When A Tree Falls in the Amazon...

I stood under a massive tree much like those under the threat of extinction in the Amazon. It was among many other trees planted by a group of Portuguese military officers who operated a gunpowder factory in Rio de Janeiro around 1800.

Among these men were botanists who saw the threat of extinction of many flora and fauna in the region. The threat came from plantations destroying vast tracts of land for the cultivation of coffee, sugarcane and many other farmed crops. Near the factory the botanists began collecting some 6500 different species of trees and plants under the threat of extinction and created a space where subsequent generations could one day come and observe nature. The space opened to the public in 1822.

I was dwarfed by the magnanimous efforts of these foresighted men as much by the tree I stood under.

Bounded by steep granite hills and deep lagoons and bays, the city of Rio de Janeiro has since been preserved as much by tourists coming to the region as by the foresight of those early botanists who felt a need to protect the environment many years before it became necessary.

Today, Rio’s Jardim Botânico is hemmed in by a rapidly growing city ravenous for space. This garden is an anomaly in an urban area that is equally colonial and newly modern, with a predictable lack of harmony. Beautiful colonial walkways and buildings fall to the plunder of mixed modern architectures as quickly as trees fall in the forests to commerce.

Here, there is a sense of cool spaciousness under giant trees sheltering walkways from the tropical sun. Water flows along stone channels built to water the garden. The space is a sanctuary for birds and monkeys and an occasional tourist searching for a refuge from the everyday world.

For a moment I understand I am a part of a mystery as an inheritor of the natural world and not its master. Listening to the birds I am pleasantly devoid of hubris, if only temporarily.

But still, I cannot imagine true bio-diversity in a place like the Amazon, where every cause of discomfort has its equal in a cure, and where there is balance in the same way a flowering plant provides the antidote to a mosquito borne in a nearby pond.

Modern man has no language or experience in bio-diversity. We would not survive for long in a place like the Amazon. Perhaps this is why man needs to destroy it.

The coming devastation planned for the Amazonian rivers and trees will remove what has been there since the beginning of the planet. Many natural remedies will be swept away by the all-powerful hydro people who bring concrete to solve a problem without considering other more efficient means of energy generation. Bio-diversity will be drowned in the floods created by dams.

Bio-diversity is the promise of a healthy planet; it is based on the notion that everything is here because it is intended; nothing is out of place, except for humans who have no tradition of respect for the natural world.

Perhaps there are those in power who will notice that the entire Amazon needs to be preserved in the same way their ancestors kept nature sacred for our generation.

Photos by Delma Godoy

The Floods of Easter

Currently, there are some 200 dead, with perhaps hundreds more missing, as mudslides continue throughout the City and State of Rio de Janeiro.

Most of the 50,000 people who are currently homeless live in poorly constructed slum housing built on or near mountainsides. They are part of the 1.5 million poor who live in favelas, which comprise 20 percent of the City’s population.

The rains came Monday afternoon, April 5, following a sultry, quiet Easter Sunday with 90 percent humidity. For the next 24 hours the biggest rainfall in the past 25 years was recorded.

Up to this point the city’s plan worked well enough to divert the water during recent storms. Unseen, however, was the shoddy new modern construction that had over-taxed a fundamentally weak city infrastructure, originally built early in the last century.

Hidden underneath the surface of roads and sewers already strained to their limits were whole sections of land built on landfill comprising garbage dumps and crumbling concrete. On the hills, the problems were magnified by massive deforestation by people living in the favelas.When the mud flowed it took homes and people with it.

While the government points to its achievements featuring elegant modern buildings being constructed in the city proper and to the rapid expansion in the middle-class suburbs, next to nothing has been done about the long-standing problems of housing for the city’s poorest.

This coming October, voters – including people living in the favelas – will go to the polls to elect a new president and new leaders, each of whom is busily promoting their recent achievements in bringing the World Cup and Olympic Games to Rio, along with developing new off-shore oil.

The politicians boast they will have some $7 billion to create a city worthy of hosting the Cup and the Games.

Little mention has been made about how much will be spent for building new housing for the homeless.

The rains continue to fall on the poor and the rich, alike.

March 31 - A Day Remembered

Tanks roll in military rule.

March 31 is a rueful date in Brasil’s history. On that day in 1964 people disappeared, civil liberties were suspended, hard-won freedoms were lost overnight. In what was supposed to be a temporary transition the military coup turned into two decades of oppression.

Teachers were hauled away, while actors and poets went into exile. Students who had pushed hard for social reforms were tortured and killed. Their textbooks were heavily edited to support revisionist histories. Film makers and writers had to be clever to make sure their work got past the censors and still had relevance.


A million people march for democracy in 1968

Not surprisingly, the poorest suffered the worst, with nearly 50 percent of the population living in the favelas on less than a dollar a day. The slums quickly spread across the large cities, while foreign multinationals profited from Brasil’s rapidly expanding economy. Education was limited to the privileged, while babies borne by the poor seldom lived to five years of age.

While the US and many nations in Europe had 200 to 500 years to develop their political systems, Brasil has had just 23 years of democracy.


Students push for a new democracy in 1987

A month ago 150,000 people in Rio gathered in a driving rainstorm to protest a proposed government policy. In October they vote in their country’s most important presidential election. Brasilians are moving at light-speed to a future no one would have predicted forty-six years ago.

An Hour of Perception

As the Hour of the Planet approaches I lay on a small pier watching the southern stars with my companion. On most nights the stars steal the show, but tonight they hide behind small clouds that look like poodles.

Directly above, a 90 percent gibbous waxing moon casts her spell on the water, which ripples from a welcome breeze.

The placid water holds the reflection of lights across the lagoon. The restaurants are full of people talking. Traffic horns and sounds of bossa-nova waft in and out of range. The herons call to each in the dark. Life goes on.

The Christ on the promontory turns off for 60 minutes. The breeze blows out our candle.


Photo by Delma Godoy

Carioca Dolphins Swim Free in Rio's Ipanema

A dozen dolphins were caught on film swimming in high seas off Ipanema Beach in the Zona Zul District of Rio early Tuesday morning, March 16.

Initially, the pod headed towards Leblon Beach then turned back. Known for their near human speech patterns, they were heard to say “Not My Beach” and swam back to Ipanema, before heading toward the Cagarras Islands.

This is My Beach

There is a saying among the Carioca, “all things die on the beach in Rio”.

I contemplate this phrase as I walk along the shore, with either beer or coconut milk settling in my bloodstream. At sunset couples walk hand in hand, children laugh as they run in and out of the water, soccer balls fly and bounce with impunity. Off shore the sea may be gentle, warm, light green waves in the last rays of day. Occasionally, the sea is rough edged, dark and forbidding, landing near your feet on shore with a thud.

Everything on the beach is temporary and casual, the result of unspecified but obvious rules. The beach has outlived bans and survived legislation because it is a culture where grandiose plans, straight lines, goals and trivialities are shed with the next wave.

Here at the edge of the eroding continent is a place where men cannot build castles. Instead, the people erect fantasy in the clouds. Here, the flesh is unleashed and the body is freed when the street clothes come off.


Not unlike a tribal community, denizens of the beach are made up of people who are territorial. They carry on traditions honed over the decades by staking out a place on the beach in the company of those they enjoy. There is the Globo television set, the fashionistas, the journalists, the business elite, artists, and the body cult. They find their spots along Ipanema, Copacabana or La Blon.

With two million people at the beach on weekends in the summer, a vast community is nowhere else but the beach. The regular life is forgotten. People who are not working the new, new thing are looking for friends or a place in the sun, an umbrella, a chair and a vendor to keep them supplied with tasty treats and beer for the duration of their stay. They sit for hours, often with people they may never see off the beach. By some instinct - perhaps a survival technique honed through generations – these sun worshippers remain relevant and secure in their place. If threatened by petty annoyances, they leave with a simple phrase: “It’s not my beach,”


With all this in mind one day I throw a handful of hand-written daily intentions into a wild sea hoping to find a generous god who will deliver them to the appropriate Shepard. The paper notes are quickly sucked back into the waves. Perhaps dreams don’t die at the beach.
Photos by Delma Godoy

A Carioca's First Carnaval Street Festival

With sleep still in my eyes, I stumble down to the corner one Sabado morning expecting to see a small band of local people celebrating a street Carnaval, one of many in the city. Instead I see a large samba band, a huge sound truck and hundreds of people in costume emerging from the shady borders of the street, including young and old dancers from Bahai performing in their traditional costumes. A group of young males wearing tight pink dresses dance among costumed females in their scanty plumage. Both sexes wear what can only be described as fantasy, as they march to the beat of their own drum, like Soshia Obama, parading as the US president.



The beer vendors on both sides of the street are doing well and soon I find a SQOL in my hand watching the crowd become one swirling tribe. It has achieved concentration. As if on cue, the music stops, The drummers take a breather. It is 45C at 10 in the morning. I’m down to beach wear. The break is just a space between the notes. Then suddenly the drums begin again and the mob contracts like a giant serpent and explodes into action. Several thousand faces are illuminated with smiles. The line between the crowd and the participants is merged into one electric samba.


In coming days I join two other parades. Again, the drumming and dancing pull me in with surprisingly ease. I am anonymous, a simple organism drenched in a flood of sweat between male, female, black, white and caramel enamel. I am swinging to a worldly synchronization I only half understand. The movement is chaotic, calling all to shed conformity.




We are a mob, cheek by jowl. The samba is seductive and pulls you in, but she is a fickle goddess and lets you go to your other life without a kiss. As the dance moves on I take a dip in the ocean to cool off. I dive under a dark wave, believing a conversion requires a baptism.
The wave throws me back on the beach, like an uninvited guest. I brush off the sand and listen to a beat in the distance.

Photos by Delma Godoy