In order to contrast opposing views when it goes to pastoralism and anti-pastoralism in the Amazon, Milton Hatoum‘s novel The Brothers and Louis Agassiz travel book A Journey in Brazil are to make my point more palpable. Hatoum is a well- known contemporary writer from the North of Brazil who, in some of his narratives, interconnects characters‘ lives with the Amazonian environment of the diegesis –
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Scripta Alumni - Uniandrade, n. 8, 2012.
generally presenting in its background severe political and social criticism. Agassiz was a Swiss geologist who, financed by the US, came to Brazil with other scholars right after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species (John Murray, 1859). Agassiz‘s intention was to rebute the ubiquitous theory of evolution by proving creationism through examining Amazonian natives and environment.
Agassiz defended that difficulties related to health and food – which were not that much – Amazonian Indians had to face would vanish as soon as foreign ships were allowed to moor. If we take into consideration that he came in the 1860s, the contact between the North of Brazil and the Western culture was insignificant. Changing this factor per se, in his view, would be undoubtedly profitable for the region‘s welfare.
While we were discussing these points, talking of the time when the banks of the Amazons will teem with a population more active and vigorous than any it has yet seen, — when all civilized nations will share in its wealth, when the twin continents will shake hands and Americans of the North come to help Americans of the South in developing its resources, — when it will be navigated from north to south as well as from east to west, and small steamers will run up to the head-quarters of all its tributaries, — while we were speculating on these things, we were approaching the end of our journey. (AGASSIZ, 1868, p. 256-257)
The doors for the Amazon have indeed been opened, and the impact of Western society on the lives of the Amazonians has been decisive for their future.
Nevertheless, and as argued earlier, the process of Westernisation brings numberless consequences, and, although we started sharing our wealth – As Agassiz suggested – the
―Americans of the North‖ have not exactly helped the ―Americans of the South‖. They just presented us some concrete problems and intangible solutions which for them were already second-nature by that time, but with which no Amazonian Indian or cabocla had had to coexist with heretofore. Hatoum shows us these novelties:
He [Quelé] only went to the Verônica [a brothel in Manaus] in the convertible. (…). Quelé handed out bottles of perfume, sweets, blouses and kisses. He got fresh with the girls on the edge of the jungle, among the wet caladiums; they caressed him and begged him to take them for a spin in the Oldsmobile. Quelé never went any further. He never went to the huts at the back of the Verônica. He didn‘t like the smell of other bodies having fun on the kapok-stuffed mattress. (HATOUM, 2002, p. 154-155)
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Scripta Alumni - Uniandrade, n. 8, 2012.
The character Quelé, descending from Germans, represents effectively many Westernised values – not from a romantic perspective but a realist one.
He is a smuggler whose interests are divided between money and prostitutes – caboclas or Indians whose stupefaction by the glamour of civilisation is enough for them to sell their bodies to those who can talk a little bit about it. Hatoum‘s novel is depicted in a setting wherein it is impossible to believe in the Western redemption and in the beneficial contact between neo-coloniser and neo-colonised. The dark side of the pastoral dream is unveiled.
The process of Westernisation that Agassiz considered so beneficial and harmless made more difference then he would – or wanted to – imagine. The city of Manaus does not seem to be the same city vis-à-vis Hatoum‘s perspective, since the atmosphere of flora, fauna and gayety pervading the air is now replaced by poverty, sadness and ugliness that even the most picturesque fragments of the Amazon are not devoid of.
The highest duty seems then to be to do nothing. The monotonous notes of a ‗viola‘ came to me from a group of trees at a little distance, where our boatmen were resting in the shade, the red fringes of their hammocks giving to the landscape just the bit of colour which it needed; occasionally a rustling flight of parroquets or ciganas overhead startled me for a moment, or a large pirarucu plashed out of the water, but except for these sounds nature was still, and animals as well as men seemed to pause in the heat and seek shelter. (AGASSIZ, 1868, p. 259)
One Sunday afternoon, my mother asked me to go for a walk with her to the Praça da Matriz. Nearby, berthed in the Manaus Harbour, the big freighters dwarfed the boats and canoes, hiding the forest on the horizon. In the centre of the square, the multitude of birds that used to delight the children were no longer there. The aviary that had fascinated me so much was silent. Sitting on the steps of the church, Indians and migrants from the interior of the state were begging.
(HATOUM, 2002, p. 238)
The contrast shown above may sound unfair if the historical background of both texts is disregarded. The prospect of a promising future was exhilarating by the time Agassiz came to Brazil, but Hatoum‘s characters experience the vicarious punishment for such a devotion to neo-liberalism and foreign deceits – punishment which is far from being only fiction. What the Westernisation of the Amazon has been giving to the Amazonians cannot ever be compared to what has been taken from them.
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Scripta Alumni - Uniandrade, n. 8, 2012.