Once More Around the Sun Looking for the Amazon…

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In 2024, Amazônia Latitude completed eight years covering one of the most complex, important, and intriguing regions in the world.
We are observers and witnesses to this place on Brazilian soil, which concentrated more than half of the wildfires recorded this year and which has suffered a record drought without having had time to recover from another historic dry spell.

We saw rivers go dry while the people that usually use the water to move from place to place were isolated, suffering hunger and thirst. This is a degradation that also frightens and threatens the Amazonians of Bolivia, Ecuador and the other PanAmazonian countries.

We were here while the eyes of the world looked for Belém do Pará, the COP 30 host, on the map, to bring forward debates on the “contribution of the Amazon Rainforest to the world”.

We were here looking for answers and offering up the discoveries we made in coverage such as that of the Festival de Parintins (Parintins Festival), the Círio de Nazaré religious festival, and the Feira Pan-Amazônica do Livro (PanAmazon Book Fair); in addition to events like the Seminário Internacional América Latina e Caribe (International Latin American and Caribbean Seminar) (Sialat) and the meeting of the Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência (Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science) (SBPC), which preceded the debates that will be taken up once more at next year’s COP.

We were here trying to show that the Amazon is so much more.

The Amazon and its struggles. Duels against fire, the drought, the environmental degradation, the illegal mining, and the counter thoughts that reduce it to the “barn of the world”. There are true battles against projects that invade the territories of the peoples of the forest, disturbing and destroying a cycle of equilibrium between humans and nature that has lasted millennia; it is like killing your own chicken that lays golden eggs.

The Amazon is its people. Quilombolas who, centuries ago, reconstructed their identities and territorialities here. Indigenous peoples that protect and hold this “place” as part of themselves. Riparians, extractivists, and protectors who, even when they are in the cities,
are the guardians of the Amazon.

How can we forget the midwife Zenaide Carvalho, the teacher Eliana Nukini, the extractivist Raimundo Mendes, the activist Huni Kuin, the Quilombola lawyer Queila Couto, the abridor de Letras (calligrapher of boat names) Idaias Freitas or the boatman Lucenildo Lameira?

The Amazon is culture, history, and knowledge. In the projects “Pensando a Amazônia pela Literatura” (Thinking on the Amazon through Literature) and “Pensando a Amazônia pela Música” ” (Thinking on the Amazon through Music) we found Technologies,
movements, rhythms, stories, ways of seeing and being that could not exist anywhere else.

We can say that this year we published 191 reports, photo-galleries, podcasts, articles, and essays. But the truth is that we don’t offer numbers. We work to put forth discoveries and thoughts. We offer the experience and connection of those who belong to the Amazon.

In the last 12 months, we have had the privilege of telling you what we have seen and heard from thinkers like Ailton Krenak and João de Jesus Paes Loureiro and reflecting, with them, on the importance of rethinking the way we interact with the (Mother) Earth and with the Amazon.

We went to meet indigenous leaders who, in different countries within the Amazon, fight to protect the forest and show us the importance of ”Stepping Softly on the Earth”.

We remembered with Felipe Milanez and Hugo Loss the “Zés Claudio and Marias” and the “Brunos and Doms”, comrades that lost their lives because they talked about the need to protect the forest and its people.

We read important works produced in the region like the overflights in “Paradô”, in West Pará, by the neurosurgeon Erik Jennings; we presented reflections and research from Amazonian scientists; we saw the beautiful and the ugly in photographs by Oswaldo Forte, Edmar Barros, Alexandre Moraes, Marcos Colón, and João Paulo Pires.

After so many experiences, we are ready to start again, sure that we can only carry on because you are there, looking to know more about the Amazon and trusting us to bring these stories to you.

2025 will be a landmark year; the year of COP 30 in Brazil, in the Amazon. It is an edition that has already been dubbed “COP da Floresta” (The Forest COP). This will be a year of great struggles and challenges for those that are dedicated to reporting the truth, investigating the facts, and valuing what really matters to the Amazon, its peoples and cultures.

In the midst of so many challenges, your support is fundamental.

Every contribution, no matter how small, keeps alive our commitment to defend, educate, and share ancestral knowledge on the  largest forest on the planet.

We are a small team (Glauce, Alice, Elielson, Fabricio, Amanda and our contribuitors), but with your support, we are stronger and more impactful together. Join us on this mission. Contribute, share, read, and, above all, stand beside us.

It is for the Amazon, for its peoples, its cultures, and its biomes that we renew our commitment to fight for the life that sustains the planet and to bring quality information to you. Together, let’s make 2025 a year of impact and hope for the largest forest in the world.

Until the next lap round the sun looking for the Amazon!

Marcos Colón
Editor-in-Chief and founder of Amazônia Latitude
Southwest Borderlands Initiative
Professor of Media and Indigenous Communities
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Arizona State University

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Pix: [email protected]