THE FATE OF THE FOREST: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon

by Susanna & Alexander Cockburn Hecht ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 27, 1989

The Amazon forest's indigenous population has dropped from one million in 1900 to two hundred thousand today; in 1492 it was six to twelve million. In burning season, eight thousand fires rage daily, destroying the nut and rubber trees that provide the region's most economically and ecologically viable livelihood. Conflict, violence, debt slavery, displacement, and land-claim chaos are endemic; and the ranchers' organization that killed rubber-tapper and union, organizer Chico Mendes is proceeding down its hit list. These facts are known to the news reading public. What Hecht (Grad. School of Planning/UCLA) and Cockburn (Idle Passion, 1974; coauthor, Smoke, 1978) address here is the long history and complex of causes behind the present disastrous situation. And while Europeans, Bolivians, and North Americans have all played misguided and disruptive roles, the authors attribute the current disasters to a quarter century of deliberate--if confused and shifting--development policies of the Brazilian military government. Massive subsidies for large landholders alternated with plots for small settlers; there followed measures for a military presence and then lip service to environmental preservation. Nothing has worked; nor, say the authors, will the current scheme for extractive reserves, unless these are planned and managed by the forest people according to principles set forth by a new alliance of Indians and rubber tappers. Thus, Hecht and Cockburn argue, the resident victims of large-scale development--tappers, Indians, nut extractors, and the newer small settlers and miners--must set aside their animosity and stand together for forest justice. A ten-year project on Hecht's part and buttressed with extensive documentary and bibliographic notes, this stands as solid, incisive analysis and a sobering corrective to the various myths and simplifications that still prevail. The prose, however, would have benefited from more evidence of Cockburn's hand.

Pub Date: Dec. 27, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Verso--dist. by Routledge

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION