Learning to relate

Learning to relate

by Andrea Vela Alarcón

1

I about it

The Amazon, with all the shades of green and all the types of lives,

>

a faraway place exists in the mind of many as seemingly untouched by the industrial noise.

We describe it statically through what we think are facts: It is a vast land of tropical forests with a rich biodiversity. It is the lungs of the planet. It is the home to the largest river in the world. It is useful to the wellbeing of the planet. The Amazon is the world’s biggest rainforest, larger than the next two largest rainforests — in the Congo Basin and Indonesia — combined. At 6.9 million square kilometers (2.72 million square miles), the Amazon Basin is roughly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States and covers some 40 percent of the South American continent. The “Amazon rainforest” — which defined biogeographically includes the rainforest in the Guianas, which technically are outside the Amazon Basin — covers 7.8-8.2 million square km (3-3.2 million square mi), of which just over 80 percent is forested. The Amazon River is by far the world’s largest river by volume, carrying more than five times the volume of the Congo or twelve times that of the Mississippi. It drains an area nearly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States and has over 1,100 tributaries, 17 of which are longer than 1000 miles.

The Amazon River once flowed west-ward instead of east-ward as it does today. The rise of the Andes caused it to flow into the Atlantic Ocean. The Amazon is estimated to have 16,000 tree species and 390 billion individual trees. Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is found in Brazil. The Amazon is thought to have 2.5 million spe-

And just like that, we know what it is.

A big useful place for when we need a break from the suffocating stiffness of the concrete,

or better yet! for when we need to boost the economy of the few with the dainty pockets.

From these generic facts we place our meanings in the IT of the Amazon, thinking we are close to an accurate portrayal.

What we (non)innocently ignore, is that this way of knowing IT is a

carefully.crafted.strategy

set in motion around the year of 1542, when an invader named De Orellana bumped into a main artery and marked

the past

the present

the future

with the desire of accumulation and the punishment against other-than-human-relations

The IT, made IT easier to feature IT as a public space up for grabs, where one can live-in-and-from but no

with

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the Amazon.

Now here we are, speaking about but never alongside the Amazonian land.

For these facts have blind our sight to see beyond of the everything that you are.

II with you

We have been taught to pose the wrong question, and our responses were not an exception.

They created stories praising human-centeredness with a one-way voice.

Without leaving much space to ever wonder, what if we took a different approach?

And if instead of the questions what is the Amazon? or what is its history?

We would ask: Who are you Amazon and what can you tell us?

Who is in your memory and where are they now?

What are the sounds of your voice and the rhythms of your songs?

What are your aches and how can we heal them?

Perhaps through questions that don’t take nor assume your voice we could have a conversation and open a path for a re-connection.

Imagining different practices of relations with you and yours, the ancestors of the past who survived the European genocidal attempts the ancestors of the present who survive the capitalist endeavour of Indigenous dispossession. the ancestors of the present/future who will find among the destruction an in-betweenness where to seek your renewal where to assert that an otherwise life is not only dreamable

but possible.

2

Learning to relate: Invitations for a creative encounter with the Amazon Learning requires a creative encounter. A meeting between two or more bodies coming together, not just to be with each other but to transform each other. This kind of encounter makes meaning and knowledge through the sensuous and creative exploration and experimentation with the symbolic, the material and the spiritual.

A creative encounter requires a disposition to be in a relationship where difference is shaped and recognized, in harmony, in conflict, in openness, in tension. Here, human and other-than-human participants come to create together, in multiplicity and not in isolation. In this encounter, our creativity must nurture practices of co-creation where solidarities are set in motion. This requires our commitment to being ready to endure the discomfort that comes from the risk and sacrifice of co-creating a multi-species well‐being.

Below are four invitations to be in a creative encounter with the Amazonian Land, to relate with her from a less human-centred location, away from the unilateral prescription of usefulness and extraction. The four invitations seek to locate the participants, the human and the land, in an encounter where they influence each other’s mode of being in the world.

These four invitations are creative acts organizing ways of relating with attentiveness to the difference and multiplicity of sounds, voices, and stories that might be seeds for refusal and renewal in a world threatened by capitalist devastation.

An invitation for ecological intimacy When in Amazonian Land, find a spot where you feel comfortable and safe.

Once there, introduce yourself and ask this question out loud: “Who are you Amazon?”

In silence, start writing all the answers given to you in the shape of sounds, of a breeze, of light beams.

Be patient and pay pleasurable attention to the whispers of the movements unravelling around you.

Once you feel you have an answer or answers, share it back with the land making every word present.

Carve them out on the ground or make the words out of leaves, twigs or pebbles When you finish, take a few minutes to see how your answer is welcomed.

An invitation for a pago a la Tierra (payment to the earth) Part 1 When in Amazonian Land, go for a walk to an area where the land is a resource. A public “acerradero” (wood mill) is most likely to be around.

Once there, observe and tracked down that which has been taken under human dominance. Ask around, what kinds of trees were these? (and if you feel safe, where was the wood taken from? Where will the wood go?)

Grab a handful of sawdust, put it in a bag or an envelope and take it with you.

Mix the sawdust with something that belongs to you.

Part 2 While in Amazonian Land, search for the kind of tree from the wood mill.

Once you find it, visit them in the early morning.

Scatter the mix around the tree and repeat three times: “as much as we need, not as much as we want.”

An invitation for tracing resistance

When in Amazonian Land, embark on a practice of tracing.

This means searching for evidence of the existence, influence, or action of those whose land you are on.

Trace the history of a person whose life was cut short while defending the land and their lives.

Learn their name and their cause. Amplify their story beyond their death.

Leave traces of their names and their cause across the territory you find yourself on.

An invitation for constellations of solidarity When in Amazonian Land, embark on conversations with those who are looking for solidarity connections.

This is a long practice, of many months, of many years.

Plan to host a yuca (cassava) feast, as this is considered the food of solidarity.

Invite three people with whom you seek to achieve a livable multi-species world.

Ask each to bring a yuca and a guest with whom they seek to achieve a livable world.

Allow this to repeat and get as big as you want.