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Peru The Amazonian Tropics
The Selva, which includes the humid tropics of the
Amazon
jungle and rivers, covers about 63 percent of Peru but
contains
only about 11 percent of the country's population. The
region
begins high in the eastern Andean cloud forests, called
the
ceja de montaña (eyebrow of the jungle), or Montãna
or
Selva Alta, and descends with the rush of silt-laden
Andean
rivers--such as the Marañon, Huallaga, Apurímac, and
Urubamba--to
the relatively flat, densely forested, Amazonian plain.
These
torrential rivers unite as they flow, forming the Amazon
before
reaching the burgeoning city of Iquitos. Regarded as an
exotic
land of mystery and promise throughout much of the
twentieth
century, the Selva has been seen in Peru as the great hope
for
future development, wealth, and the fulfillment of
national
destiny. As such, it became President Fernando Belaúnde
Terry's
"Holy Grail" as he devoted the energies of his two
administrations (1963-68, 1980-85) to promoting
colonization,
development schemes, and highway construction across the
Montaña
and into the tropical domain.
Human settlements in the Amazonian region are
invariably
riverine, clustering at the edges of the hundreds of
rivers and
oxbow lakes that in natural conditions are virtual fish
farms in
terms of their productivity. The streams and rivers
constitute a
serpentine network of pathways plied by boats and canoes
that
provide the basic transport through the forest. Here, the
Shipibo, Asháninka (Campa), Aguaruna, and other tribes
lived in
relative independence from the Peruvian state until the
midtwentieth century
(see
fig. 6). Although the native people
have
cleverly exploited the extraordinary riverine environment
for at
least 5,000 years, both they and the natural system have
been
under relentless pressures of population, extractive
industries,
and the conversion of forest into farm and pasture.
Amazonian
forest resources are enormous but not inexhaustible.
Amazonian
timber is prized worldwide, but when the great cedar,
rosewood,
and mahogany reserves are cut, they are rarely replaced.
Peru's tropics are also a fabled source for traditional
medicinal plants, such as the four types of domesticated
coca,
which are prized through the entire Andean and upper
Amazonian
sphere, having been widely traded and bartered for 4,500
years.
Unfortunately, coca's traditional uses as a beneficial
drug for
dietary, medical, and ritual purposes, and, during the
twentieth
century, as a primary flavoring for cola drinks have given
way to
illegal plantings on a large scale for cocaine production.
All of
the new, illegal plantations are located in Peru's upper
Amazon
drainage and have seriously deteriorated the forests,
soils, and
general environment where they exist. The use of chemical
sprays
and the widespread clearing of vegetation to eliminate
illegal
planting has also created unfortunate and extensive
environmental
side-effects.
In the early 1990s, the Selva was still considered an
important potential source for new discoveries in the
medicinal,
fuel, and mineral fields. Petroleum and gas reserves have
been
known to exist in several areas, but remained difficult to
exploit. And, in Peru's southern Amazonian department of
Madre de
Dios, a gold rush has been in progress since the 1970s,
producing
a frontier boom effect with various negative
repercussions. The
new population attracted to the region has placed numerous
pressures on the native tribal communities and their
lands.
All of these intrusions into the fragile Amazon tropics
were
fraught with environmental questions and human dilemmas of
major
scale. In this poorly understood environment, hopes and
development programs have often gone awry at enormous
cost. In
their wake, serious problems of deforestation, population
displacement, challenge to the tribal rights of the native
"keepers of the forest," endless infrastructural costs,
and the
explosive expansion of cocaine capitalism have emerged. In
the
1963-90 period, Peru looked to the tropics as the solution
for
socioeconomic problems that it did not want to confront in
the
highlands. In the early 1990s, it was faced with paradox
and
quandary in both areas.
Data as of September 1992
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