O Mamoré, generous sustenance giver,
tributary, great earthworm of a river: I see you from above, pushing off and
pushing on, northwards flowing, northwards growing, like an uneven, winding hem
across the landscape. I see you from the plane, ever the direction shifter, you
turn and return, loop and loop once more – almost full circle, several times,
before you go about switching course again. Of the Beni, of the lowlands of Bolivia
O Mamoré, do you remember when we met? It
was as that open-air truck, the camion
from remote San Ignacio de Moxos, cautiously sidled down your muddy bank trying
not to overturn in a rut, as it took to the ferry on its way eastwards to the
Holy Trinity, Beni’s capital, La Santísima Trinidad. As you well know that was
towards the end of the few-hour journey, for of course Trinidad
was first established on your very bank, until, it seems, you tired of the
dizzy distraction of the town-dwellers and urged them on, was that it? Through
flooding and disease you pushed them back, not far, to relocate in 1769. What
you might not know is how in the wild ranch-and-mission country of San Ignacio
that morning I’d gone to meet the bus only to be confronted instead with that
camion, arranged with loose-fitting wooden plank benches to sit on; and it was
before we met I faced the dirt highway. But there were blue and yellow macaws
in a towering dead tree and caimans lying in the open by the ponds in the
cattle paddocks – not sure how the cows could drink there beside all those
teeth – and rheas, those South American ostriches, with purpose they went
strutting through the grasses beyond the road – and to find these animals
without even trying made Beni seem a wildlife wonderland. So it didn’t matter
about the patchy rain that fell on us or the dust kicked up that teased our
eyes. When we met, if I wasn’t smiling it’s because the wooden plank seating,
after hours, bumpy road, does little good to the posterior.
O Mamoré, what do you really think of Trinidad ? The low buildings around the central plaza, the
palm trees and the melting in the day’s heat, is it to your liking? It can be the
sound of the town – the groan of pick up trucks and the buzz of moped and
motorbike that swarms the air is unsettling but the Benianos are resourceful people,
in tank tops and jeans, removed from the centres of Bolivian power in the
Andes, neglected they may say, and proud of their lowland camba Spanish and their camba culture that inherited more from El
Andalus than from La Paz. And I need a hat for the sun is fierce. Do you know
that in the evening when the locals promenaded and moped-buzzed around the
plaza I pondered how it would be to run a little English school there?
O Mamoré, tell me how it was, the Beni, for
you saw the Spaniards arriving late, one of the last blank spots in South
America on the European maps. You knew the pre-conquest civilisations, the
people without a name who built vast canals and mounds across the savannah in a
system of agriculture unique to the Amazon basin – they fooled the scientists,
didn’t they, who thought that because Amazonian soils are infertile, despite
the jungle, humans in any numbers could not subsist there. Isn’t it strange how
they’re trying those old ways again, the farmers growing crops on mounds,
raising fish in the canals, facing the annual flooding with that prehistoric
methodology that reduces the need to slash new areas of jungle every few years
when the soils become depleted? You saw the indigenous peoples who came later, you
watched as they faced the missionaries and their languages merged, as diverse
groups they were reduced to the singular Moxeño people, old ways forgotten. Did
they really benefit from Christianity? You saw the nineteenth century rubber
boom and best of all you must know the truth of El Dorado El Dorado
O Mamoré, do you remember my little
adventure in Guayaramerín? You’ve become the Brazilian border by then, isn’t it?
And apart from that little disputed island it’s clear that on your far bank the
Portuguese starts, in the Brazilian co-town called Guajará-Mirim. So I took the
boat, do you recall? I saw how broad and fine you are –and from the heat I
wished to, ill-advised, dive into you. There was ill-ease, did you sense it? I’d
read I could enter the Brazilian town for the day without a visa and return but
it wasn’t certain what would happen. I tell you, when I went inside the
immigration building on the far bank I paused with a kind of dumb, innocent
smile waiting for the official to acknowledge me, wanting to humbly ask if
Brazil wouldn’t mind much if I slightly entered its territory for just a short
while. The official quite deliberately turned his back which I took as quiet
permission to wander past the desk and out onto the street – I’m sure that’s
what it was about – overlooking the formalities, just as he’d undoubtedly done for
foreign tourists before. I liked Brazil
O Mamoré, I found a mid-range hotel, for
water, not to stay, and inside there wasn’t a soul at reception but after some
minutes a uniformed maid, attractive, came, and all I could say, the only
Spanish I found, that I knew, that she would understand was ‘agua’ – water,
aside from the hello and thank you I managed in Portuguese. She took a bottle from a trolley, a bottle
that must’ve been destined for a bar fridge and I only wanted a glass of tap,
and I showed her, I couldn’t pay unless she would take the Bolivianos she
didn’t seem to want. She put her finger to her lips, O Mamoré, it was secret,
without language, between us – and there wasn’t much I could do. I was more
than hot and more than thirsty – she could see that. Back at the riverside I
boarded your ferry to Bolivia
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