from: Dilwyn Jenkins: The
rough guide to Peru; Rough Guides, New York, London,
Delhi; 6th edition September 2006; www.roughguides.com
The continuous destruction
of the rain forest by gold mining and oil industry
A large forest region, with a manic climate (usually
searingly [very, very] hot and humid), but with sudden cold
spells - friajes - [coming from the high Andes] - between
June and August, due to icy winds coming down from the
Andean glaciers), the southern selva region of Peru have
only been systematically explored since the 1950s and were
largely unknown until the twentieth century, when rubber
began to leave Peru through Bolivia and Brazil, eastwards
along the rivers.
Named after the broad river [Río Madre de Dios] that flows
through the heart of the southern jungle, the still
relatively wild department of MADRE DE DIOS, like so many
remote areas of Peru, is changing rapidly. Living in one of
the last places affected by the rubber boom at the turn of
the twentieth century, the natives here - many of whom
struggle to maintain their traditional ways of life, despite
the continuing efforts of colonos and some of the less
enlightened Christian missionaries - were left pretty much
alone until the push for oil in the 1960s and 1970s brought
roads and planes, making this now the most accessible part
of the Peruvian rainforest. As the oil companies moved out,
so prospectors took their place, panning for gold dust along
the river banks, while agribusiness moved in to clear
mahagony trees or harvest the bountiful Brazil nuts.
Today the main problems facing the Indians, here as
elsewhere, are loss of territory, the merciless pollution of
their rivers [with mercury by gold mining], devastating
environmental destruction (caused mainly by large-scale
gold-mining) and new waves of oil exploration by
multinationals (p.541).
The gold damage in the
Madre de Dios rain forest
Every rainy season the swollen rivers deposit a heavy layer
of gold dust along their banks and those who have been quick
enough to stake claims on the best stretches have made
substantial fortunes. In such areas there are thousands of
unregulated miners, using large front-loader earth-moving
machines, destroying a large section of the forest, and
doing so very quickly. Gold-lust is not a new phenomenon
here - the gold-rich rivers (p.544)
have brought Andean Indians and occasional European
explorers to the region for centuries. Even the Incas may
well have utilized a little of the precious stuff - the Inca
Emperor Tupac Yupanqui is known to have discovered the Río
Madre de Dios, naming it the Amarymayo ("serpent river").
Perhaps, too, it's more than coincidental that one suggested
location for the legendary city of
"El Dorado" (known in
southern Peru as
Paititi),
where the Incas hid their most valuable golden objects from
the Spanish conquerors, is in the high forests close to the
Río Alto Madre de Dios (p.545).
