Altamira, “capital” of the Transamazonian and cemetery of the great forest

It didn’t take long for us to miss it. A little earlier, however, an insider had told us his position with precision. On leaving the city center, drive 8 kilometers east, pass the police station and the service station, and take a good look on the left side, under the electricity pylons, against the tire retreading centre. “You can’t miss it! », he had assured. Despite everything, once there, nothing visible, not the slightest monument, at least a priori. And then suddenly, in the car, one of us shouted. ” It’s here ! It’s him ! » Turn, swerve. To hell with the trucks and their furious horns. This first stop was non-negotiable.

Curious place for a monument… Lost by the side of the road, between waterlogged pastures, sinister “sex motels” and rusty warehouses. In appearance, it is certainly not much; just a tree, or rather what’s left of it: the trunk of a gigantic walnut tree, cut with a chainsaw and cast into a concrete coating. Consumed by humidity, overgrown with weeds, it does not look great. In its cracks grow small purple flowers and embarasseda plant with lobed leaves, popular with lazy people. All this smacks of oblivion and nothingness. Affixed near the trunk, a black plate looking like a death announcement struggles to remind the visitor of the importance of the place: “On these banks of the Xingu, in the middle of the Amazon jungle, the President of the Republic launched the construction of the Transamazonian, giving historic impetus to the conquest and colonization of this gigantic green world. » The inscription is followed by a place, “Altamira”and a date, the “October 9, 1970”. That of the birth of a road. And of the death of the great forest.

Front line

So begins our story. In Altamira, in the middle of the fields, very close to the turbulent waters of the Rio Xingu. It is here, in the heart of the Brazilian state of Para, that the first shot was fired a little over fifty years ago in a war that has never known its name: that waged against the nature. A conflict where the anonymous victims – trees – number in the tens of billions and whose today depends the fate of the climate, of the planet and a fortiori of humanity. A war of which the Amazon is the battlefield, and the Transamazonian, the front line.

“So how did you find the ‘president’s trunk’? » Antonio Ubirajara Umbuzeiro suppresses a smile. In Portuguese, the word “trunk” also designates the male gender… The joke helps to break the ice. Our host, air traffic controller by profession, cultivates a tongue-in-cheek eccentricity. From his chick-yellow house, stuffed with trinkets, this 50-year-old also devotes himself to poetry and science fiction. For his dog, a chow-chow, he built a giant kennel in the shape of a Swiss chalet, with light and wooden door. “Knock before entering!” », he said without laughing.

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