Roraima, a wedge of jungle and savanna between Guyana and Venezuela has caught fire. Out-of-control flames in a poverty-stricken frontier land in the middle of the Amazon jungle, which for so-long has been called the lungs of the planet, has once again served as a wake-up call for the world. Are these signs of times to come, in which the world's most important ecosystem will apocalyptically end up in flames?

Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima, had never seen so many foreign and illustrious people. At the end of March, the few hotels and lodges in town were filled to capacity. Politicians, including presidential hopeful Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former President José Sarney; foreign and Brazilian journalists; members from several worldwide Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), they all flocked to the city. The gathering had all the makings of an ecological bash inside the Amazon jungle if it weren't for all the human suffering and the ecological tragedy taking place.

Clearing fields with fire is a common practice in the Amazon. It is used as a fast and cheap way to clear the terrain in preparation for planting by big companies as well as the caboclos (poor settlers who live in the region) and the Indians themselves. The law forbids the use of fire for clearing fields, but the slash and burn method is used routinely by ranchers and farmers who can be sure of their impunity.

It was this traditional practice that misfired this time and the flames raged out of control. Add to this the fact that Roraima was hit by a harsh period of drought—Boa Vista saw only 30 mm of rain from September to March, 8% of the rain it usually gets—brought in by El Nińo and the presence of strong winds, and we have a perfect recipe for a catastrophe. Together, all these ingredients concocted the worst fires ever in the region registered in books or that anyone can remember.

The military accused big and subsistence farmers of keeping on setting their fields ablaze even after the fires got out of control because they heard that the government would pardon the bank loans of those hit by the fires. Accused of causing the Amazon catastrophe, small farmers don't seem to feel any guilt. Talking to weekly newsmagazine, Isto É, Mariano Pereira, a 55-year-old small farmer who cultivates manioc and rice in the municipality of Mucajaí, explained: "We don't have a tractor, young man. The only way is to burn when we need to plant ".

Not everybody is blaming El Nińo and the farmers, though, for the drought and the ensuing fires. Environmentalist José Lutzenberger, for example, believes that the main cause of the Roraima's fires is the forest devastation occurring in the state of Pará. Lutzenberger, who was Environment Secretary during the Fernando Collor de Mello administration, says that the Amazon creates its own weather.

According to him, the cutting of big trees in Pará has prevented what he calls evapotranspiration, which occurs in the heart of the rainforest. There the vegetation is so thick that 20% of the rain never reaches the soil staying over the canopy evaporating and forming clouds. Two thirds of the water that infiltrates the land through the transpiration of the plants form other clouds that irrigate faraway parts of the forest. Without trees the rainwater is being absorbed by the soil or running to the rivers.

Lutzenberger, who is an agronomy engineer, explains: "Before, the humid and green forest didn't burn. Now, a little burning in a rancher's field causes such a huge fire because the region doesn't see rain for two, three months."

And he added: "It is now fashionable to blame El Nińo for everything, but this phenomenon might have contributed only secondarily for the little rain in the Amazon."

Lutzenberger accuses the federal government of never "giving a damn" to the devastation in the Amazon, which according to him has reached 500,000 square km (193,000 square miles), an area bigger than California and slightly smaller than France.

In January the fires were already out of control, what led the state of Roraima to declare a state of emergency. Appeals in the newspapers, radio and TV that farmers stop burning their fields went unheeded. Subsistence farmers, Indians and big proprietors stuck to their traditional way of slashing and burning. In the past the burning could be easily controlled due to the high humidity of the area and the primary rainforest. A three-month drought has changed this scenario, though.

The Ibama (Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis—Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) has forbidden the use of controlled fire in all the areas hit by the drought even those utilized for the subsistence cultures. Government-owned Rádio Nacional da Amazônia was expected to start, though a little late, a campaign to educate the public about the risks of using fire to clear the land.

"A lot of trees burned in their bases are dying, so next year there will be more burning, and it will be even worse," said Professor Philip Fearnside of INPA (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia—National Institute for Amazonian Research), a non-governmental organization linked to Universidade Federal do Pará. He adds: "We have started a process in motion, which will destroy the whole forest."

By the end of March there was talk that 19,000 square miles of Roraima's forest and savanna had already been burned. The numbers varied wildly, however, not only because of the difficulty to measure the extent of the blaze, but also due to shifting political interests. The government would inflate some numbers to get more help, for example, or would cut a little the size of the estimate not to seem too irresponsible in the face of the catastrophe.

How much damage have the fires caused? Estimates varied wildly from 6,000 square km (2,300 square miles) to 30,000 square km (11,500 square miles)—that would be size of a country like Belgium—were either burned or at risk. Satellite photos released in the last week of March showed that about 13,200 square miles—about 15% of the state of Roraima—had been charred by the blaze.

From March 15 to March 25. the fire spots increased almost five times. When Ibama's technicians flew over the state in mid-March they detected 10 hot spots. Ten days later they were able to count 28 different blaze locations, without counting the southeast region of the state where controlled burning is also done by farmers. Since each spot represents a minimum of five focuses they concluded that there were a minimum of 250 different fires ravaging Roraima's forests. According to INPA, the fires consumed 31,000 square km (12,000 square miles) of cerrado (savanna), 4,200 sq. km (1,600 square miles) of areas in which the forest had been cut, and 1,800 of virgin forest inside the Yanomami reservation, representing more than 15% of Roraima's territory.

At the peak of the fires a cloud of white smoke was covering Boa Vista and visibility was reduced to a mere 100 feet. Breathing became difficult for the 180,000 residents. All around cars were using their lights during the day as a precautionary measure. And some cautious people were walking with masks and damp cloths covering their faces. People with respiratory problems, mostly children and the elderly, filled up hospital beds. Besides human suffering, Roraima paid a hefty price in many other areas. Homes have been burned down, several crops were wiped out. Mal-nutrition increased among the caboclos and their families, who often grow some of their food—rice and corn are common cultures—despite an emergency food program started by the state government.

In Boa Vista hospitals were overflowing. Most of the people were being treated for respiratory diseases, but there were also cases of anemia and dysentery. For lack of beds, many had to go back home and wait there for the doctor. Every doctor available was being pressed into service. Even a group of Cuban physicians who were in town for conferences were giving assistance to the population. "I never imagined that I would be one day in the middle of such a tragedy," declared Osmel Rodriguez, one of the Cuban doctors.

Indians have also lost their cabins and crops. Reporter Alexandre Medeiros from Jornal do Brasil told the story of 60-year-old Wapixana Indian, Augusto Gomes da Silva, with a wife and two children. He had no food and there was little water left. After losing everything he had planted, Silva stood guard at his house to prevent it from being consumed by the flames. "I am not going to eat, I am not going to sleep," he said. "I'll just stay here waiting for the fire to come so I can wrestle with it."

This was not an isolated case. Most of the plantations were burned around Boa Vista. The cattle were also suffering from lack of pasture and water. After saving human lives, the priority of the fight against the fire was to preserve the few pasture areas left untouched by the flames. On both sides of BR-174, a road linking Boa Vista to the Venezuelan city of Santa Elena de Uiarén, there cattle grazing on torched grass. beside igarapés (river arms) that dried out. Some were skeletal and could barely walk. Some fell down and needed help to get up.

The government started to distribute food baskets among the small farmers. Reaching the Indians, however, was a bigger problem, since many Indian areas can only be reached by plane, and flight in the region was hampered by the smoke.

The blaze began in January. However, only on March 26 the Environment Minister, Gustavo Krause, sent his request for help to the World Bank and only after that bank offered $5 million to help fight the flames. The request was preceded by a three-hour meeting between President Cardoso, his close aides and the military ministers.

After having offered help since November, by the end of March United Nations officials were very frustrated and getting edgy. They even placed a team of seven experts on alert while waiting for an OK from the Brazilian government. "I hope the green light will arrive before the weekend because I cannot maintain my team on alert waiting for too long," said an impatient Gerard Putman-Crame, chief of the UN agency in charge of fires.

Sarah Tyac, spokeswoman for NGO Friends of the Earth, seem to have spoken in the name of environmentalists the world over, including in Brazil, when she said : "We are all nonplussed with the Brazilian government's refusal to accept help. The Brazilian authorities should wake up to the fact that these fires are causing regional and global damage. This problem needs to be solved immediately. If Brazil is not prepared to solve them alone, it needs to accept aid from the rest of the world."

Carlos Pereira Monteiro, chief of the UN mission, called the blaze "an environmental disaster without precedent on this planet." He and his team didn't arrive to the scene before the rains had extinguished most of the fire. They were impressed though by the total lack of information about the effects of the fires and the way land is distributed in the area.

They were expected to make some recommendations, even more necessary since new fires similar to those in Roraima are expected in other areas of the Amazon. Walter Franco, the UN representative in Brazil said that the south of the Amazon might suffer a blaze even worse than that in Roraima around the month of June. The dry season in the area starts at the end of April. At the beginning of April, no Brazilian agency had data about losses caused by the fires including the number of cattle killed, houses burned, bridges destroyed, and plantation fields razed.

On March 30, a congressional commission went to the Boa Vista Area to start an investigation on who was responsible for the delay on fighting the fires. Former President and now House Representative José Sarney, one of the members of the investigative group, criticized the situation: "It is sad to know that only after the international community called attention to the problem, the government took measures."

It also didn't work in the government's favor that neither the Environment Minister, Gustavo Krause, nor President Fernando Cardoso found time to visit Roraima for a close-up look at the ecological tragedy. Krause was the big absent not participating in any discussion to end the fires, not even at the end when the federal government under international pressure was forced to take a position. Krause, who wants to be reelected to the House of Representatives, was out of Brasília on the campaign trail, denied that the government was negligent: "What we had was an unexpected disaster," he said as an explanation.

Brazil and Brazilian military in particular have always been wary of foreign presence in the Amazon on grounds of national security. Trying to dispel the notion that this nationalistic pride had contributed to the extension of the disaster, presidential spokesman Sérgio Amaral declared that "There is no resistance to international help as long as it conforms to Brazilian needs." Pressed by the military, Cardoso decided to create taskforces to analyze every foreign offer of help. After much international pressure, Brasília let it to be known that it was ready to receive help in the form of technicians, firefighters, and equipment. It was against the idea, however, of letting a military multinational force, informally known as green helmets, enter the country.

The whole world was offering help. Russia made available two water-carrying airplanes, the U.S. had some forest fire specialists ready to go to Brazil to help assess the situation. Brazilian neighbors, though, had an easier time to have their offer for help accepted. Argentinean and Venezuelan firefighters were the first to arrive even before Brazilians from other states. The men from Venezuela, with a personal stake on the disaster, remained in Pacaraima, a city where the flames were threatening to cross the frontier into Venezuelan territory.

Argentina's willingness to help and the efficiency of its aid gave Brasília's officials cause for pause. Some of the President's aides, with apparent jealousy, confided they were mortified at their own inability to deal with the international public opinion, while president Carlos Menem used the episode to his own electoral benefit. Brazilian officials also contended that the fire was raging even stronger in Guyana and Venezuela: "This a problem of three countries," complained a diplomat, "but all you hear about is Brazil."

Roraima's governor, Neudo Campos, from PPB (Partido Progressista Brasileiro—Brazilian Progressive Party) blamed the federal government for delaying sending resources and helping to fight the fire. "We still didn't get a cent until now," he told reporters on March 26, two months after having declared a state of emergency. "In the meantime, the fire continues to spread," he added. Campos also criticized the Cardoso administration for taking so long before accepting foreign help. "When Argentina offered its help, I accepted immediately, he said. "And the next day they were here."

Campos wasn't that trustworthy himself. After saying that the blaze had consumed 1/4 of his state, he dramatically lowered this number to 3% (1.5 million acres). And while reporters in the area could hardly find any animal carcass, the governor blamed the fire for the death of 20,000 cattle, a figure that later was lowered to 12,000. The Government also estimated that 15,000 families were severely affected.

Wilson Précoma, Funai's (Fundaçăo Nacional do Índio—Indian National Foundation) attorney in Boa Vista, accuses Roraima's governor of having kept secret the gravity of the blaze in order to get federal help. Précoma says that the state authorities waited until the fires had become an unmanageable catastrophe. He adds that the farmers also contributed to make things worse: "They are using the fire to remove the Indians from their lands. After the forest is burned they intend to convert the whole area into pasture."

Governor Neudo Campos denies any wrongdoing, however, saying that he had alerted the federal government back in January when he declared estado de calamidade pública (state of emergency) due to the drought. Campos adds that until February the fires burning in the state were those normally used to prepare the land for planting. On March 9, the governor asked $15 million from Brasília. Ageu Floręncio da Silva, Federal Prosecutor based in Roraima is also looking into the case. "I suspect that state authorities delayed taking any measure for political reason," the prosecutor told reporters.

Information and numbers on the fires coming from several sources, unreliable and often contradictory. How much of Roraima's territory was consumed by the flames? Twenty eight percent some experts were saying, 12% contended others, while there were more conservative approaches that were placing the devastation at 3% of the state land. Flooded with media from all over the world, the Campos administration was having a hard time getting the facts straight. An official handout during a press conference in the last week of March listed three different numbers as the size of Roraima. Instead of giving subsidies to the press, Kléber Cerquinho, Roraima's Civil Defense Chief, was using reports made by journalists to monitor the fires, since he wasn't able to communicate with his people on the field.

The Governor has plans to use the international aid to implement a $6-million program of environmental education for the population in general and the children in particular, build 6,000 barrages along the igarapés that proliferate in the state, and create a brigade specialized in forest fire. While some authorities said that only St. Peter would be able to solve the problem, sending rain to the area, Gilberto Mendes, a firefighting expert from Rio de Janeiro estimated at first that 1,000 firefighters would be enough to put out the fire. At a closer look, however, he changed this figure to 10,000.

The burning forest has become the central theme of the political campaign for governor. Elections will be held in October. While Campos, who wants to be reelected, accused the opposition of painting a rosier scenario of the situation in order to delay federal help, the governor's foes blamed him for not being able to take a more prompt and decisive action against the ecological tragedy. Opposition presidential candidate leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores—Workers' Party) has also used the incident to point to the shortcomings of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Apiaú is a diminutive village with 328 residents. The area ravaged by fire is also Roraima's main agricultural zone. The presence of Brazilians and Argentineans side by side, in Apiaú—the center of operations against the fire, 80 miles from Boa Vista—has served as a sobering lesson in contrast. While Argentina's team was formed by 127 experienced firefighters—some of them doctors—carrying state-of-the art equipment and personal gear, Brazil's initial contingent was composed by a group of brave inexperienced volunteers.

Even the military personnel who arrived early in the scene gave a heart-breaking, pathetic demonstration of incompetence and lack of resources: without any special gear these heroic and unprepared men got inside the jungle armed with big knifes and small water pumps in their bare hands. To smother the fire they used fallen palm branches. The Brazilian army assumed control of the firefighting operation only on March 19.

The Argentinean team, on the other hand, brought four helicopters equipped with the Bambi Bucket, a pail-like device capable of carrying 1,000 liters (260 gallons) of water. Their method of using helicopter to drop water over the fire was initially criticized and then copied by the Brazilians when it was proven effective. Gerardo Elst, 39, one of the Argentineans, who works as a firefighter for 17 years, said that nothing he had done before prepared him for the Roraima inferno.

The fires grew so much that Brazilians and Argentinean firefighting teams seemed sometimes a band of rowdy toddlers throwing the content of their beach pails against the flames. At times the helicopters had to be grounded due to the excessive smoke. Inside the jungle the combat against the fire brings additional risks to the already extremely risky job of fighting blazes. Brazilians firefighters were having close encounters—too close for comfort sometimes—with snakes and jaguars. They were also taking special precaution not to getting lost or being choked by the smoke that doesn't dissipate easily under the jungle's canopy.

They were walking in line inside the forest not more than seven feet apart. Each man got a number according to his position in the line and every once in while everyone was called to make sure nobody got lost. They might walk up to two hours before finding a hot spot. When one was found they would try to clear the area around and smother the blaze. The firefighters' effort seemed successful when the flames disappeared. The next day, however, some hot spots reignited and the fight started all over again.

Apiaú never saw so much agitation. Beer sold out in the local bar where Antônio Altevir, the owner, was beaming with his booming business: "Before, I used to sell $100 a day, but now I am selling $500," he told a reporter of daily Folha de Săo Paulo. The foreign presence has also raised the excitement among the women in town. Said Nádia David dos Santos, the town administrator's wife: "These Argentinean have brought us a lot of joy. The girls are way excited, but we have to rein in, because with teenagers you never know."

Firefighters from Distrito Federal, Amazonas, and Minas Gerais joined in the effort in the last week of March raising from 500 to 800 the number of men fighting the blaze. But the amount of smoke that covered almost all the state—due in part to many fires that extinguished—made it almost impossible for the helicopters to be used. At the height of the effort to fight the flames there were 1,700 firefighters from all over the country, including some elite firefighters from Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, and Rio Grande do Sul.

The biggest problem, said the operation commander, general of brigade Luiz Edmundo Maia de Carvalho, commander of the first Brigade of Forest Infantry, was the resurgence of fire after they had been put out. Carvalho was the same man who, when asked by reporters, on March 26, if he was going to accept help offered by the United Nations, answered: "If they are offering men and equipment, I don't need them. We are already arranging to get the necessary resources and I don't believe Brazil is going to accept this help."

Confronted with the news that Sérgio Amaral, the presidential spokesman, had announced that help had been accepted, the general commented: "This is probably a misinformation." By declaring that international help was dispensable, general Carvalho didn't help the image Brazil wanted to create as a nation responsible and respectful of its natural treasure.

Through the humanitarian group Cáritas, the Catholic Church started a national campaign to collect money, food and clothes for the people, Indians and caboclos, dislodged by the fires. SOS Roraima, the campaign launched by CNBB (Conferęncia Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil—National Conference of Bishops of Brazil), intended to collect money to buy food in all 7,000 Catholic parishes in the country.

The Catholic Church calculated that 2.400 families were made homeless by the fires in Roraima. Their goal is to buy 150 tons of food. The contribution can also be sent to a special banking account established in a Brasília branch of Banco do Brasil. The account number: 222.000-8. The bank's branch number: 3475-4. The check should made to Cáritas Brasileira.

The Brazilian participation wasn't always improvised and amateurish. Among the Brazilian high-tech agencies helping to fight the blaze there was the Environment Monitoring Nucleus from Embrapa (Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária—Brazilian Agency for Agricultural and Cattle Research) from Campinas, in the state of Săo Paulo. They already have installations in Boa Vista and were ready to take a new team with computers, antennas and a system for capturing satellite images.

According to Evaristo de Miranda, research manager of the unit, his group receives images from 40 satellites and since the beginning of the decade they have being following the deforestation of Roraima at a rate of 250 square km (97 square miles) a year. Miranda said the efforts to extinguish the fires were futile and agreed with the government policy of concentrating its efforts in saving lives by attacking fires that threatened populated areas. "The fire is uncontrollable. Saint Peter is the only one capable of extinguishing it," resignedly he told O Estado de S. Paulo. He also expressed his belief that Brazil can do without any international help.

The biggest problem in the Roraima fire was the forest, which makes up 72% of the state's territory. While the flames advanced much quicker in the savanna areas with shorter and thinner vegetation—they represent 18% of the territory— regeneration in these areas, which use the ashes as fertilizer, might take a little as six months. By the end of March 70% of the savannas had already been charred.

Technicians at INPE (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais—National Institute of Space Research) have been poring over data in order to analyze the fire's impact on the local ecosystem. They believe it could take decades before the forest area hit by the flames goes back to its old self. "Some species will not stage a comeback in many, many years, " said INPE's forest science expert Joăo Roberto dos Santos. In the thicker areas of vegetation the fire might cause irreversible damage since 30% of the 106 species catalogued by the INPE in the area will never grow back.

The INPE uses images sent by the Yankee Landsat satellite that flies over Roraima every 16 days at an altitude of 400 miles. The thick smoke, which prevents satellites from taking pictures of the area, has made difficult a precise assessment of the situation. Any picture would be useless anyway before they fix the Cuiabá—capital of Mato Grosso, 1,300 miles southwest of Boa Vista—satellite ground station that is broken.

For Joăo Roberto dos Santos, an expert in forest science, the Roraima fires were a catastrophe forewarned. He reminds that satellites had detected the first hot spots last August, but the warnings were not taken seriously. For him, small farmers and bio-diversity were the worst hit by the blaze. Flora and fauna have suffered incalculable losses, he says. Some species like the tamanduá bandeira, who is slow and incapable of fleeing from the fire will be dramatically reduced in the area hit by the flames. Santos says the extension of the damages will not be known before May, when the skies should again be clear enough for the American satellite NOAA to take pictures of the area.

Ibama's forest engineer, Giovanni Cornacchia, who was sent to Boa Vista to monitor the fire, believes that the press has exaggerated the gravity of the blaze in Roraima and he is worried with the image of the destruction being portrayed around the world. "People think that the blaze is like a fire-thrower hitting the forest, but it is not happening like that," he says. The damage being caused by the fire is many times smaller than it would be in a classic blaze, which normally reaches the top of the forest."

According to Cornacchia, the fire is burning under the big trees, but sparing the trunk and the top and the animals being killed are only those that that are too slow to escape. He says that there is no immediate danger to the green coverage of the Amazon even though the areas burned will more susceptible to new fires. For Reinaldo Barbosa, a researcher from INPA, the causes of the fires ultimately go back to the military dictatorship that started in 1964 and lasted until 1985, a time in which small farmers were encouraged to occupy and cultivate the Amazon region without getting any official back up, in a tacit promotion of the slash-and-burn policy. Said Barbosa: "This blaze started more than 20 years ago when the Médici administration started to disorderly settle this region".

But Barbosa does not spare today's authorities, who according to him should know better: "At the end of 1995 NASA had announced that El Nińo might cause problems like this and in the middle of last year our Institute warned again about this possibility."

The international press flocked to the area. In a dispatch from Boa Vista, Washington Post correspondent, Anthony Faiola, described his encounter with the raging flames: "Amid choking smoke and the crackle of flame, Geraldo Elst gave the signal for the helicopter overhead to empty its water tanks. The pilot missed his target, and Elst, eyes tearing from the searing heat, just shrugged helplessly. "This is an impossible mission," said Elst, part of a multinational team of 500 firefighters recently brought in to battle what Brazilians are calling the largest conflagration since 1925 in the Amazon rain forest, home to more than half of the world's known plant and animal species."

Correio Braziliense's staff writer Vannildo Mendes talked to residents from Boa Vista who lost all to the fire. One of them was José Wilson Ferreira, who with his wife Erisbete and two little daughters talked about restarting his life, after losing his house and plantation. They were left with 15 cattle and 60 deer, which were taken to a neighbor's pasture. "We have to start from scratch" complained Erisbete. "God only knows if we are gonna make it."

There is also the story of Leide Dayane (an apparent homage do Lady Diane), a girl of 13, whose parents are small farmers at Apiaú's Colônia Agrícola. She suffers from asthma and had to be taken to the hospital due to the excess of smoke. Leide started a campaign in her school to encourage other farmers to stop using fire to clear their land. "I would like the adults to understand that fire destroys nature and themselves," she said.

Early April, at least two Indian settlements—the Ajarani and the Mucajaí, both from the nomadic Yanomami ethnicity—were encircled by fire. The Yanomami are the world's largest Stone Age tribe. With their plantations burned; without game, which was scared off by the blaze; and with little fish since the waterways dried out in many places, the natives there were suffering of malnutrition. They don't stock their food, only taking the necessary for a day or two. The Yanomami accused the government of trying to deceive them. While the Yanomami Park Creation Commission warned that hundreds of Yanomamis were surrounded by the fires in neighboring Amazonas state, federal authorities guaranteed that the flames were at least 60 miles away.

Most of the Yanomami aldeias are in an area known as Baixo Mucajaí. They were not getting new stocks of medicine either because due to the thick smoke, government planes that periodically visit the aldeias were not able to fly there. Davi Yanomami, arguably the best-known Yanomami leader, talked about being approached by Indian mothers worried with their children's survival. Davi said to believe that the authorities could save them from this predicament if they wanted: "Government has money, government has helicopter, government puts out fire," he commented.

Ninety-one riflemen from the Army's Forest Battalion backed by helicopters and Brasília's very effective firefighters' force, were sent to the area to try to keep the fires at bay. Several of the Indians from these aldeias, however, have fled into the deeper jungle. There are 7,000 Yanomami in Roraima occupying a huge area of 9.5 million hectares, which is the size of their reservation in the state.

Among the animals that were not fast enough to escape the fire were pacas, snakes, turtles, and capybaras, all of them part of the Yanomami diet. As pointed by Yanomami cacique (chief) Peri Xerixana the very appreciated fruits like apatoá, abacaba, and abiu also disappeared in the fire. "We have a little water left," said Avelino Loyola, another Indian chief, "but very little manioc flour or rice, corn, and roots."

The fires hit the Yanomami also in other ways. With the sanitary teams unable to reach the Indians, the number of Yanomami attacked by malaria increased. In a group of 888 Indians 515 had the disease. The government was also preparing food baskets to distribute among the Indians. One of the problems, however, was what to include in the package since most of the natives, among other items, do not eat frozen chicken or beef.

Other Indian tribes also had to fight for their survival and some indigenous peoples from areas not threatened by the fire showed their solidarity by offering their help. Two Kayapo pajés (shamans) from the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, were taken by Funai (Fundaçăo Nacional do Índio—National Indian Foundation) to the Yanomami reservation to execute the rain dance ritual.

The rain ceremony was done secretly by the two pajés Kukrit e Mantii, on the banks of the Curupira river. The invocation to the god, Kororoti, could not be seen by non-Indians. The rite includes a heart-to-heart talk with the spirits of the Indians forefather, the shamans explained to reporters. These spirits are the ones responsible to address their requests to the rain and thunder spirits. "The rain is going to start and then it will never stop," they guaranteed .

The dance ceremony drew criticism from all quarters. The Yanomami themselves contended that they had their own rainmaker xaboris (shamans) and did not need other tribes help. The press has accused Funai of taking too seriously and giving a scientific aura to a folkloric costume.

"It makes no sense spending taxpayer's money with a somewhat absurd thing, when the drought and the fire are leaving the Indians without having what they need to eat," complained Adalberto Silva, vice-president of CIR (Conselho Indígena de Roraima—Roraima's Indigenist Council). Silva believes that the money would have been better spent on medicine or food: "We cannot understand Kayapo xabori," said Joăo Davi, 36, chief from the Papiú Novo aldeia. "Kayapo is a different nation. Funai's is using our suffering to promote itself."

Walter Blos, Funai's administrator told reporters that he didn't understand all the fuss about the rainmaking ceremony, which for him is the "natural thing to do." As a kind of poetic justice—and a fast one for that matter— for those who defended the ritual, just a few hours after the night ceremony the rain started to pour on the morning of March 31. This was the first strong rain in the area in the last six months and the meteorology services were expecting heavy rains only by mid April. The rain lasted four hours. The pajés went to the street to celebrate for the delight of the cameras from all over the world.

"If it is a coincidence or not, I don't know, but it certainly seems to have done the trick," said Alan Suassuna, spokesman for Funai in Boa Vista. According to Suassuna, 80 to 90 percent of the fires had been quenched by that rain. The Army also had plans for making rain, even though in a slightly different way. Funceme (Fundaçăo Cearense de Meteorologia—Ceará's Meteorology Foundation) was contacted to study the possibility of bombarding the clouds over the burning region with silver iodide flares, just before the rains started.

The fires were still raging uncontrollably in the north of the country on March 30 when premiered the new Environmental Crimes Law. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso had signed the legislation on February 13. You can't ignore the irony, though, that penalties against those who provoke blazes for burning their fields to clear the land, were taken off the bill at the last minute by Cardoso, under pressure from the ruralist caucus, a group of congressmen backed by big farmers or farmers themselves. The law intends to punish those who commit "aggressions against the environment". The penalties go from $50 to $50 million and might include jail term.

Slow Motion

The Brazilian press was unanimous on condemning the way government managed the Roraima disaster, especially the refusal on receiving foreign help. However, few media outlets, if any, noticed that the fires only became front page news in Brazil after the international press started reporting the blaze.

In a March 29 commentary on Correio Braziliense, the most traditional and respected daily of Brasília, Brazil's capital, special editor Kido Guerra wrote in a commentary entitled "The Amazônia is ours!":

"More alarming than the blaze in Roraima it was the disregard with which the tragedy was treated until last week by the federal government. Once again it was necessary that environmental NGOs, habitually considered by serious people in the press and the government as "alarmist and catastrophist", made a big scene. Only then Brasília recognized the extent of the tragedy and decided to act to extinguish the fire.

"Besides doing nothing to avoid the blaze, the federal authorities took a long time to take action even after the fire started to consume the state. Even the Argentinean and Venezuelan firefighters arrived earlier. Any moderately informed neophyte ecologist or a sympathizer of the ecological cause knows that behind this apparent ecological concern big economic interests are hidden: the Amazon is an invaluable source of vegetable species, with a still-unknown bio-diversity. Without mentioning its subsoil, apparently too rich to stay in Latin-American hands. (...)

"What remains of this monumental blaze that devastates Roraima is the impression that the Amazon really seems not to be in good hands. In delaying to take action to put out the fire, Brazil gave proof of its incompetence and offered ammunition to those who want to internationalize the Amazon. This way it is hard to convince the world that we know how to take care of our share of the Amazon. Besides the environmental disaster of Amazonian proportions, the image itself of Brazil comes out—no pun intended—charred from this episode."

The military lack of action followed by its initial refusal to accept any foreign help has irked many journalists. Writing in the newspaper Folha de Săo Paulo, the daily with the largest circulation in the country (850,000 copies on Sundays), writer Luiz Carvesan panned the Army for its role in the disaster and even wondered if there still is a place for an Army: "It is incredible that the Armed Forces would take so long before finally deciding to do something to try to contain the monstrous fire that decimates forests in the North of the country.

"After weeks of flames consuming ecological sanctuaries and laying to waste a natural patrimony formed during thousands of years and that represents one of the most admirable treasures of the planet, the Army now says that they are going to lead the combat against the fire. This is something that should have been done in the minute they became aware of the true extension of the ecological accident that the criminal burning of the Roraima has become.

"But the Army didn't go there because of the fire itself or because the protection of the country's territorial patrimony is one of its obligations. No, they sent their troops because the military felt hurt in their nationalistic pride, since the fires were drawing an international task-force, made up with military from other countries, who more sensitive than the Brazilians had already mobilized themselves.

"Facing the "foreign invasion" the Army decided to budge and end the idleness for at least a portion of thousands of soldiers it maintains throughout the country without a thing to do. Better late than never? Maybe. At least this is a good time for us to question, once again, why do we need Armed Forces in times of peace.

Rio's moderate daily Jornal do Brasil has also expressed its outrage in an editorial entitled "Jungle's Agony":

"The recipe for this destruction combines the traditional primitivism of indiscriminate burning with a drought prolonged by the El Nińo effect and strong winds that spread the flames through the dry vegetation. The official want of foresight towards ecological scourges in remote spots and the delay in mobilizing national and international means complete the tragedy's tableau.

"In lieu of fast, decisive, massive, coordinated actions we were offered scattered efforts, absence of preventive policies, disdain for the international know-how and aid. Powerless, the local authorities can't agree either on the gravity of the fire or on how long it will take to put it out. While Governor Neudo Campos says the situation is out of control, the federal government's civil defense coordinator, colonel José Wilson Pereira, swears that the fire is limited. But the Amazon's commander, general Luiz Gonzaga Schroeder Lessa, believes that the combat against the fire will be long and unpredictable. (…)

"The Roraima tragedy is an alert that everything is yet to be done in the Amazon environmental defense chapter and that the national mobilization is indispensable to avoid the amplification of a devastation of unpredictable proportions."

Liberal Folha de Săo Paulo, the largest Brazilian daily, also lambasted the federal government's total lack of initiative. The criticism appeared in a March 30th editorial entitled "The Fire Is Ours":

"After three months and at least 9,000 square km (3,500 square miles). destroyed by fire, there is more information on how negligence and irresponsibility contribute to Roraima's environmental catastrophe. At this point in time, the international aid under Brazilian command is not only welcome but necessary.

"It is correct the concern about not accepting precedents that might serve to future external interventions made without the national state's consent. But the deplorable performance of the Brazilian authorities in combating the fire must be condemned also for reinforcing the image that less-developed countries irresponsibly allow the destruction of its natural reserves.

"In fact, two months ago the local Ibama (Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis—Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) sounded the alert about the risks of the land burning. The National Institute of Space Research also has the capacity to monitor fires. Ibama's information, however, circulated in Brasília to no avail. Only now the pictures received by the INPE—which began to be sent faster by satellite—are orienting the work.

"The federal administration started to really act only last week after the tragedy had made big news in the international media. So, it is not surprising at all that the main fire spot is out of control according to an evaluation taken to President Fernando Henrique Cardoso by the Foreign Relations Chamber and the National Defense.

"Some personalities, especially military, gave the impression that nationalism in fighting the fire is more important than protecting the patrimony that the fire destroys. But it would be an exaggeration to lay the blame for the environmental disaster to this attitude. Several national institutions, the press included, were unprepared to perceive the problem's extension. It was pure incompetence. Foreign aid is compatible with the respect to national sovereignty."

Veja, Brazil's main weekly magazine, more editorialized than covered the fire on the issue dated April 1, 1998. Entitled "Fire, Omission and Bravado", the article signed by Klester Cavalcanti and Vladimir Netto, chastised the government for its omission:

"Due to El Nińo, last week people were fighting fires in countries like Australia, Indonesia, and Venezuela, all of them as large as the one that assaulted Roraima. The difference is that in Brazil to the ecological disaster was added the governmental disaster. Since last year the government was being alerted to the dangers of the burning in Roraima due to the dimension of the climatic phenomenon."

Veja goes on to say that in November 1997 the Brazilian government had received a letter from Vladimir Sakharov, UN's coordinator of humanitarian affairs, offering any help Brazil might ask. The offer was repeated in December of last year and then in March, revealed the magazine.

"(Sakharov) only obtained an answer this last Friday when the fire was already out of control. The government decided that it will accept help, as long as it is under Brazilians' coordination. If it had acted earlier it could have saved Roraima from tragedy."

"As it has always happened in disasters dealing with the Amazon, the government only acted when the international press started to show images of the fire and to denounce the omission of the authorities. Also as it always happens, it tried to minimize the disaster and took from the vest's pocket a trite nationalistic bravado. To admit foreign aid, according to the military and a good portion of the government, would be to admit Brazilian failure in managing the Amazon. Therefore it would be—still according to this vision—to open the doors to intervention in the region by other countries. This is what the military during years called, paranoiacly as the "Amazon internationalization. (...)

"Few times have we seen such a narrow-minded exhibition of antiquated nationalism. It is as if Brazil had stopped in time, more exactly in the '60s, when the military paranoia towards the Amazon started. There was talk, already at that time, that other countries, especially the U.S., had plans to take from Brazil the sovereignty over the Amazon forest."

For the traditional newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, which for years has been leading a preservationist campaign in the country, the authorities omission in Roraima is incomprehensible and unforgivable. In an article showing all the cutting edge technology the Union has at its disposal and the bad use the government made of it, journalist Liana John wrote:

"The environmental disaster that befalls Roraima, with the spread of fires and out-of-control burning, admits several adjectives: uncontrollable, impressive, unacceptable, inaccessible, implacable, and even unforgivable. Everything, but unpredictable. Especially for the only government in the world that has a decade of operational monitoring of fires by satellite in its history, with the best technology of planning and forecast there is. There are ten years of inestimable services rendered by the environmental research to which the authorities turn their back without doing their part."

The article traces the origin of this effort to 1987 when INPE's (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais—National Institute of Space Research) researcher Alberto Setzer developed a program to use data from NOAA, the American meteorological satellite, to locate fire spots for now extinct IBDF (Instituto Brasileiro de Desenvolvimento Florestal—Brazilian Institute of Forest Development). The next year, the editors of Agęncia Estado, the news agency of O Estado, signed a contract by which the paper committed itself to divulge that work, publishing it on the front page of its flagship paper the way some Yankee dailies publish information about the weather on the newspaper's cover.

Starting in 1990 Embrapa produced maps showing major fire concentrations and the number of fire spots. The maps made it possible to detect new fronts of deforestation inside the virgin forest and showed that fires follow deforestation within three years. By 1992 the Estado/INPE partnership had created the so-called economic-ecological zoning model, a blueprint for developing economic activities in the Amazon, according to principles of sustainability and with minimum impact on the environment.

Forlorn Land

Located in the northwest of Brazil, Roraima, which was upgraded from territory to state in 1988, is the least populated of the 26 Brazilian states, with a mere 1.16 inhabitant by square km (0.39 square mile). Brazil's extreme northern point, the Roraima mount at the Pacaraima mountain range, is in Roraima, right on the border with Venezuela and Guyana.

According to the 1995 census, the state has 262,201 residents, 40,000 of whom are Indians, constituting the third largest Indian population in the country. The reservations take up half of the state 225,116 square km (86,900 square miles) territory, roughly the size of Utah. The native presence, especially of the Yanomami, whose reservation occupies 9.4 million hectares, has created several conflicts. Many see it as an impediment to the growth of the state.

Roraimenses contribute a diminutive 0.11% to the Gross Domestic Product. The main crops in the area are manioc, orange and corn. They also raise cattle and swine. Logging, diamond and gold mining, and ceramics are some of the other economic activities.

Ah!Mazon

Despite all the uproar in the last two decades and a half, the Amazon is still an impressive and mostly intact forest with a size two thirds of the continental U.S..

For centuries the Amazon has been a source of inspiration and awe for all kinds of dreamers and lunatics. Explorers and adventurers have entered it in search of riches or some more intangible goods like the warrior women Amazons or the fountain of youth. Two Americans—car pioneer Henry Ford with rubber trees in the '30s and eccentric billionaire Daniel Ludwig, who poured $3 billion in paper pulp, cattle raising and rice planting projects during the '70s—were just some of the many people who tried to conquer the region and were defeated by what has been often called as the Green Hell.

The so-called Amazônia Legal (Legal Amazon) which extends for nine Brazilian states covers 5.2 million square km (2 million sq. miles) two thirds of which are in Brazilian territory. If it were a country, it would be the world's sixth largest one. The region contains a wider variety of fauna and flora than any other place on earth. More than 1,500 bird species live there, as well as 3,000 fish species (that's 15 times more than in all European rivers). It is also believed that the number of insects that make the Amazon home surpasses 30 million.

The number of plant species is unknown. Estimates vary from 5 million to 30 million. Thirty thousand of them have been classified, representing 10% of all plants in the world. One single acre in the Amazon contains close to 200 tree species. The forest has several distinct layers. The biggest trees can reach 40 meters (130 feet). The upper canopy grows generally 25 to 30 meters high (80 to 100 feet).

Since 1970 Brazil has created 124 environment parks and reservations which occupy more than 45,000 square km (17,400 square miles), an area larger than Switzerland. In all, Brazil has 1.8% of its total territory put aside as protected land. That's too little, though. By comparison, Colombia has 8% and Venezuela, 15%. To complicate matters, in less than 30 years, 600,000 square km (231,700 square miles) of forest—an area larger than France—were destroyed.

Despite occupying roughly half of the country's territory, the Amazon is residence for only 12% of Brazil's 160-million strong population and contributes a miser 5% to the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Illiteracy reaches 25%, while the country's average is 19%. Annual per-capita income is 2,059, less than half the national average. Life expectation is also lower in the area: 63 years compared to 67 years for the population in general.

Living in reservations that take close to 1 million square km (386,000 square miles)—20% of the Amazon—there are 280,000 Indians belonging to 210 different ethnic groups, and speaking 170 languages. If you also count natives living in cities there are more than 300,000 of them.

In 1500, when Brazil was discovered by Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral, there were an estimated 6 million Indians. In the '50s this number had fallen to less than 100,000. It is believed that at least 50 tribes have never had any contact with anybody else than their fellow Indians. In one of the few good news in the ecological battle, the Indian population in Brazil is growing at a rate of 3.5% a year, almost triple the 1.3% for the population in general.

The Amazon river, which cuts the Amazon from west to east, together with its 1,100 tributaries carry 20% of all potable water in the planet. Seventeen of its tributaries are over 1,000 miles long. The river drains an area as big as the continental United States. The Amazon stretches itself for 6,868 km (4,268 km miles). More than 2,000 species of fish live in its waters.

The military regime dream of occupying the Amazon—one of its favorite slogans was integrar para năo entregar (to integrate so not to give it way)—created among other public works the Rodovia Transamazônica, a 5,000 km-long (3,100 miles) road cutting inside the jungle between Joăo Pessoa, in the state of Paraíba, and the border of Brazil with Peru. The jungle has retaken the precarious path and today only 1,000 km (621 miles) are passable part of the time. But it is a road only for the adventurous.

The government is spending $1.4 billion in a controversial, corruption-marred radar-based system to monitor air traffic in the Amazon, as well as fires and all kinds of invasions, including those of Indian lands by garimpeiros (wildcat gold prospectors)—they are believed to throw 20 tons of mercury illegally used for gold panning on the water streams each year— and the sem-terra (those without land). It is the Sivam (Sistema de Vigilância da Amazônia—Amazon Watch System), which should start operating in 2002. The twenty-radar system will also use data from eight weather and environmental satellites as well as five planes specially built, which will be able to look through the thick jungle vegetation. Today, Ibama has 275 inspectors to oversee the whole of the Amazon, or 18,500 square km (7,142 square miles) for each one of them, an area almost as big the state of New Jersey.

The Brazilian official position on the Amazon has changed dramatically (at least on paper) since 1972, when the military regime informed the world during the Stockholm Environment Conference that Brazil considered its own development much more important than concerns with pollution and deforestation.

Today there are plans to explore the enormous potential of the area for ecological tourism. Amazonas Governor Amazonino Mendes, who oscillates between defender of the environment and very good friend of the lets-cut-down-the-forest lobby, has some Amazonian plans such as building a monorail inside the jungle together with a floating hotel large enough to receive up to 30,000 visitors.

"Until now the premise to economically explore the Amazon was to cut the forest," says ecology professor and WWF (World Wild Fund for Nature) executive director Garo Batmanian. "There are smart alternatives to that and they need to be tested."

The world spent $260 billion in eco-tourism last year. Costa Rica, with a forest 100 times smaller than the Brazilian one got $600 million. Only $40 million was spent on Brazilian's most famous jungle. A ridiculously low 0,01% of the total eco-tourism bill. And nobody else has an Amazon so rich and so vast.

Apocalypse
Now

Amid all this tragedy there was a sad and disturbing behavior: that of the Brazilian authorities who let it all burn down until they were pressed into action by the international press outrage.

Emerson Luís

Slow Motion

Forlorn Land

Ah!Mazon

Despite all the uproar in the last two decades and a half, the Amazon is still an impressive and mostly intact forest with a size two thirds of the continental U.S..

Apocalypse Now

Amid all this tragedy there was a sad and disturbing behavior: that of the Brazilian authorities who let it all burn down until they were pressed into action by the international press outrage.

Emerson Luís

Slow Motion

Forlorn Land

Ah!Mazon

Despite all the uproar in the last two decades and a half, the Amazon is still an impressive and mostly intact forest with a size two thirds of the continental U.S..

Apocalypse
Now