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The Amazon is declining at an amazing rate.
Loggers are active chopping down the trees to create grazing space for cattle, so that hamburgers can be made to sell to the US market – among many other things.
Some Amazonian Indians in the rainforest refer to Western people as the “ant people” in their language, as we just destroy vegetation – just like ants. Pretty sad really.
Have you seen the film “Emerald Forest”? It is pretty haunting really. About life in the rain forest. Some Indians kidnap this small American boy (played by the son of the director), and force him to join their tribe. But he still has this very distant memory of a man he used to call “Papa”, who was his real Father.
His real Father goes in search of them with a photographer, and another person. The most memorable portion of the film was when the three of them meet up with a tribal chief. The photographer was being obnoxious sticking his camera in everyone’s face. Then the tribal leader says something about their meat being tender.
They realise that they are surrounded by a bunch of cannibals. The Father and friend manage to escape, but they are forced to leave their photographer companion behind. I can still remember him screaming to them to help him, and not to leave him, even though I watched the film many years ago.
Then white people came with guns and traded their guns for young women. The tribe would go to another tribe and kill the men and steal the women. The women were then kept as sex slaves in a brothel run by the Westerners for the use of the staff of the logging companies.
But the kids father manages to infiltrate this brothel as a pretend client, and somehow finds his son, and takes him back to civilisation.
I have no idea how much of that stuff reflects real life in the Amazon, but it was a great film anyway.