Portrait of a Picking Community

Welcome to Huasta.

The road to Huasta.

As we rocked and pitted along the muddy and nearly impassable road, I watched the passing land through the open window to my right, breathing deeply. The scene framed by the window was beautiful – lush and verdant and vibrant and soft. Catching only glimpses of the sun on the mottled road before us or through the thick treecover above, smelling the simple purity of the forest mixed with the distant yet distinct scent of pineapple, hearing the birds whistling and singing around us – as we passed deeper into the forest, I was reminded of the National Geographic magazines I once so admired. My knees doubled under me, curled on the floor and holding my breath, I would pass my fingers gingerly over the glossy, two-dimensional photos, imagining myself taking that photo. What was beyond that lens? What sounds and smells and sensations? If such a simple and distant image could evoke such a sense of wonder – of awe – in me, what must the photographer have experienced, completely enveloped? I longed to be there, dreamed of seeing such beauty firsthand.

And here I was.

Deforestation in the Amazon

My first impression of the road to Huasta was of its untouched and unblemished beauty. But shortly, I began to see a different reality. Entire swaths of trees had been cut down, harvested, leaving broken stumps as headstones. I watched with a helpless sadness as we passed stump after gnarled stump, dead under the harsh and oppressive sunlight that just moments before had seemed to playfully dart between the leaves and shadows.

After alternating between treecover and sections of naked land, we finally arrived in Huasta, a town identical to the road we had just traveled – improbably beautiful and tragic.

Drying palm leaves near the Community Center

There were very few homes visible from the road. Those we could see were one-room buildings walled by bamboo or wooden planks and covered by thatched roofs of palm leaves. Shoeless, half-naked children watched as we drove boy. We arrived at the center of the community, marked by multiple houses, the community center – the only building constructed of cement – and an open field of palm leaves drying in the sun. Huasta is a community of self-proclaimed Aguaruna (also called “Awaruna”) natives fiercely proud of their heritage. Spanish is not spoken.

Roberto, our translator.

With our translator, a pastor from a nearby community, the Paz y Esperanza team – Luz, Ronald, and I – walked to the river. As we walked, discussing the problems faced by the community, we passed from the forest into cultivated fields bisected by the road. To our left were trees heavy with rich green papayas and beneath one tree I saw the remnants of someone’s lunch – a machete and the shaved orange husk of a ripe papaya. To our right stretched endless rows of trees boasting enormous beautiful green bananas. Swatting at the mosquitoes that had appeared in plague-like proportions, we finally arrived at the river. Looking across the rushing brown water, I saw a pull-out on the other bank that apparently led to a neighboring community which was accessible only by canoe. Sitting on the rocks, I learned a little about the history of Huasta and other indigenous peoples of the forest.

Traditionally, many of the indigenous Aguaruna communities of the Amazon rainforest lived nomadic lives. Every twenty years or so, entire communities of families would pack up and move to a different part of the forest, rotating in a large circle and returning to the same location every hundred years or so. While they maintained relationships with other nomadic tribes through occasional inter-tribal marriages, there was little to no interaction with the world that was modernizing around them. They were hunters and nomads – this was their way of life as it had been for century upon uninterrupted century. Their culture was rich and undisturbed.

A home in Huasta

Predictably, the government grew greedy for the wealth of resources offered by the Amazon, prioritizing the fortune to be gained from its petroleum, trees, and minerals over the protection of the rich cultural heritage of its indigenous people. Peruvian and international companies alike grew restless to harvest the treasures of the land inhabited by the Aguaruna people and other indigenous communities. As recently as the 1970s, laws began to be passed, and soon formerly nomadic peoples were confined to small sections of land in the Amazon Rainforest to free up much of the forest for harvesting. Forced to sacrifice their entire nomadic way of life, communities such as Huasta have had to adopt agrarian lifestyles, leaving them with new and often devastating problems and destroying their cultural heritage. As my boss told me, “It’s like what you did to the Native Americans in your country, only here it happened thirty years ago.”

The papaya fields of Huasta

Initially, the communities over-hunted the forests. In the previous centuries of hunting and moving on, the forest and people adapted to each other. The natives had hunted animal populations of one area for a period of time and then moved on, allowing the cycle of life in the forest to replenish itself. In a fixed, permanent home, however, they soon began to exhaust the forest’s resources. Not only that, they were not farmers nor have their people ever been farmers and they are currently struggling to learn by trial and error how to care for the land in a sustainable way – how to cultivate crops year after year without ravaging the land and leaving the soil barren. Additionally, they have been forced to engage in the public market for the first time, traveling to nearby cities to buy fertilizer and meat when food is scarce. As a result, they have had to rely more and more on their poor-yeilding crops as a source not only of nutrition but of income, a new necessity for them.

These are some of the problems faced by Huasta. As we left the river and walked back to the town, our translator told us that much of the pineapple and banana laden land around us was actually rented to foreign companies. The people of Huasta rented their land in response to their farming struggles and in a desperate attempt to utilize the land and receive guaranteed income. Foreign companies with short-term investments come into Huasta, inject the land with powerful fertilizers, harvest fruit for a few years, and then leave when the soil is useless. The people of Huasta are left with very few options.

The water source for Huasta

When we arrived back at the community center, one of the few local men who could speak Spanish offered to show us where they bathe and get their drinking water. Across the muddy road, we descended a steep incline. To the right was a small pool of water. “That’s where we bathe,” he said. To the left was another small pool of clear water surrounded by mud and a rotting log. “That’s where we get our water.” I asked if there was anything they did to clean the water. He said no.

A malnourished boy of Huasta

Walking back to the community center, I saw a group of children playing. The youngest, a boy of probably about two, was wearing a shirt and no pants or shoes. Perhaps when you don’t have the resources for diapers or for cleaning soiled clothing, it is simpler and more practical to let your children go without pants until they are potty-trained. He looked at me. His belly was slightly distended and his hair was thin and light brown, indicating malnutrition. I imagined him drinking from the spring and it suddenly struck me that, in the United States, I shower every day in drinkable water.  We flush our toilets with drinkable water.  I imagined him drinking from the spring and tears filled my eyes.

Welcome to Huasta.

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