Sergio's Journey Part 4

Between the old partisans of Stroesser, the relatives and friends of the missing ones and the nocturnal plunderers of the capital, a weak elected executive tries to steer its way in the midst of general contempt. The presidential palace ? shining white and majestic ? rises above the Bay of Paraguay, an ample turn of the river where the civilian and military harbours are located. It was empty when we walked around its perimeter, as the president was on a long trip, away from the dead-ends of his administration. On the same day that we saw the picketers and the empty presidential palace, a dealer in leather goods told us while we looked at his merchandise that great amounts of people were leaving the capital and going back to the countryside. This urban exodus is quite contrary to Latin American trends, and a sure symptom of an unusually deep crisis in trade and industry. It seems ? as I discussed before ? that the remnants of a Guarani rural civilization can take them back in.

As for Iberian Paraguay, it keeps as linked to the river Plata as it has been since the time of its original foundation by an offshoot of Mendoza?s expedition. Ever since the late XVIII century the lead has been taken by Argentina ? the former Provinces of the River Plata ? and Paraguay?s trade balance and markets for its industrial production now depends on the more affluent downriver neighbour. The deep recession of the Argentinean economy in the last couple of years has meant that its Paraguayan counterpart sank to the bottom of the abyss. The ruralisation of Paraguay, temporary as it may prove to be, is a direct effect of a crisis extending from the south, just as the wave of conquest extended from south northwards in the sixteenth century. Political instability has followed suit in a country ruled with an iron hand for a long time and not yet at ease with its elected governments. A heavy and still cloud hovers over the city of Asunción today, like electric air before a storm.

THE SWAMPS OF THE MATTO GROSSO

The river Plata had been discovered in 1508 by Juan Díaz de Solís and until Mendoza?s expedition it was named after that sailor. But in his 1534 expedition Mendoza found on its banks an embassy of Indians carrying small amounts of gold and silver, and ever since the river took its current name, meaning silver in Spanish. This proved to be a hasty change because the precious metals turned out to have come from Alto Peru, or present day Bolivia, where the Spaniards were to find the mountain of Potosí. Nonetheless, and as was to happen so often in the Iberian exploration of America, a legendary El Dorado served the Indians the purpose of luring the conquistadors on their route and away from their lands. In the case of the Paraguayan Indians, this route led north ? simply because the invaders came from the south ? and into the swamps of the upper Paraguay River.

Cabeza de Vaca followed this route after his sighting of the Iguazu Falls and his arrival in Asunción with the title of Adelantado, in replacement of the already deceased Pedro de Mendoza and in tacit opposition to the founders of the city, among which was Domingo Martínez de Irala. After Cabeza de Vaca had managed to secure his governorship among the encomenderos ? at least temporarily and thanks to his role in defeating the hostile Guaycurú Indians ? he led four hundred men north, half embarked up the river Paraguay and half by land. On their way the Spaniards established a fort near a round mountain, and called it Puerto de los Reyes. In time it would come to be known as San Fernando and eventually as Corumbá, the border town in the Brazilian State of Matto Grosso du Sul. From that base, Cabeza de Vaca and Martínez de Irala explored the flood plain of the upper Paraguay River. Gold always laid further north, as Sacacies, Xaqueses, Chaneses, Artaneses, Xaraes and Tarapecocies would invariably have it, one after the other. Before being deposed by Irala?s faction, Cabeza de Vaca reached the northernmost fringe of his expedition at latitude of 16 degrees south. This corresponds to the place where the Cuiabá River flows into the Paraguay, in the northern Pantanal (as the whole region is called today), and in the land of the Tarapecocies. From these Indians, Cabeza de Vaca learned about the amazing previous expedition of the Portuguese Alexo García, of which there were no news in Europe.

Contradictory versions of García?s expedition date it between 1526 and 1531, and present it as dispatched from San Vicente (present-day Santos) by the governor Martim Affonso (this could only be possible after in 1531, when he arrived there). At any rate, it appears clear that García, in command of a large army of Tupi Indians, crossed the Parana and the swamps of the upper Paraguay and eventually reached Alto Perú, as far as the valley of Tarija in the south of present-day Bolivia. He must have crossed the Paraguayan Chaco, a harsh expanse of dry lands northwest of Asunción that we were not to see on this trip. Only five Christians came with him, and eventually a couple of them made it back to San Vicente, carrying silver and gold objects from Inca domains several years before the exploits of Pizarro. García was killed after having crossed the Paraguay and he could never claim any honour or prize for his achievements. A number of Tupi Indians from his army remained in Paraguay, and were met by Cabeza de Vaca in 1544.

By Raposo?s time, the failure of these earlier expeditions had not been enough to discredit the legend of a lagoon of silver located beyond the swamps of the upper Paraguay and further up the reach of Cabeza de Vaca?s and García?s expeditions. The common belief among the Portuguese and the Paulistas was that silver existed in great amounts at the very sources of the Paraguay river, north of the flooding plains that are known today as the Pantanal and right in the higher lands that mark the divortium aquorum between the La Plata and the Amazon basins. Already well into the XVII century, the Portuguese as well as the Paulistas were on their quest for another Potosí ? as the one in Alto Peru was indisputably in Spanish control ?, and they put their bets beyond the fringes of former expeditions. Ironically, it turned out that gold, not silver, was to be found half a century later just to the north of the first Pulista settlings. This was just across the Mantiqueira mountain range, which we saw to our right from the bus that took us from Rio to São Paulo earlier in our trip. In 1648, Raposo still insisted in carrying on his quest according to the early Spanish patterns of exploration along the rivers of the La Plata basin, and perhaps in the awareness of Alexo de García?s ill-fated expedition.

By the end of 1648, almost a year after their departure, Raposo?s and Pereyra?s columns reunited in San Fernando ? the site of the ancient fort of Puerto de los Reyes, established by Cabeza de Vaca more than a century before. Pereyra came from the south, after his routing of the mission of Mboymboy. Raposo had been awaiting him for almost four months, during which he had not kept idle. He dedicated this time, and another two months together with Pereyra, to the exploration of the northernmost reaches of the upper Paraguay and the higher lands that separate the basins of the Plata and the Amazon rivers. This is the present-day Sierra dos Parecis, the so far un-reached location of the mythical silver lagoon. Detachments of the expedition were sent as far north as the divortium aquarum of the rivers Juarú-Paraguay and Guaporé-Madeiras, in the present-day mountain of Santiago, at latitude of 14 degrees south. A region that had until then been left blank in the maps, could in 1650 be described in detail by the chronicler Simão de Vasconcelos. This was the first stretch of land visited by Raposo and his men that had been previously unexplored by Iberians, and it would be perhaps the only one. As such, it constitutes Raposo?s main contribution to sheer geographical exploration, even if he did not describe it properly given the already mentioned circumstance that no priests came with the expedition. On the other hand, it proved fruitless, as no silver lagoon was found and instead the men had to endure the constant warfare of the Guaycurú Indians, the same who had been fought by Cabeza de Vaca in 1544. They had retreated further north, as the Spanish settlers had advanced north from Asunción and were by then mounted warriors reputed by their fierceness and command of the horse. As a consequence of the lack of silver and the mighty hostility of a mounted community of warriors, Raposo was forced to try his luck further west, dangerously approaching Spanish domains.

A night bus ride spared us some of the hardships faced by Cabeza de Vaca on his way up the Paraguay river, except for uncomfortable sleep and a number of minute creatures of the swamp that had found their way into the bus, surely at an earlier service. The small town of Miranda, some 80 miles east of Corumbá, was to be our gate into the Pantanal.  There we fell into the gentle but inexorable tentacles of Fátima, the Pernambucana woman-woman who has managed to put half of the Pantanal in her pockets. Three days were not too many to explore what took Raposo six months, but we were resigned to have just a glimpse of this vast flooding plain where cattle ranches coexist with lush South American nature. The Fazenda Rio Vermelho would be our best bet, or so said Fátima.

Contrapino, a taxi driver from the town, picked us up early in the morning. He was to drive us to the Otter Pass, on the Miranda river, from where a boatman from the fazenda was to take us up river and into the Vermelho affluent. Our chat with Contrapino was most rewarding, as he kindly introduced us to his feelings about the Pantanal?s fauna. He talked at length about the João de Barro, the red-chested bird that builds perfectly spherical nests of clay neatly divided in two inner compartments. Of ounces, my personal main concern, he spoke with respect, and of jacaré caimans and tuyuyu storks as emblems, but he showed more interesting in telling us that all the land we crossed after a fast half an hour ride, was the property of some Rockefeller junior. Contrapino spoke of 135.000 hectares east of the Paraguay River under the name of the iron magnate?s descendant and of the finest cattle stock within the super-fazenda?s boundaries. The Matto Grosso is still a land of barons and servants, as we were beginning to discover.

Surita, a Guaraní Brazilian, took the relay of Contrapino?s taxi with the fazenda?s motorboat. He spoke Portuguese and Guaraní, and asked me insistently for the Spanish names of the animals that he names in his two languages. Unfortunately, I did not have the linguistic scope to be able to record in my memory the Guaraní names of the animals. These are the most ancient names for the biota endemic to the Pantanal, as well as the southernmost ones for part of the Amazonic one. Many of these names have been assimilated into Linneau?s binomial system of classification, in a process that amounts so much to a Latinisation of the South American biota as a guaranisation of Latin. Surita presented himself as originally Paraguayan, and told us that his father spoke Spanish. It is most likely that his ancestors were among some of the peoples recorded by name in the Comentarios of Cabeza de Vaca. Iberians and Guaranís still maintain a complex rapport in this land.

We reached the Fazenda Rio Vermelho by noontime, and Surita handed us over to Jerson, a parsimonious black man in charge of entertaining the visitors in much a peculiar way. Starting with Fátima, the white Pernambucana in possession of the deals, and up to Jerson, we had completed the triangle of races that formed Brazil and the whole of Latin America. In the Matto Grosso do Sul, however, and for the purpose of the tourist industry of the Pantanal, the roles of the three seemed to be unchanged since the sixteenth century. Fátima made the money and gave the orders; Surita served as guide and interpreter to exotic newcomers; Jerson was meant to be at our beck and call, and he practiced resistance with the masterfulness of a natural philosopher.

Horses and motorboats do the trick in these flooding plains. They are the means to get to the animals and to have a feeling of this blend of wilderness and cattle ranches. In some parts, cows disappear as if they were rodents among the tall grasses; where grass gives way to swamp, they share the ground with caimans and anacondas. Interspersed among the huge manors and separated by more or less regular distances of half a mile, there rise thickets of woods of small dimensions, called matos in Portuguese. It is inside these that animals are to be seen. Jerson did not tell us that, content, as he was to ride on his horse with one leg crossed over the saddle and both feet dangling on the same side. Fortunately my horse, a small and young chestnut called Lambarí ? after a small fish used for bait ? was swift and brisk, and it was in a good mood that day. I was not, because of the deadly boring pace in the midst of such land of wonders, but the Lambarí made things right for me. I could leave the group led by the pondering Jerson and intern myself into the tall grass and the matos. I soon discovered that every mato afforded the opportunity to see a type of animal, as if they all had been distributed by a newly landed Noah. In one, a coatí came out of the foliage of a tree to observe the mounted intruder; another one was home to yellow-crested parroquets; entering the one further ahead I came across a small red deer, of the genus Mazama; a large Penelope reigned alone in another, on top of a tall tree; a large light-brown owl rested in another; two nests of Joãos de Barro, spherical as lamps and with a perfectly round entrance, just as Contrapino had described them to me. The equilibrium between manor and mato seemed to be too neat to be true. As for the actual status of the populations present in the Pantanal and the ecological stress caused by ranching, hunting and fishing, I cannot say.

In fact, we partook in the fishing. Along the course and banks of the rivers, the distribution of space among animals is quite different. It becomes linear while in the manor and matos it was patchy. As one moves up the river on the motor-boat, cranes fly off branches at regular intervals; caimans occur along both banks separated by distances that appear to be proportional to the size of the individuals; solitary capibaras can be seen near the water at random intervals. Upriver we locked the boat to some tree roots on one of the banks and set off to fish piraña. For this we used bits of raw beef, thus making sure that they would take the bait.  They did indeed, and we took six yellowish specimens that are much more difficult to get off the hook once out of the water than on it while underwater. The massive rows of fourteen teeth shine in the sun very near the place where the hook pierced the fish?s cheekbone. A firm hold of the slippery wriggling creature and an attentive staying clear of the teeth does the job, never without flashing images of an amputated thumb. Piraña fish seem to be abundant, and they are certainly not the people?s favourite catch. They can be deep fried, as we did that very night, but they are mostly used to prepare a thick fish chowder that is added to finer soups or poured over filets of better fish such as pintado or dourado.

One more thing we did in the Fazenda Rio Vermelho, or rather attempted to do. Spotting the ounce ? the jaguar, that is ? is not easy even in the Pantanal. Had we done it in only two days and with the parsimonious pace of Jerson would have been almost undeserved. The locals of the fazenda spoke of the nearest mato as the home of the onça, an impossible idea since jaguars continually patrol a territory of no les than 15 square miles (up to 25 in intervened Amazonian forest). They could mean, however, that it came to that mato frequently, a much more likely contention. If this was a tale to add thrill to the visitor?s trip, the trick proved counter-productive because I pestered Jerson for two whole days until I brought him to accompany me for a night walk in the search of the mightiest predator in America. The conditions were not ideal, with Jerson in control of the light and so little time at hand. Instead of the feline, we saw caimans, pintado fish and capibaras at night. One of these even jumped into the river and we saw it dive and reappear, in the same way the early conquistadors describe the way in which they hunted them with their muskets. Our sighting of the mighty onça was then postponed to a second and longer visit.

In July and August the Pantanal is in its dry season. Its southern stretches look as I have just described them, with dry manors, isolated matos and normal rivers. The northern part of it is wetter and usually constantly under water, even if its depth increases greatly in the wet season. As for the Fazenda Rio Vermelho, it also sinks between October and March, and only the slightly higher matos remain above the level of the waters. The river canal is lost in a lagoon dotted with islands of forest, capibaras become gregarious and even the onça turns to fishing with its piercing paws. Cattle must be assembled in higher manors and the fazenda?s buildings look like ships in a mirror of water, as the pictures held in the walls permit to see.

Raposo Tavares and his men saw the Pantanal under water, moreover since they advanced northwards into the lake of the Xaraes, near the present-day city of Cuiabá. They could have hardly suffered hunger in this bountiful land but they may have been affected by the continuous presence of water all around. The point where Pereyra joined his commander lies west of where the fazenda Rio Vermelho lies today. Contrapino picked us up on time in the Otter?s Pass and drove us to that point, in the present-day border town of Corumbá. On our way we passed the river Paraguay and then a range of low mountains that rise just in the western side of an abrupt turn of the river towards the southeast. Because of this turn, the river no longer marks the border with Bolivia, and a stretch of dry mountainous land extends between this country and the river. It was here that the fort of Puerto de los Reyes had been set up by Cabeza de Vaca for the exploration of the swamps to the north, and it was here that Raposo and Pereyra met, in what they then called the mountain of San Fernando. Gold was never found in this range, but it now yields a great amount of iron ore, ferried by train all the way to São Paulo. Skirting along the feet of this small mountain range, a pipeline brings natural gas from Bolivia, a major part of which is converted I electricity for the Matto Grosso. Corumbá is a great town for fish restaurants and for a bit of indulgence after the Pantanal. Among generous platefuls of pacú and pintado fish ? grilled and ensopado ? and together with Contrapino, we said good-bye to Brazil for a while. Our friend saw us to the Bolivian border with plenty of time to catch the Death Train to far away Santa Cruz.

IN THE FOOTHILLS OF THE ANDES

Vieira writes that Raposo moved out of the wetlands of the upper Paraguay and headed west until he met highland Indians, the Serranos. He does not tell anything about the landscape of the peoples the expedition met until they reached the foothills of the Andes. Once there, however, he faced trouble, because those were warlike Indians who did not give him any peace. The lowlands of Bolivia along the feet of the Andes mountains had always been in pre-Iberian times a meeting place of peoples, and as far as we can tell politics were always tense in the region. There was the westernmost reach of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic family, with some established groups come from the east; farther north, there was a Carib people come from the Amazon basin, the Chanes, who had undergone a process of guaranisation. The mountains, on the other hand, had all been taken under the control of the empire-making Incas, after a process of political domination that was fully accomplished by the end of the fifteenth century of the Christian era. In fact, there is evidence that the Incas were attempting to spread their political influence throughout the lowlands of present-day Bolivia, at the expense of the Tupi-Guarani groups and in fulfilment of their myths of origin, which stated that the Inca peoples had come from the lowlands. The Spaniards, for their part, had taken control of the Inca Empire in 1538, and by the middle of the seventeenth century had managed to link it to their possessions in the basin of the river Plata. A system of roads ran from Buenos Aires to the mining highlands around Potosí, through Tucumán and Salta. A branch joined it from the north, coming from Asunción.

The customary gate to Perú when coming from the River Plata and Paraguay was, therefore, the south of present-day Bolivia. North of that tamed track, laid the dry lands referred to as the Chaco, thinly populated by hostile Indians, and to the northwest of them, along the foothills of the Andes, the still independent and hostile Guarani and Chane groups already mentioned. Raposo?s expedition crossed this forbidden land in its northern part, after having left the headwaters of the La Plata river system and moved on to the southern headwaters of the Amazon. After their exploration of the divortium aquarum between the two river systems, he and his men must have followed the course of the Guaporé river, which leads to the north of present-day Bolivia where it flows into the Mamoré. This river runs in turn into the Madeiras, which is one of the major three major tributaries of the Amazon.

For our part, we used an intermediate route, south of the Guaporé River and north of the Chaco. This was the compromise struck by the Brazilian and Bolivian railway systems in the first half of the twentieth century, and it served passengers until ten years ago. This line still links São Paulo and La Paz, but on the Brazilian side it only carries cargo. The stretch between Corumbá and Santa Cruz de la Sierra is referred to as the Death Train, simply because it has been so neglected in the general demise of this link, that the old trains have a marked tendency to derail. The Death Train was a compromise in our route too, since the boat trip on the Guaporé takes at least five days and we did not have that much time. So, we departed a bit from Raposo?s route, but it was worthy it to the last mile. On the other hand, I had travelled in the north of Bolivia back in 1992 and the things I saw then coincide with the last half of this stretch in Raposo?s route, as I will show below.

When we arrived in Quijarro, the Bolivian town of departure, there were no more train tickets in the booth. We both them resold for a higher price to a daughter and mother couple who introduced us to Bolivian womanhood. We dealt with the daughter, who must have been in her fifties, but it was her septuagenarian mother who controlled the whole deal, and a great deal of the train station. The mother never spoke, she only grinned, but she kept all the money, gave all the signs and was the centre of a real clique of female power. I had been in Bolivia before, so this did not surprise me too much. What happened on the train did, though. It was a story of 20 hours, as long as the seemingly never-ending ride from Quijarro to the city of Santa Cruz, the heart of the Bolivian orient.

The train arrived after hours of waiting for it, and I took a seat on my own in a cold and almost empty car. It filled up progressively, and in front of me there sat a mature and elegant man who seemed to be extremely concerned with his comfort. He made sure nobody sat by his side and produced a woollen blanket to cover his legs. His chest and neck were covered by good quality jackets and a wine-red scarf. We exchanged some shallow words but at first showed our inclination to mind our cold limbs in silence. As the car filled up with people, a woman in her late forties took possession of a full four seats with a number of packages and bags. The Death Train is a trade train, and people from Santa Cruz use it to transport Brazilian merchandise to be retailed in Santa Cruz. Her mannerisms were upper class, and she was troubled only by the perspective of a long and uncomfortable trip, not by her merchandise as all the other traders ? all of them women. It just happens that the police checks the merchandise and confiscates anything unattended or not sufficiently justified by the owners. The woman seemed to be well set in that respect, but she frowned before the perspective of a cold and uncomfortable night. After assessing the mature man and me, she decided to join us in our part of the car, and to start conversation.

Her name was Mayra. His, I forgot or perhaps never bothered to record in my memory; to me, the elegant man was to be the self-pleasing one. He had come to Corumbá to undergo treatment on his eyes, she was a businesswoman. They started talking in the awareness that conversation was to be their only pastime over a sleepless night, and at conversation they were no less that artists. Besides, they spoke in the best Spanish I have heard in my life. It all became a virtual flirt from the start. That was to be the way to play it out, but only for the sake of entertainment. Right from the start, she told us that she was a widow, and tired of being alone; she was looking for a good man, and earning an invitation to coffee in her house would be his first task to perform. He spoke of his wife, but presented himself nonetheless as a candidate for that invitation, and set out to prove why he was worthy.

Mayra had come onto the train without a ticket and was concerned about it. The self-pleasing one presented himself as her protector, thus asserting a masculinity otherwise muffled by his shortsightedness, his obsession with comfort and his upper-class mannerisms. She began by telling us her story, which progressively grew kinkier and kinkier, but always in the best Spanish and with the best taste. She had been married to a Brazilian doctor, a good man whom she loved and with whom she had two daughters. The doctor died and she found herself providing for her family. As their standard of living had always been high, she had to work very hard to keep it and to educate her girls all the way. Coming to Corumbá for goods to be sold in her store in Santa Cruz was part of her chores, and she confessed to being profoundly tired of it. She showed us her face as a proof of this, for as she said it had been that of a young woman until very recently. Then she moved on to tell us about her love stories as a widow.

By this time she had made it clear to me what it meant to be a Cruceño (that is, a native of the city or the region of Santa Cruz). They are referred to as Cambas, as opposed to the Koyas of the highlands. This amounts to a racial difference, because the highlands are inhabited by a majority of Quechua and Aymara speaking Indians, even if many of them live now in cities and partially separated from their original communities (it would be more correct to say that those cities ? including La Paz ? are blown up Indian communities, at least for the majority of their populations). The Santa Cruz lowlands are inhabited by a larger proportion of mestizos, who in most of Latin America are thought of as whites, and consider themselves to be white. It just happened that at the time of the Spanish conquest, the more thickly populated highlands absorbed the Iberian racial component to the point where it is hardly noticeable in the population; the lowlands to the east, much more thinly populated, took the shock of the Conquistadors in a very different way. Here the conquest was a business of missionaries and outright wars of extermination, while in the highlands it was the taking over of a great empire from the top down. Marya and her friend, then, were Cambas and proud of it, but as I was to learn,