leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (11/08/85)
AMAZON by Brian Kelly and Mark London
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983, $9.95.
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
It is a region of contradictions. It is a land of dreams coming true;
it is a land of nightmarish injustice. It is a land of incredible wealth;
it is a land of incredible poverty. Its resources are too great for man to
ever make a dent in; its resources will be gone by the turn of the century.
The jungle is an implacable, invincible enemy; the jungle is as fragile as a
flower and is already dying. It is a land of infinite promise; it is a land
of constant failure. In other words, it is one hell of a mess!
AMAZON is the true account of two journalists' journey to investigate
the vast territories surrounding the Amazon River. Brian Kelly and Mark
London go from town to village to boat to city through Brazil and Peru
trying to get a better picture of what is really happening in the Amazon and
instead getting a mosaic of diverse and contradictory impressions.
One theme they return to again and again is whether the jungle is in
danger of being depleted, and with it a substantial part of the world's
oxygen supply. The authors present a gamut of opinions. To some the jungle
will soon be gone; to others, scarcely any of it is gone. Of the many
opinions the writers hear, the most believable is that only about 3% of the
jungle has been deforested, but the yearly rate of deforestation increases
each year. If the rate of increase continues as it has, the jungle will be
in real trouble in the next decade or so.
But while Brazil looks at the Amazon rain forest as a gold mine waiting
to make the country rich, one attempt after another seems to be foolish and
end in disaster. The rubber trees that brought a short-lived affluence to
the area were transplanted to other parts of the world where greater profits
were made from them. And it is not just the locals who fail to make a go of
things in the jungle. Henry Ford built a company town to grow rubber trees
plantation-style. The town would have suited Detroit well, but the houses,
designed in the U.S., did not have the ventilation needed for the area.
Growing fields of rubber trees close together was a worse mistake. A
contagious parasitic fungus spread from tree to tree, ruining Ford's dream
of Fordlandia.
In much the same way, project after project dies in the Amazon of
failure to understand the region. When projects don't fail, more often than
not they are run by someone getting rich by raping the jungle. As one
particularly vicious lumber entrepreneur says gleefully, "God has given us
this forest for us to take advantage of. We are to use it as we need it."
It is clear throughout the book that the authors disapproved of much
that they saw. The hero of one passage will be the villain of another.
Landowners fighting the government to stay alive will by Indian oppressors
later. AMAZON is a glum travel book with moments of humor, but usually at
the expense of the locals. One gets the impression that it is equally
depressing to visit the Amazon or to know the authors.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper