The Best American Travel Writing 2015 (41 page)

It came as something of a surprise when the road abruptly came to an end at the Madeira River in western Rondônia. Dozens of bridges had been constructed in Brazil and Peru before South American politicians inaugurated the “completed” Interoceanic almost two years before, but this one was left unbuilt. A barge waited to ferry the bus to the other side.

We began drifting across the inky current at 11:15 p.m. Several of my fellow passengers staggered moon-eyed, mouths agape, conversing in tones that deserved italics and multiple exclamation marks. At first I assumed they'd been drinking, but I had failed to recognize something rare: genuine, unselfconscious wonder. They were staring at the night sky, which shone with enough stars to impart an instant understanding of the infinite. A twenty-something Brazilian tourist named Guilhermo spoke for everyone: “I have never seen anything like that!”

We were leaving the pragmatic monotony of large-scale agribusiness and heading into more improvisational territories. Ahead lay the steamy hollows of the Amazon basin and the stonewashed skies of the Andes, regions where the highway more forcefully influences the enterprises popping up in its path. Guilhermo, doling out high-fives to anyone with a free hand, seemed to sense and embrace the change. Before we got back on the bus, he told me that he'd never in his life been this far from home.

About 62 hours after first boarding the bus, I bid Mauro
adeus
in Rio Branco, capital of the far western state of Acre. It was 4 a.m., and I believe I was the only passenger awake.

I hope the others didn't sleep all the way to the border.
Acre não existe
(Acre doesn't exist) is a Brazilian chestnut that pokes fun at the state's isolation, the gist being that the place is about as real to most Brazilians as is, say, Atlantis. People in Acre tend to shrug off the joke as obvious nonsense, which isn't to say it doesn't bother them a little.

According to government figures, more than 85 percent of the state is jungle; the rest mostly consists of Rio Branco and the string of small villages along the highway. That denuded strip has been filled with people, Toyotas, pizza parlors, and shopping malls, yet the forest's shadow looms over everything. One of Rio Branco's soccer stadiums is called Arena da Floresta (Forest Arena); another is known as Florestão (the Big Forest). The regional government's public Wi-Fi network is called the Digital Forest. A central square is the Plaza of the People of the Forest.

Some people, like Eziquiel Alves da Silva, the manager of the state's first ethanol-producing factory, are pushing for Acre to become more like the regions we'd already passed through. Da Silva told me that he had been visiting local landowners, trying to convince them that sugarcane-based ethanol soon would become a cornerstone of the local economy. He suggested that if exports to Asia took off, market forces could expand the sugarcane industry, now centered in São Paulo, westward.

“We're in a privileged position here,” he said of the month-old factory, which perfumed the highway with sweet, pungent notes. “From here, we can go”—he waved his arm with a flourish—“to the world.”

But along the highway he seemed outnumbered by people resisting corporate development and experimenting with enterprises that might protect local forest traditions. About 120 miles past Rio Branco, I passed a government-subsidized company called Natex, which uses latex collected from trees by local rubber tappers to make condoms. A few miles down the highway, I followed a dirt road into a 100-square-mile reserve that's collectively managed by about 80 families, most of whom make their living roaming the forest and harvesting either Brazil nuts or latex. They told me they're trying to carry on the legacy of Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper and activist who was shot in 1988 for defending the rainforest. “This is what he fought for,” said Everton Paiva de Oliveira, who manages an ecolodge in the reserve with one of Mendes's nieces.

Trails led into the forest between the flying-buttress roots of enormous tauari and samaúma trees. Dozens of white butterflies erupted upon approach—a handful of tossed confetti. In the tree canopy, Oliveira pointed to an obstacle course of rope bridges and ziplines. Guests can sleep in individual chalets or less-expensive dormitory-style rooms. But when I visited, at a time of year that should have been considered high season, every room was empty.

Over a glass of pale yellow araçá-boi juice, Oliveira admitted that the lodge wasn't turning a profit and depended on state funds to stay afloat. When he mentioned that they didn't have Internet access, I wasn't sure if it was another example of the rustic ambience he was trying to sell or if he was explaining why they were having trouble selling it. The lodge's quandary was Acre's writ small: how much change can tradition absorb before it becomes something else entirely?

On a Saturday night back in Rio Branco, I met Junior Fera, an 18-year-old who doesn't make a habit of worrying about such questions. I first noticed him standing with a small group of friends in the middle of a suspension bridge and embracing a girl. A couple of seconds later, both of them plunged off the side of the bridge toward the current far below, still locked in each other's arms. A harness line, which I hadn't noticed at first, cut their swan dive short. They swung together in a wild arc, a few feet above the water, before their scissoring feet eventually found purchase on the sloping bank. A few minutes later Junior returned to the bridge, alone. “Was that your girlfriend?” I asked, wondering where the other jumper went. He erupted in laughter. “It was just some girl who was walking by!” he said. “I asked her if she wanted to jump, and she actually said yes!”

Once or twice a week he and a group of about 30 friends bring their ropes and harnesses to the bridge. They range in age from 15 to 45 or so, and about the only obvious thing they share is the instinct to embrace the natural world—rivers, forests, mountains, whatever—in the most physical way they can. The group wouldn't exist, they admitted, if the highway didn't; all of their rappelling equipment comes from their periodic road trips into the Andes. “By car, by bus—we go any way we can,” said Junior, who told me that he finances his trips by working as a physical therapist. He and his friends were the only people I found in Acre who seemed comfortable honoring both nature and the highway at the same time.

“This is not a big place,” Junior said, “so we have to make our own opportunities.” He clipped the ropes back into his harness and took another leap into the dark. Acre exists.

About 30 miles from the Brazil-Peru border, in Brasiléia, a man trudged through the 90-plus-degree heat wearing jeans and a heavy denim jacket. One block from the local bus station, he disappeared into a crowd of hundreds of aspiring immigrants. All had journeyed from their homes in Haiti to end up in this makeshift migrant camp. Many arrived overdressed—an attempt to save space in their roller bags.

After the 2010 earthquake, rumors began circulating around Port-au-Prince that Brazil might be a haven for migrants. Human smugglers began offering desperate Haitians travel packages priced anywhere between $2,000 and $4,000 for passage to Brazil, typically via a bus to the Dominican Republic, a flight to Ecuador through Panama, another bus to Lima, and, finally, a ride to the Brazilian border along the Interoceanic Highway.

More than 7,000 Haitians have been granted a visa or permanent residence in the past three years. But the immigration bureaucracy struggles to keep pace. Newcomers were showing up at the pavilion every day, where they generally waited 20 to 30 days for their Brazilian residency papers to come through.

The population of the encampment was around 500 when I was there, but recently it was as high as 1,200, about four times its capacity. Most are men. When I arrived, a mob of about 50 pressed against me on the off chance I was an immigration official. It must have been 100 degrees in the middle of that crowd.

Scores of saggy, stained mattresses lay on the concrete slab under the open pavilion. Many people tried to sleep; others listened to headphones. Few spoke.

“We wait patiently to be able to leave,” said Joseph Silas, 34, who left his wife and three children in Haiti. “That's all we do.”

The men described conditions that were tolerable, but just barely. A few shower stalls stood nearby, but most said they washed with buckets of water. Their meals never varied—rice, beans, a little chicken. Many complained of stomach problems.

Everyone was focused on getting to São Paulo. They all wanted jobs, the kind of legitimate work they believed they could get only with solid immigration papers. A civil engineer hoped to work in a restaurant, any restaurant; Silas, who was a professional driver, figured he might get a job in construction. Or as an electrician. Or whatever else he could find. They spoke of handing over their life savings, but no one expressed buyer's remorse. “There is no hope in Haiti,” Silas explained to me. “That is the difference.”

Later that day, I took a minibus to the Peruvian border, sharing the vehicle with two Brazilians and two Peruvians, one of whom avoided Peruvian immigration officials by hiring a motorcycle to take him on dirt paths around the passport station. A couple of miles beyond the office, our driver pulled over to welcome our lawbreaking companion back onboard. I thought of the Haitians waiting in the heat of the pavilion, playing by the rules. Nothing was keeping them in that slice of hell, other than an unwillingness to stop pursuing a rumor of hope.

The jungle town of Puerto Maldonado, about three hours beyond the Peruvian border, seemed clear in its purpose: to squeeze whatever money it could from tourists before they could make it to one of the many riverside ecolodges in the surrounding rainforest. Within the past five years, the population doubled, to some 200,000, and that growth gives the city an every-man-for-himself vibe. The newcomers have included environmental organizations critical of the Interoceanic, and their news releases warn of wildcat gold miners who exploit the opened access to once-pristine rainforests, stripping the landscape of vegetation so they can sift through the soil in search of alluvial gold. Illegal logging is also on the rise, the conservationists say, thanks to many new secondary roads, most unpaved, that branch out from the main highway.

But when I stopped by the offices of the Amazon Conservation Association, the regional director, Juan Loja Alemán, said he tries to be careful not to go overboard with the dire warnings. “There are no comprehensive statistics yet measuring the positive and negative impacts of the highway,” Loja, a biologist, said. “But an interesting balance is starting to emerge. Illegal activity has definitely increased, but clearly so has interest in sustainable activities. The Interoceanic is creating a tourist circuit that's getting very interesting.”

I rode a motorcycle taxi over one of the secondary roads toward a wildlife rescue center, where staff members and volunteers nursed red howler monkeys, turtles, and white-throated toucans for an eventual return to the wild. Clouds of parrots swirled around the clay banks of the Tambopata River, a short distance from a secluded research center that, according to a sign, was dedicated to reducing human impacts on the forest. Late in the afternoon I stood alone in the middle of a suspension bridge that stretches for nearly a half-mile over the Madre de Dios River. The sky above the glassy water turned orange, then pink, then purplish. The sun dropped so fast I half expected to hear a splash.

The next morning, though, about an hour and a half down the highway, the negative impacts reasserted themselves. The town of Mazuco is the unofficial gold-mining capital of Amazonian Peru, and the Interoceanic is its Main Street. Among the vegetable stands and clothing stores are gold-buying shops, where independent miners can trade their gold dust for cash. The mining boom helped the town's population to grow exponentially, to about 8,000 people, in the past five years, according to the handful of locals I found gathered in a hair salon beside the highway.

“There's so much destruction,” said Anthony Andea, who runs the salon with his wife. “There used to be forest. Now it's just sand. A desert.” Andea was 29, but like most I spoke to in Mazuco, he sounded like a grumpy senior, wary of more change. “People come here for work,” he told me, “but the work is crap. It's exploitation. The wages are terrible, and the conditions are inhuman.”

Most of the mining camps are technically illegal, yet some abut the Interoceanic. Environmentalists blame their continued existence on Odebrecht, which maintains most of the highway in Peru. The Brazilian company collects tolls to help finance the upkeep of the road and the land immediately flanking it. The Odebrecht officials I spoke with blamed the Peruvian government for not enforcing the law, and almost everyone bemoaned a collusive atmosphere of corruption that allows the camps to spread without consequence. “Political power in Peru is very centralized, and that power simply doesn't exist here,” says César Ascorra, from the local office of Cáritas, a Catholic social service agency, and an outspoken critic of the highway. “The government responds with laws, but that's just paper. The people who come here know this very well.”

Before the highway, the only way to get to Mazuco was to hitch a ride on a diesel truck from Cuzco. The trip down the muddy mountain roads usually took a few days, longer if it rained. Nowadays any miner with a few hours to spare can make the journey. All of the old-timers—a group that seemed to include anyone who lived there for more than four or five years—said the miners had brought with them delinquency, crime, and drunkenness.

Actually, not all of the old-timers said that. A man of about 45 interrupted my conversation with a pessimistic clothing-store owner to tell me: “The mining sector has opened things up here, economically.” He had lived in town since 1993, he said, when the population was “maybe 150”; anyone who yearned for the good old days had a patchy memory. I asked him his name, but he narrowed his eyes and wagged his index finger at me. “No name,” he said, and disappeared down the street.