Fires
The jungle at the south of Venezuela exerts the fascination of the unknown. As a venezuelan child, right after reading “the lost world”, with dinosaurs still alive and mountains made of diamonds, you are told that the places described lie right at the south of your country. So you want to go there. Later on, when you are about to give away the hope of seeing weird animals from long gone times, you realize that perhaps not dinosaurs, but surely unknown plants and insects. A field biologist trip to those forests will give you fame and adventure. So as a student of biology, you still want to go.
Well, it was around 1988, and I could register for an expedition organized by the climber's club of my university. I was already frustrated with studying physics, and indeed, after that travel I switch to biology. The travel itself was a disaster. I was in the group that supported the climber team, and we were made to carry backpacks of thirty some kilos, meanwhile hacking our way into the jungle with machetes. We run out of food, and expend two weeks more than planned walking, aiming at a wall that every day seemed to grow further away. As I say, I could not have imagined a better trip.
Today, one reportage of the Spanish newspaper “El Pais” made me remember the starting days of that hike. Before getting into the rain forest, we have to walk some forty kilometres in the savannah. It was a hell of a hike, but we ended it. Actually, in the many stops that we have to make to rest, the almost pristine savannah showed burned patches. We were told that few years ago, the inhabitants of the region had started a series of protests again a governmental ban on tourism. The people there worked as guides and porters of the few hikers that would arrive, and the ban coming from the capital (more than two thousand kilometres away) could deprive the region from its main income. So the people burned the place. As simple as that. The local law enforcement, perhaps remembering the science fiction best-seller Dune (the one that controls a resource is the one that can destroy it) acknowledge the treat, and restore the tourist flow. The savannah, nevertheless, stayed burned for the years to come. Ecosystems do not really recover after human crimes.
Now, I read in El Pais that the record season of fires in Galicia, a spanish province heavily burned the past weeks, had a social background. Different social workers, researchers and politicians of the region agree: the fires started as a protest.
Differently than in Venezuela, though, the reasons of the protest are less clear. There haven't been a ban on tourism, for example. Neither there is an identifiable movements behind the action. One university professor, though, believes that fires increase when left wing governments take power. The reasoning is that the right wing activist like to show he incompetence of the current government, and then produce the fire to expose them. Be this true or not, the agreement exists: people burn because they are upset.
In the table that I am using now there is a candle burning. I stare at the flame, the warmth light that transform my morning café into the intimate and personal location that I like so much. I imagine then the same flame, expanding on the forests of Spain, I imagine the trees going away in a flash of ashes. In the years to come I'll visit Spain again, and probably I'll walk in Galicia. I will stare at the burned places.
Once more, I won't be able to understand.
Well, it was around 1988, and I could register for an expedition organized by the climber's club of my university. I was already frustrated with studying physics, and indeed, after that travel I switch to biology. The travel itself was a disaster. I was in the group that supported the climber team, and we were made to carry backpacks of thirty some kilos, meanwhile hacking our way into the jungle with machetes. We run out of food, and expend two weeks more than planned walking, aiming at a wall that every day seemed to grow further away. As I say, I could not have imagined a better trip.
Today, one reportage of the Spanish newspaper “El Pais” made me remember the starting days of that hike. Before getting into the rain forest, we have to walk some forty kilometres in the savannah. It was a hell of a hike, but we ended it. Actually, in the many stops that we have to make to rest, the almost pristine savannah showed burned patches. We were told that few years ago, the inhabitants of the region had started a series of protests again a governmental ban on tourism. The people there worked as guides and porters of the few hikers that would arrive, and the ban coming from the capital (more than two thousand kilometres away) could deprive the region from its main income. So the people burned the place. As simple as that. The local law enforcement, perhaps remembering the science fiction best-seller Dune (the one that controls a resource is the one that can destroy it) acknowledge the treat, and restore the tourist flow. The savannah, nevertheless, stayed burned for the years to come. Ecosystems do not really recover after human crimes.
Now, I read in El Pais that the record season of fires in Galicia, a spanish province heavily burned the past weeks, had a social background. Different social workers, researchers and politicians of the region agree: the fires started as a protest.
Differently than in Venezuela, though, the reasons of the protest are less clear. There haven't been a ban on tourism, for example. Neither there is an identifiable movements behind the action. One university professor, though, believes that fires increase when left wing governments take power. The reasoning is that the right wing activist like to show he incompetence of the current government, and then produce the fire to expose them. Be this true or not, the agreement exists: people burn because they are upset.
In the table that I am using now there is a candle burning. I stare at the flame, the warmth light that transform my morning café into the intimate and personal location that I like so much. I imagine then the same flame, expanding on the forests of Spain, I imagine the trees going away in a flash of ashes. In the years to come I'll visit Spain again, and probably I'll walk in Galicia. I will stare at the burned places.
Once more, I won't be able to understand.
posted by Unknown at 12:34 AM
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