Green (less) Hell

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It was Alberto Rangel that made the phrase “Green Hell” famous. The image evoked by this trope transcended the pages of fiction and was brought to us in the preface of Euclides da Cunha. However, when we look to the Amazon today, this metaphor has become even more relevant, and more disturbing than ever.

The “Green Hell”, the name also given to the title of Rangel’s book, should be what it is: surprising, original, extravagant; made to awaken a strangeness, discomfort, and instinctive antagonism among the critics of today. The current Amazonian reality reflects a “painful reality” which, despite being far from the universe exposed by Euclides, echoes the same sense of urgency and desolation.

The Amazon is facing the worst drought in its history, in addition to the largest burnings of recent years. In every dry season, what was once a green exuberance is reduced to ashes and desolation. As Euclides da Cunha observed, “the land of plenty and the growth in the cheerful fullness of its life” is now consumed by a green hell where the local society seems to be “dying miserably”.

The drought and the burnings are the most recent manifestations of a large-scale environmental crisis. “The tragedy is happening without a plot twist”, as Euclides said, and the devastation does not follow a traditional narrative; it is a silent overwhelming collapse. The “fallen lands” and the floods that he described are now replaced by fires that consume the land and the future of the region.

“Among those wandering in the soil, who are denied their own physical stability”, today, we observe the desperate struggle for survival in the midst of devastation. The environment that sustains the lives of millions is being destroyed, and “man kills man like a parasite annihilates the tree”. Euclides’ comparison between physical and moral destruction echoes strongly in contemporary reality.

Today, more than ever, the Amazon represents the last page of Genesis, as states Euclides da Cunha. However, this page is not being written by God, but by the arrogant ignorance of the deniers, under the banner of environmental catastrophe. This notion, according to Euclides, tells us that in addition to the Amazon being a new territory (for being the last on the list of God’s creations), it will always be — in his words — in evolution, in constant change, in a “state of being”, as he wanted. These days, we see the manifestation of the Euclidian prophecy, but the wrong way round: its evolution, is the evolution to a “state of not being”.

Thus, “The wild flock copies, in its ferocious agitation, the unconscious struggle for life that shows itself at the lowest biological order.” The struggle for survival in the Amazon transcends the forest itself — it is a struggle for the very essence of life on Earth, in which the destiny of the largest tropical forest in the world reflects the future of humanity.

Alberto Rangel and Euclides da Cunha warned us to the horror that is not just an echo of the past, but a cry for help in the present. The “green hell” that they described is more real than ever, and what we are seeing today is a collective agony, a desperate struggle to save what remains of a unique, vital ecosystem.

The devastation of the Amazon is not only an environmental issue; it reflects a moral and social crisis. The world should pay more attention and act before the last chapter of Genesis is written in ashes.

The future that is being shaped in the Amazon is, in fact, haunting. It is a future marked by higher temperatures, the intensification of drug trafficking, severe droughts, increasing hunger, and the scarcity of water, which, until recently, was the basis of life in the region. Euclides da Cunha has already warned us of the human and environmental tragedy: “Now among the magic of those vibrant scenarios, there is an agonizing actor, man”. He further complements this by referring to one of Rangel’s eleven tales: in “Hospitality, the fallen man strives, in seconds, for a miracle of atavism, to arise from humanity, before diving forever into the shadow, denser day by day, of its irreparable moral decrepitude.”

The degradation that we are witnessing today seems to fulfil this bleak destiny described by Euclides. Man, the main actor in the destruction of the forest, also becomes the victim of this process, diving ever deeper into the shadow of an irreversible moral and environmental crisis. What was once a struggle for survival in a vibrant ecosystem, is today a struggle to not succumb to a devastated environment, where the lack of water, food, and human dignity are becoming the new normal.

If Alberto Rangel, as Euclides said, “is haunted before those scenes and scenarios; and in the frantic impetus of sincerity, did not wish to suppress his amazement, or rectify, with the mechanical coldness of the professional scribe, his giddiness and the defiance of his exasperated sadness”, how would he feel upon seeing the images captured by the photographer Edmar Barros on his trip of 10 days through the green(less) hell of the Amazon?

Certainly, Rangel, who described the Amazon as a scenario of tragedy and struggle, would be even more horrified. Barros’ photos documenting the burnings, the devastating drought, and the communities that are fighting for survival, are making tangible what Rangel and Euclides only glimpsed in their days: a scenario of environmental collapse that goes beyond the esthetic, touching the essence of what it means to exist in an environment that no longer sustains life.

The “green hell” of Rangel and Euclides was not only a literary metaphor, but a premonition of what the Amazon is becoming today. A hell with no green, with no water, with none of the life that once flourished. The images of Barros bear witness to this agonizing process, capturing the pain, the resistance, and in many cases, the defeat of man before a tragedy of catastrophic proportions, not only for the region but also for our planet.

This is the future that the Amazon faces — and which, somehow, the entire world must also face.

Fire reaches an area of Amazonian forest along the edge of the BR-230 (Transamazonian highway), in Lábrea (AM), Wednesday, September 04, 2024. Data from INPE indicate that in the first four days of September, 10,032 fires were registered in the Amazonian biome. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude

On Amazon day, September 05, the city of Lábrea woke to the poorest quality air in Brazil. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude

Fisherman, Lairton Castro da Silva (22), moves along on his motor boat under heavy smoke from the burnings, which covers the Purus River, in the city of Lábrea (AM), September 06, 2024. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude

A riparian carries a gallon of potable water along the dry bed of the Madeira River. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude

Riparian and community leader João Mendonça, together with other riparians, carry gallons of potable water to help other residents affected by the largest drought in the history of the Madeira River. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude

Riparians affected by the largest drought in history carry gallons of potable water and an empty water waterto be filled along the dry bed of the Madeira River, in the Paraizinho community, in Humaitá (AM), September 08, 2024. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude

Riparian Sandra Gomes and her daughter store potable water during the recird drought of the Madeira River, in the Paraizinho community, in Humaitá (AM), saturday, September 07, 2024. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude

A dense cloud of smoke, arising from the burnings in the Amazon, covers the city of Lábrea (AM) on Amazon day, Thursday, September 05, 2024. Photo: Edmar Barros / Amazônia Latitude

Click here to read the Portuguese version and here for the Spanish version.

Marcos Colón is the Southwest Borderlands Initiative Professor of Media and Indigenous Communities at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His research focuses on Brazilian literary and cultural studies, with a particular emphasis on the Amazon, Indigenous studies, and representations of natureculture in documentary film and world cinema. His book The Amazon in Times of War is scheduled to be released in October this year.

Editor: Glauce Monteiro
Page layout: Alice Palmeira
Direction: Marcos Colón