigger problem had been growing. Large scale illegal logging, often done in secret on protected lands, is the real threat to the rainforest. Unchecked and supported by local mafia groups, it is responsible for the deaths of environmental workers, indigenous people and anyone who stands in its way. 

Today, the same illnesses brought over by conquistadors in the 1300s are still the largest threat to indigenous people, while dams, illegal logging, mines and roads claim more land and lives. Of the estimated 11-50 million indigenous inhabitants living in the Amazon in the 1500s, only 9,000 now remain. 

Between 1970 and 2018, a total of 792,051km² of the Amazon rainforest was lost, equivalent to an area of land larger than Turkey.