Unstoppable

Thirty years ago, when travelling from Marabá to São Félix do Xingu, you'd embark on a 500km-trip through dense jungle. Two weeks ago, when I repeated this same trip, I kept looking out of the window waiting to see this beautiful dark forest in all its frightening majesty. But all I saw was farmland and cattle. 500 kilometers of forest were simply gone. Nothing had remained. Before this trip by bus, while flying over the Amazon forest between Carajás and Marabá, I saw a forest full of ugly wounds inflicted by mining companies. Man was everywhere, and man was destroying everything, it seemed.
While in São Félix, I made two trips upriver up to the border of the Kayapó-reservation. The image repeated itself here: Farms cut into the jungle and already invading Indian territory. But I also saw something else: People - Brazilians - deeply worried about the future of their environment. They occupy still untouched islands and small strips of land at the margins of the river, build small huts and hire somebody to live there and scare away possible invaders who want to cut down the trees. They use these islands as getaways on weekends, some build small hotels with 4 or 5 rooms for tourists who want to spend their holidays in the middle of and in harmony with nature. 
It is impossible to stop the advance of civilization, they say. People have to live, and we understand that. But we also believe that there are ways of co-existence. We don't have to destroy everything in our legitimate effort to survive. Truth is, when we kill nature we're killing ourselves. 
This movement is still small, but it is a sign of hope. People who have shown no concern with environment in the past are now waking up to the fact that they need to protect the very thing that sustains them. 
The real danger to the forest, however, doesn't come from the poor who just want enough to survive. It's the farmers and mining companies who destroy everything in their pursuit of money, and they are now closing in and already invading native territories - with the blessings and support of federal government. 
The effects on the Indians are devastating (I will talk more about this tomorrow). 
The shadows of man's progress are everywhere. And the shadows of the trees that offer man a place to rest are getting rare.