From Warwick to the Peruvian Amazon

As a Sustainable development student, I found myself doing a module in the Hispanic Studies department called “Nature and Modernity in Latin America”.  Not really sure what to expect, I thought that as a Spanish student in the UK interested in the idea of “nature” in different cultures, I should give it a try. The module took an artistic and literary approach to seeing “alternative” views of the self in relation to the earth/nature/culture, or at least that is what I took from it. 

When the module was over, I felt very inspired by the idea of “having a world where many worlds fit”, meaning that one culture ought not to weigh more over others in how we act environmentally and politically, and therefore other voices (such as indigenous) should rise to the forefront of environmental thinking. I asked the module convenor if she knew anyone who did fieldwork int his area, and she gave me the email of a Peruvian anthropologist.

At this point, I thought I might as well send an email, but really didn’t even expect a reply. After 3 months of not hearing anything back, I had almost forgotten about this. But Deborah finally contacted me to let me know that they would love to have a research assistant come for the summer. I applied for as much funding as I possibly could, with a lot of support from my Hispanic Studies tutor, and in August 2019 I was off to the Peruvian Amazon as a research assistant. 
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This man was named Julio, he was a farmer, showed me the way to the “hippie” community – He told me he had cancer and received plant medicine from them that saved his life.

The project was a cluster of Academics studying 14 native communities that all lived in one reserve. These communities were comprised of 4 different ethnicities and had come to live there together after the Peru-Colombia war in the early 1930s. The communities fled their separate territories, and all came together. 

Since the 20th century was ruled by post-colonialism and extraction, the community had a traumatic past. This had drastically changed over the last 10 years, when it took the title of “reserve”, which meant that the indigenous people elected leaders to represent their interests locally. The “reserve” was part of a UN program for reforestation called REDD++, where the indigenous people got financial compensation for environmental preservation (in other words, a conditional cash transfer). ​

So, I arrived to the city of Iquitos, which I had been told was in selva baja (low jungle), which essentially meant a weather people call bochorno (very humid and heavy). It was indeed the most bochorno weather I had ever experienced, and outside of speaking Spanish, this was by far the most unfamiliar place I had been. 

The trek from the road to the commune, where I met Julio.
I was with a Peruvian PG (Postgraduate) student, who I first followed around to interview academics, NGO’s, indigenous leaders and their families. Later on, I established my own little social network and had my own interviews. 

To be completely honest, it was nothing like I expected, and I struggled a lot being there, because half the time I didn’t know what to do with myself. The PG student, as well as the academic researchers, were mainly interested in the economic advancement of the region, whereas my interest was more in the cosmovisions and religions of the communities (to which they replied they had always been evangelists).  

I later met some hippies (not self-proclaimed, of course), who lived amongst different nationalities (foreign as well as indigenous) inside the jungle and followed the lifestyle of a few different indigenous ethnic groups (mainly Boras). So, after collecting all the necessary data for the University, I felt ready to live inside the jungle and see how this type of lifestyle would influence me. I worked in the fields, in the kitchen, without either electricity or running water, and cleaned myself in a river. I harvested yuca, and made massato (yuca drink); we sat around a fire every night to discuss tasks, tell stories, sometimes sing and sometimes argue. A few local boys my age who lived in the community taught me a lot about the different plants and species, as I helped them with their school work. 
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Carlitos lived in a village close to the commune and spent a lot of time with me. He was six at the time, but was able to climb these tall trees with a machete to pick fruits he shared with me.
I am so grateful for this experience, especially the fact that it was far from feeding my idealisations about what indigenous lifestyles were. It taught me that the ones my age have smartphones and dance to some pretty misogynistic reggaeton, as we all do. I am equally grateful that the job itself was nothing like I expected, and though disappointed in some regards, it allowed me to spend a big part of my time bonding with people I’d meet around the city. What was craziest of all is that speaking Spanish, all the way across the Atlantic, was enough to enable me to communicate with every single person there, regardless of how distant it all seemed.