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).
