CHRONICLES OF THE END OF A WORLD

Indigenous knowledge holders and Western scientists have joined forces and expertise to protect three turtle species of the Amazon River. Charapas, taricayas, and cupisos are spreading the word: on six beaches in Colombia and Peru, they can lay their eggs without the threat of being captured.

The chronicler aspired to become a champion of the Indigenous peoples, exposing the evil Ultra Oil, which had polluted the waters of the O... River basin with cadmium and lead. But when he arrived at the scene, what awaited him was very different from what he had seen on TV. And thanks to Ultra Oil, he was able to spend Christmas at home.

A miracle: after centuries of dispossession and abuse, an area the size of Portugal became the Terra Indígena Vale do Javari—home to six thousand Indigenous people in contact with state society and an undetermined number of refugees in remote regions. The curse is the white man's legacy: his hepatitis and malaria, which now threaten the social fabric.

Ethnography doesn’t have to be confined to dense, highly specialized texts filled with vocabulary unintelligible to anyone not initiated in the mysteries of academic rhetoric. Why not use the sonnet to convey the ethnographic experience? That’s the attempt here: ten lessons in ten pieces. (ONLY SPANISH)

Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, Latin America’s most renowned scientist, faces a thorny dilemma. For decades, thousands of wild monkeys have been acquired clandestinely by his foundation to conduct experiments in his quest for a malaria vaccine. The case is now in the courts; the evidence is damning—but will it be enough to put behind bars someone who received a Prince of Asturias Award?

International development cooperation—sounds good, works terribly. Disguised as selfless altruism, these interventionist policies aim to bring the planet’s last autonomous societies under the discipline of the market. In the process, bureaucrats and urban professionals thrive, Indigenous idiosyncrasies are dismissed, and the rainforest is laid to waste.

School enjoys an excellent reputation among well-meaning Westerners, but its implementation has dealt a decisive blow to Indigenous cultures. The indoctrination has been effective: no one wants to resemble their grandfather anymore—you have to be a professional, dress well, own a car.

The Peruvian Amazon stands as tragic evidence of humanity’s insatiable greed. In just six decades of colonization and “development,” what was once an unparalleled paradise has turned into a terrifying landscape. Fish are scarce, animals are fleeing, the polluting threat of oil extraction is spreading, and deforestation is advancing at a relentless pace.

The sins of the world have provoked divine wrath; global warming threatens devastating famine. The Israelite Mission seeks refuge in remote Amazonian communities, works the land, and stocks the pantry that will save the world. A religion that may seem delusional—yet also a social response to the deep inequality in the distribution of land and wealth in Peru.

A blend of ethnography, chronicle, and short story, this piece delves into the relationships between an ethnographer and the teenagers of a Shipibo community he has chosen as the focus of his research. His inexperience and anxiety sabotage the project—but in the end, they lead him to a historical awareness of the power dynamics between whites and Indigenous people, between North and South.

The Indigenous peoples of the Amazon wage an unrelenting battle against the animal, plant, and spiritual inhabitants of the forest—beings that both sustain human existence and threaten it. Although they are regarded as “guardians of the forest” and assumed to live “in harmony with nature,” the reality of everyday Amazonian life tells a dramatically different story.

Anarchists: who recognize no authority above themselves nor consent to coercive power. Self-sufficient or independent: capable of meeting all their vital needs on their own. Anti-capitalists or anti-market: believing that competition, accumulation, and maximum profit are not universal human conditions.

Where nature is ravaged, misery creeps. Where the democratic paradigm is imposed, obedience flourishes. Where corporations triumph, inequality is born. And despite it all, the people of the jungle resist the designs of globalizing totalitarianism.

The primary protein in the diet of Amazonian riverside communities comes from fish. In lakes or rivers, in the flooded forest—with poison, nets, harpoons, or hooks. Fishing is a vanishing art of a vanishing forest.

An indispensable requirement for autonomy: producing your own food on your own land. The chagra, or traditional plantation, essential in Amazonian cultures, guarantees abundance and exemplifies how to use nature without depleting it.

In recent years, the most remote region of the Peruvian Amazon has been taken over by the organization led by Jair Ardila Micchue, who enforces his will through fire and gunfire: chilling massacres, displaced Indigenous communities, open warfare between rival gangs, police corruption… A feudal state beyond the law where the presence of Peruvian authorities is merely symbolic, and the vast borders with Colombia and Brazil guarantee impunity.

In the Amazonian tri-border region of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, Indigenous and mestizo communities from all three countries take part in producing tens of tons of cocaine each year, shipped via the Amazon River to the rest of the world. The jungle and its people pay the price: rampant deforestation, polluted rivers, and ancestral ways of life degraded by the lure of easy money.

Defying all logic, the clitoral ablation ritual to which Shipibo girls were subjected until a few decades ago was a fundamental mechanism to sustain a society based on female power.

In the Shipibo matriarchy, mothers decided whom their sons would marry, and the sons moved in with their mother-in-law. The wishes of the future spouses were disregarded; only after marrying and having children could a person be considered an adult and, therefore, autonomous.

Until recently, the moral code governing everyday life in Shipibo society stood in stark contrast to the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—drafted in 1948 by a handful of Western diplomats and jurists. But is there truly a universal morality, one that applies equally to every person, in every place, and across all times?

How a sport invented by the English just over a century ago became the most important ritual activity for the Shipibo people.