The UK has Susan Boyle, Brazil has Andressa Soares, AKA “The Watermelon Woman.” It’s just that singing isn’t the first thing that made her famous.

During my recent Brazil excursion to research the book I stopped in Salvador, without much of a specific agenda. I had long wanted to visit, mostly because the city and the surrounding state of Bahia, predominantly Afro-Brazilian, have had such a definitive influence on the country’s culture (from samba to candomblé and capoeira).

(Photo: Etica e Coragem/Ethics and Courage, Cf.)
As I finish up my work in Manaus and thereabouts, some last thoughts on current flashpoints of conflict, the resolution of which may point the way to the Amazon’s future—for better or worse.
In an area this vast, there, of course, are many disputes simmering at once: the drug-running that [...]

(Photo: Mateus in front of a squatter shack on his property, Cf.)
Mateus Cabral is from Sâo Gabriel de Cachoeira, a town of almost 40,000 on the frontier with Venezuela and Colombia. It’s an isolated place that takes a boat ride of four or five days upriver from Manaus to reach. The area around Sâo Gabriel [...]

(Photo: Cf.)
There are points where the river is so wide the distant shore appears to be little more than insignificant scrub, a slight, squiggly line of green. Sometimes, gazing up or downstream while in the middle of it, there’s hardly a horizon at all, just a vanishing point where water blurs into air and pools [...]

(Photo: Cf.)
Our boat floats up to Abrozinho’s dock, past a drowned tree, fútbol goal posts part-submerged, and a water-logged canoe. This is not uncharacteristic for the rainy season, as many ribeirinhos (river people) of Amazonia tend to settle on or near alluvial floodplains (várzea), living in floating houses, or, like Abrozinho, shanties erected on wood [...]

It’s shortly before midnight when we arrive at Manaus’ Sambódromo. The atmosphere outside the stadium is a bit Saturday night-at-the-rodeo meets samba party. Fireworks explode, the friends I’m with are already drunk and screaming nonsensically, and so too are many of the others streaming inside. A night of Boi Bumbá, the Amazonian version of Carnaval.