Brazil with Michael Palin (2012–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Into Amazonia - full transcript
I've been travelling
the world for the past 25 years.
I've met so many people
in so many countries
that everyone thinks of me
as the man who's been everywhere.
But in all these years, there's been
one big gap in my passport.
Nothing less than the fifth
largest country on Earth.
A country blessed with
a melting pot of peoples
and an abundance of resources.
A country that's risen
almost out of nowhere
to become a 21st-century superpower.
It's the host of the next World Cup
and the next Olympic Games.
It's a country whose time has come.
How can I say I've seen the world
when I haven't seen Brazil?
Okay, waterfall, we defy you!
We defy you!
PALIN: Brazil is now the sixth largest
economy in the world
with 80% of the population
living in megacities
where industry and technology flourish.
But alongside this
21st-century dynamism,
there are people in Brazil whose
way of life has remained unchanged
for thousands of years.
It's in their land that I start
this leg of my journey.
Amazonia is a region which has enticed
explorers and adventurers for centuries.
In this episode, I shall be
travelling its vast distances,
from the border with Venezuela
to the nation's capital Brasilia.
I'm excited and a little apprehensive.
Below me, thick rainforest cloaks
an area as remote and inaccessible
as anywhere on the planet.
(INDISTINCT TALKING ON RADIO)
When people from the West
landed in Brazil
just over 500 years ago,
there were some five million
indigenous people living here.
A fraction is now left.
One of the largest and least contacted
of these are the Yanomami.
I land at the recently built
government outpost
three kilometres away
from their village.
The sound of the plane
has drawn an inquisitive crowd.
(CHILDREN CRYING)
(LAUGHTER)
The Yanomami have a reputation
for being warriors and hunters.
I'm barely off the plane
before I'm into archery practice.
That rock there?
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Wow, pretty good!
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Do you want me to go and get it?
All right.
(MEN LAUGHING)
Error!
Looks like bone or something.
Maybe it's just wood.
Error!
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
That bird there, okay?
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Oh, wow!
Wow. Very good.
No, I am not going to get it.
He can go and get it.
(LAUGHS)
(INDISTINCT)
PALIN: They're much less fierce
than I expected,
and seem to regard me
and my accessories
as a considerable source
of entertainment.
Good to be here.
I've never been
in this part of the world before.
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's my own hair.
That's what you're saying.
I didn't expect to be doing comedy
on my first day in the Amazon.
(LAUGHS)
It's an hour's walk through the forest
to where they live.
And as we finally approach the thatched
walls of their village, or maloca,
I realise I'm entering
deeply unfamiliar territory.
Unlike us, the Yanomami live communally
in a huge, round, thatched house.
It must be at least
400 metres in circumference.
There appears to be
no privacy whatsoever.
I've no idea
where you're supposed to wash
or do all those other private things.
They don't seem to do toilets.
Perhaps they don't need them
with a million square miles
of virgin forest outside.
At last, I'm shown to my room…
Sorry, bed… Uh, sorry, hammock.
Now, yes, this is my hammock.
This is where I'm sleeping, I think.
Thank you. (CHUCKLES)
Well, yeah,
I've been in hammocks before.
I don't think I've ever spent
an entire night in one.
So this will be a bit of a first.
Everyone here, of course,
in the maloca,
they all sleep in hammocks.
So I think the thing to do is,
you have to get…
That's right in the middle there.
Oh, that's rather nice.
And then you got a kind of
swing the legs up.
Whoa! (SIGHS)
And then, stay here
for about another 12 hours.
Aah! That's lovely.
The maloca seems to consist entirely of
women, children, and one very old man.
But then, just as I'm settling in
to some quality hammock time,
I get the word that the rest
of the villagers are in the forest
preparing the traditional welcome
for outsiders.
The welcome is both
an opportunity to dress up,
in this case with red urucu dye
and white feathers from the harpy eagle,
and a way to intimidate anyone
who might cross their path.
Dressed to kill,
they head back to the maloca,
but there's still one important
ingredient for any Yanomami ritual.
The Yanomami are famed takers
of a powerful psychotropic snuff
made from the bark of forest trees.
Apparently, it puts them
into a trance-like state
so they can communicate
with the spirit world.
(YANOMAMI CHANTING)
Suitably prepared,
the welcoming party enter the maloca
and the ritual celebrations begin.
(CHANTING)
I can understand why the Yanomami
were nicknamed "the fierce people".
The women don't take the snuff
and are less intimidating
with their version of the hokey-cokey.
After circling the maloca repeatedly,
the men and boys go out
into the blazing heat of the day
and work themselves into a state
of stomping, rhythmic agitation.
I'm just exhausted watching.
It's hot out there, they need a break.
I'm worried about them.
(YANOMAMI CHANTING)
Feathers are blowing away.
Ah!
ALL: Oh!
PALIN: After the climax
of the welcoming ceremony,
participants are rewarded
for their exertions
with almost unlimited amounts
of a rainforest cocktail
made from fermented peach palm.
I'd quite like to try some.
Maybe I'll start with a child's portion.
Knock it back.
As the day draws to a close,
the effects of the snuff
and the cocktail
create a soporific air
as the maloca quietens down.
It's time for me to get ready for bed.
My first night in a hammock.
Malaria! mosquitoes
are a constant threat here,
and the Yanomami are as
anxious as I am to protect me.
I've a very bad record
with mosquito nets.
They always collapse.
Ah, yeah, that's it. Yes.
You just need someone who knows
how to do it, that's the thing.
What do I know?
Sydney Harbour Bridge, this.
Don't try this at home, certainly.
Four days later…
It's good.
The slow pace of life
is wonderfully infectious.
But as dusk draws in, I finally
find a way to make myself useful.
There you are, see,
great explorers of Roraima.
Telling bedtime stories to people
who don't understand a word.
It's fun, isn't it?
That's Teddy Roosevelt,
Theodore Roosevelt.
He was the President of America
and he came to this part of the world
when it was very difficult
to get through the forest.
He came on a trip with his son
that was called Kermit.
Yeah, honestly,
and a man called Rondon.
Mr Rondon was a Brazilian.
And, uh, they came here
and they got completely stuck
and they found a river
to take them away,
and, uh, they didn't…
They called it the River of Doubt.
They didn't know where it began,
didn't know where it ended.
But eventually, after many days,
they floated their way down this river
against a very hostile environment
and they came out of the other end.
And Rondon, the Brazilian, was so
thankful to his mates, the Roosevelts,
that he called one of the rivers
the Rio Roosevelt.
(IN LOCAL ACCENT) Rio Roosevelt.
-(BOYS LAUGH)
-Yeah, I know. You laugh.
And he also called one of the rivers
Rio Kermit after his son.
End of story.
Bedtime. Off you go.
(PALIN CHUCKLES)
Night time in the maloca is only
slightly less rushed than daytime.
The pet sloth they keep in the rafters
seems perfectly adapted
to the pace of life here.
Oh, there's the sleepless Englishman,
always wanting to improve his mind.
What is the point?
Things weren't always as secure
for the Yanomami.
For a long time,
their remoteness had protected them
from the trauma of contact.
But the discovery of gold
in the late 1980s
changed all of that.
Their land was invaded by thousands
of illegal miners, garimpeiros,
who not only poisoned the river
with the mercury
they needed to flush out the gold,
but brought with them diseases
like measles and tuberculosis
which swept through the tribe
killing hundreds
and changing forever the way
they perceived the outside world.
Only when the Brazilian government
under intense international pressure
took measures to get rid of the miners
did the Yanomami begin to recover.
But the lure of gold
will always be a threat.
And no one knows this better than the
shaman of this village, Davi Kopuena.
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
He has travelled in Brazil and overseas
to plead their cause
to impress on the outside world
the need for continued protection.
As I watch him in action today,
I see no remote tribesman,
but a consummate politician
working on behalf of his people.
The Yanomami have lived in the forest
for thousands of years.
Are you consulted by the government
about how best to use the forest?
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
MALE TRANSLATOR: They don't call us
to go to the capital, Brasilia,
so we can hear what the government
is planning to do with our land.
They don't ask us,
the indigenous people,
they just tell us.
"We are going to build
the Belo Monte Dam."
"We are going to build
the northern ring road."
"We are going to build
the army headquarters."
"We are going to open mines
in the indigenous territory."
They don't consult us.
PALIN: The fact that
they've cut and cleared
a football pitch
in the middle of the forest
shows the Yanomami are not resistant
to all outside influence.
As soccer mad as the rest of Brazil,
they save on kit
by painting their team colours
straight onto their bodies,
and the kop's filling up nicely.
But this outside influence,
like football, has a purpose.
Many Brazilians feel indigenous peoples
don't need such vast tracks of land
which could be better exploited
for logging, or cattle,
and of course, mining.
So by hook or by crook,
the government wants to bring
the Yanomami into this debate.
(WHISTLE BLOWING)
One hook is the provision
of health care.
Health workers come to the maloca
to treat injuries,
dispense drugs,
and inoculate the children.
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Today, a group of government workers
has flown in to tell the Yanomami
of a new initiative
in the way health care is delivered.
Despite all these
undoubtedly benevolent actions,
Davi the shaman remains wary.
You have a, um, a clinic near here,
you play football.
Do you see, um,
engagement with the outside world
as the way forward for the Yanomami?
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
MALE TRANSLATOR".
Our priority is health care.
This is what we need.
And other things like playing football,
this is really not a priority,
because this is the white man's custom.
Our priorities are health care,
our own culture, language, and customs.
This is what is important.
PALIN: Alongside the health programme,
is also a school
to teach them Portuguese,
a prerequisite for closer engagement
with the rest of Brazil.
What I've sensed from my brief stay here
is that the Yanomami
have no strong desire to change.
Like so many of the
indigenous peoples of Brazil,
it will be forced upon them.
But who am I to judge
whether a life of hunting with arrows
and snorting snuff
is preferable to a life of
iPads and TV soap operas.
But surely, the choice should be theirs.
In many of these really remote
northern areas of Brazil,
like where the Yanomami live,
there's no road access at all.
Everything goes in and out by plane,
including me.
So I'm heading south now
towards the Amazon.
PALIN: The mighty Amazon is at the heart
of a network of over a thousand rivers.
Together, they contain up to
20% of the world's fresh water.
I leave the headwaters of the Rio Branco
and head south towards Manaus
where all the great rivers gather.
I'm on my way to find out more about
the people who live from these rivers.
From the growing business
of eco-tourism,
to the declining fortunes of a people
almost as endangered as the Yanomami}
the Seringueiros.
150 years ago, wild rubber
harvested by thousands of Indians
and the caboclos,
those mixed raced
Indians and Portuguese,
created a boom which made
fortunes for the rubber barons
and a harsh and pretty miserable life
for those who collected it.
In 1876, an Englishman
called Henry Wickham
stole some rubber seeds
and sent them back to England.
By 1900, they'd been
transplanted to the Far East.
And by 1920, the Brazilian
rubber industry had all but collapsed.
Welcome to the Sao Tomas village.
In the village of Sao Tomas,
I'm met by my local guide, Gabriel.
He takes me to meet Elias,
one of the old Seringueiros.
He still taps the few
remaining rubber trees
which leak their now
not-so-precious fluid.
Rubber man, he knows
whereabouts rubber tree is.
He knows to cut a rubber tree.
-Hello.
-Hello, mister.
Michael.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
-This is the rubber tree.
-Yeah. Yeah.
MALE TRANSLATOR". And here,
they are wild trees.
They grow here and there and everywhere.
PALIN: So then, here's the sap
coming out. Yeah.
GABRIEL: Yeah.
PALIN: And this…
-Thank you. Ah, the seed.
-Yes, rubber.
These are the seeds of the rubber tree.
So this is what the seeds
look like that Henry Wickham…
GABRIEL: Exactly.
…took from the Amazon,
went back to Kew.
-They then took them out to Malaysia.
-To Malaysia.
And end of the Brazilian
rubber industry, yeah.
I might take one myself and
start the rubber industry in Sheffield.
-Yeah. (LAUGHS)
-They need some more investment.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
(ELIAS SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
It's dry, he said.
It's dry. I know, I know.
We're pretending. (LAUGHS)
PALIN: The key to turning the white sap
into big business
was a process in vented in 783.9
by Thomas Goodyear.
Vulcanisation, he called it.
By heating latex with sulphur,
he found that the brittle rubber
became elastic and malleable.
And so, the floodgates to a hundred uses
from tyres to Waterproofs were opened.
So the idea is to get it in
a nice sort of
flexible piece of variable material.
-Look here.
-Okay. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
-That's it, yeah. Here we are.
-Stick, yeah.
That's rubber indeed, yes.
God, it reminds me of the handle bars
I used have on my old bicycle at home.
Well, you wouldn't know, but I did.
Great.
Wow.
To collect latex,
then to make this process here.
So this is just
a larger version of that?
-You can throw.
-Ooh!
Yeah, like a ball.
Yeah, that works.
To you.
And so did people like him get rich?
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
(ELIAS SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
-So he said…
-The foreigners got rich.
-Only the rubber barons.
-Yes.
-But not the caboclos?
-Caboclos, no.
PALIN: Elias carries with him
an air of sadness and regret,
as do many caboclos of this generation.
Life goes on, but there will be
no more good times,
if there ever were.
Even a younger man like Gabriel believes
the river has magical properties.
Like the legendary pink dolphin.
Some caboclos, they believe that
the animal has the capacity
to become a man, like, midnight.
Oh, right.
And sometimes, it's possible
to find some girls here pregnant.
-They said that the dolphin did this.
-Oh, right.
All the guys who are to blame,
blame the dolphin, that's great.
They say,
"Oh, the dolphin is responsible".
PALIN: There's something about the
pink river dolphin that intrigues me.
Thanks to a local dolphin wrangler,
there is a way] can find out more.
Well, the first time
I've actually done…
Swam with the dolphins.
They are here, which is rather good.
But I have to wear this.
This is regulations
for the Brazilian authorities,
even though I'm only gonna be
standing on the board.
It's not some strange
incontinence garment.
So here we go.
The water's very black,
can't actually see anything at all.
Okay, I'm on the platform now.
And where is the dolphin?
Then quite suddenly, there they are.
She's quite alarming with the teeth.
Unable to resist
the lure of the sardine.
(SCREECHES)
Ooh.
(CHUCKLES) Whoa.
Terrific jaws. In fact,
rows of about 25 teeth on either side.
At first, it's slightly…
Oh, I can feel his body rubbing
against the bottom of my leg.
Once they've got the fish,
they just sort of rub against you,
and almost use you to bounce off
back into the water.
They're big, sort of sturdy,
quite heavy creatures.
I'm now actually off the platform,
free in the water and
a bit apprehensive of the beak.
(LAUGHS) Whoa! Oh, yes, very good.
I wish I could do that.
Wow. Fantastic.
Oh!
I so easily could have been
that sardine.
(DOLPHIN BARKS)
Okay, guys. Well, you can
all go home now.
Leave me floating in the Rio Negro
with my new friends, my new chums.
Whoa!
We are the sardine generation.
PALIN: There are many spectacular
sights in the Amazon.
But few can rival the confluence
of the regions two mightiest rivers,
the muddy Amazon itself, rich with
acidic sludge from the Andes,
and the tannin-black waters
of the Rio Negro.
It's an absolutely extraordinary sight,
because it's so clear and sharp.
It really is like a battle between
the black tea and the
milky coffee coming in.
The coffee colour wins
over the black tea in the end.
Leaving the new double strength Amazon
to flow another 1,000 miles to the sea,
we descend to the city which is
synonymous with this great river.
Manaus, once a jungle outpost,
is now home to two million people.
Rubber put Manaus on the map.
At the heyday of the boom,
it was the richest city
in the Southern Hemisphere.
The first in Brazil to have trams,
the second to have electricity.
At the turn of the 20th-century,
fortunes were made and spent here.
The rubber barons spared nothing
in creating a mini Paris
in the rain forest.
But when the British stole
the rubber trade away from Brazil,
the glories of Manaus quickly faded.
Except, that is,
for one magnificent survivor.
The Teatro Amazonas,
the Manaus opera house,
has been sumptuously restored.
Designed by Italians, built with
Scottish iron work and French marble,
it was intended to show that
jungle or no jungle,
anything Europe could do,
Brazil could do better.
(PLAYING OPERATIC MUSIC)
A hundred years on,
the Amazonas Philharmonic Orchestra
are rehearsing the overture
to a Brazilian opera called Il Guarany,
about a doomed love affair
between a Portuguese noblewoman
and a native Indian.
The musicians come from
all over the world.
Many from the former
East European countries.
The latest of a long line of immigrants
who have come to the Amazon
to find a better life.
Manaus might have had its day
as the centre of the great rubber boom,
but there was still one more act
in the great Brazilian rubber drama.
It was here at the ferry port
of Santarém on the Amazon
in the mid-1920s,
that a group of Americans
from the Ford Motor Company
set off to find a site in the jungle
where they could build
their very own rubber plantation.
I'm going to take a ferry myself
to see how their dream turned out.
The ferry's in there somewhere.
Let's go find it.
These tightly packed boats
are the lifeblood of the river system,
not just for people, but for goods, too.
No trucks are allowed at the jetty,
so all cargo which seems
to consist largely of beer,
has to be manhandled onto the boats.
(BELL RINGS)
But amazingly,
my 4:30 ferry out of Santarém
leaves dead on 4:30.
I'm now on my way
to one of the strangest locations
of modern Brazilian history,
a place called Fordlandia
which Henry Ford created in the 1920s.
An experiment in rubber production.
There wasn't a {at of room on board,
but not to worry.
The journey only takes 14 hours.
We shall navigate rivers
the size of lakes,
turning south of the Amazon
and up its tributary, the Tapajós.
I must say when I got on,
there was a bit of a chaos, I thought,
can I survive this?
But it kind of, sort of…
There is an order here,
and you settle down
and get your hammock, and I…
I just can't believe I've discovered
the joys of hammock travelling
so late in my travelling life.
They're just, they are…
They are wonderful.
And here in Brazil, of course,
you don't have the sort of
government hammock
or the shipping line hammock.
You have your own colour.
Look at all these lovely colours.
And you take up a minimum
amount of space, pretty simple.
If you want to have
a look around, you do that,
if you want to be a bit private,
you just, you know…
Ah…
I think I was just born
to swing from hooks.
(BELL RINGING)
It's a grey old morning on the Tapajós
and I transferred to a smaller ferry
which will drop me off
where the men from Dearborn, Michigan,
first arrived some 80 years ago.
And what looks like a mirage at first
is indeed my destination.
Fordlandia.
There it is.
To tum Ford's dream into reality,
factories were built,
and Midwestern houses and streets
sprang up as fast as the jungle
could be stripped and cleared.
Under the guidance of the top men
in the American motor industry,
schools were built
and a transport system
created to carry the workforce.
It was an epic adventure.
And in the end, an epic failure.
Ford's plan for his company
to produce all its own rubber
collapsed as disease
destroyed the trees
and ill health sapped the workforce.
In 1945, the Americans
finally packed up and went home,
leaving behind the ghosts
of a great enterprise.
This is all that remains
of what was once Fordlandia's
state-of-the-art hospital.
Now, the only signs of life
are colonies of bats
occupying the rooms
in the operating theatre.
This is it.
This is all that's left of
Henry Ford's great dream
of creating the perfect America
in Brazil.
Belém, one of the oldest cities
of the Amazon,
is the perfect place
to lift the spirits.
Located close to where
the river meets the sea,
it bounces and blossoms with life.
As the fishermen bring in the produce
of the fertile waters of the delta
watched all the way
by the resident rubbish collectors,
an enthusiastic flock
of turkey vultures.
This gothic extravaganza
made from Glaswegian ironwork
is the market they called
Ver-o-peso, "see the weight,"
a reference to the days
when the Portuguese extracted taxes
on the local produce.
Ver-o-peso is one of the
great fish markets in Brazil.
And I'm guided around it by Priscilla,
a young music manager,
and someone for whom quality is vital.
Belém's top-rated young chef,
Thiago Castanho.
Tucunare, tucunare.
Oh, yeah, tucunare. Yeah.
Got an eye on the back, yeah.
Yeah, this is beautiful.
What a beautiful-looking fish.
I mean, part of the thing
about food here seems…
There's so much of everything,
not just fish, but fruits and…
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
Belém, Amazonia,
has a lot of different food,
every fish, every fruit has its season.
All right, okay.
So you're always changing your menu
to reflect what is season.
THIAGO: Yes, yes.
Thiago had to go back to his kitchen,
but Priscilla is keen to show
another aspect of Amazonian produce,
dear to her body and soul.
PALIN: So what's all this?
PRISCILLA: These are traditional
medicines for almost everything.
PALIN: From the Amazon,
from the rain forests?
PRISCILLA: Yes,
all from the rain forests.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
-This is Andiroba. It is an oil.
-Yeah.
We use it for almost everything,
we even use it for hair.
You'll have beautiful hair.
-You just used for the hair.
-Yes.
And we use for pain, if you have…
-(STAMMERS) Arthritis?
-Arthritis.
-Yeah.
-Yes. On joints, yeah.
Do big companies come around
and look at these and say,
"Hey, we can make money out of this"?
Arthritis and shampoo
in the same bottle.
Yeah, there are now
shampoos in Brazil with this.
-Really?
-Really.
Because medic companies
are coming for this.
It is very traditional, everyone uses.
PALIN: What other things
do they have here?
I mean, you know,
we've been travelling for a long time,
I'm quite, you know, tired,
few aches, you know.
You feel just a little bit travel-worn.
Does she have something
that would, you know…
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
…liven me up. (LAUGHS)
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
FEMALE TRANSLATOR".
We have the natural Viagra,
which is an energising concoction.
It stimulates you sexually and mentally.
Not quite what I meant, but, yeah.
-(LAUGHS)
-Yes, yeah, okay.
What is the most popular seller here?
The most popular one you get asked for?
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
She sells a lot of baths for love.
That's the top seller.
Oh, yeah, baths for love, I love that.
Baths for love is like… Yeah.
So sex is a quite important
problem with people, I suppose.
Yeah, in Brazil as well?
You always imagine the Brazilians being
sexually very happy
and harmonious and fulfilled.
-Probably because of this one.
-Probably because of this, yes.
Well, that kind of bottled that!
Yeah, well, I don't think
I will take that because, you know,
I'm past that now, but maybe… (LAUGHS)
-You should have the spiritual one.
-Something… Yes.
Something to help me
learn Portuguese next time.
The reward for a hard morning's shopping
in this palace of delights
is lunch with Priscilla
at Thiago's newly-opened,
decidedly upmarket restaurant.
Thiago maybe the star
of his all-male kitchen,
but Priscilla makes it clear
the fairer sex
is the stronger one around here.
PRISCILLA: The strong people,
they are women.
Women are stronger in the Amazon.
"Really?
"Really!
A lot of the shopkeepers were…
Yeah. What…
PRISCILLA: You see, men,
they don't talk.
They don't talk that much.
They stay there, they keep their place.
That's interesting.
'Cause they originally were,
the Spanish were,
that wasn't… The women,
the warriors, you know…
-Yes.
-Entirely female warriors.
-That's how I see…
-Do you see yourself in that tradition?
Yes, I think so.
You're gonna meet Gaby.
-Yeah, I will.
-Gaby, the singer.
Gaby is who you manage, yeah?
You're going to understand the power
of Amazon women when you meet her.
(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)
Gaby Amarantos is quite something.
She's created a fusion
of old-style local music
with a modern beat that
she's christened tecnobrega.
(SINGING IN LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Gaby has been trying to
make it in the business
since she was a teenager.
What keeps her going,
even in a modest local bar like this,
is her strength and self-belief
which she attributes
to her mixed-race Amazonian roots.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
FEMALE TRANSLATOR: I think women
from the Amazon feel free and natural
because we are product
of our indigenous roots.
And I am very proud of my origins.
I feel free to say how] feel
through my music;
and I think this is a very particular,
special characteristic
of the women from the Amazon.
They are more relaxed.
PALIN: Gaby's been called
the Beyoncé of the Amazon.
But to me,
there's something else going on here.
Something more Boadicea than Beyoncé.
(GABY SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
FEMALE TRANSLATOR: I feel a force,
and the people that watch the show,
that have never seen me before,
that are not from here,
they see a force of nature
bringing them the power of Amazonia.
So, I feel something
that I can't explain
that gives me goose bumps,
that makes people fall in love
with this type of music,
and they know that
there is something behind it.
(CROWD CHEERING)
PALIN: With the sounds
of Gaby's tecnobrega
still ringing in my ears,
I head south from Belém,
up one of the major
tributaries of the Amazon.
The Xingu River.
It runs through one of the most
protected areas in Brazil.
Sixty years ago, a reservation
for the 10 tribes of the Upper Xingu
was created.
In contrast to the Yanomami,
their land is more accessible.
So it's been a constant fight
against incursions.
Today, only those invited by the
tribes themselves are allowed to enter.
(GRUNTS)
I have no idea what I shall find
or how I'll be received.
My legs are wobbly.
Hello.
Hi.
(VOCALISING)
We've been invited here
by the Wauja people,
of whom there are fewer than
500 left in the world.
The Wauja are feared warriors
renowned for their wrestling skills,
but they are equally well-known
for their elaborate rituals.
I'm not absolutely sure if this is
a war dance or a welcome.
Happily, it turns out to be both.
(PEOPLE WHOOPING)
Oh, brilliant. That was brilliant!
Fantastic! Thank you, thank you.
Their elaborate body decorations
and the feathers they use
on their arms and ears are beautiful,
but to a newcomer, quite mystifying.
As is the purpose of the
elaborate dances they've laid on.
(HOOTING)
Fortunately, I'm in good hands.
Our intermediary with the Wauja
is Emi Ireland,
an American anthropologist,
who on several visits here,
has learnt the language,
and developed a deep affinity
with the people.
What's the dance about?
Okay, this is the karapa dance.
-Karapa ceremony.
-Karapa.
-Karapa.
-Yeah.
And it's a small fish, it's a bait fish,
and, uh, it…
You find it in the shallows,
under the leaves.
And that's why the young men
are wearing leaves,
'cause they are the spirit
of the karapa fish…
PALIN: Oh, I see.
EMI: And so, they appear
just as they do in the street.
And the karapa fish
is a superb bait fish.
So people are very happy
to find karapa because…
-It leads them to another…
-A big one.
Yeah, I see.
So everybody's in a good mood
when there's lots of karapa.
PALIN: What do they…
Do they catch a lot of fish?
-Is that their main source of food?
-Uh, protein.
Uh, yeah, but along with…
They eat a lot of manioc.
-Manioc bread, you'll have some of that.
-Yeah.
EMI: And they also eat Pequi fruit.
It's an oily fruit, very nutritious.
PALIN: How long
does this dance go on for?
Uh, it usually goes on
for a couple of hours,
and they have other ceremonies
that go on for days,
but not this particular one.
What's nice is that
they have this big village
with a big population.
So it gives them
more options for everything.
More options for ceremonies,
more options for marriage partners.
For a long time, people grew up
with only one or two.
-Yeah.
-People who they could marry.
Wow, that's…
That takes a lot of
complication out of it.
(LAUGHS) Yes, it certainly does.
You know what you've gotta do,
who you've gotta do it with.
PALIN: Though fit not easy
to get to the Upper Xingu,
we're certainly not the first film
crew they've ever seen.
Indeed, they now have
film equipment themselves,
which they're using to make
a photographic record of their tribe,
their way of life,
what being a Wauja means.
But are they in danger
of losing something
because of all this outside influence?
EMI: The notion of purity, whether
it's racial purity or cultural purity…
PALIN: Yeah.
EMI: …is dangerous.
But what they have to maintain
is vigour and self respect,
self determination, empowerment.
And frankly, also, the forest,
it's very important for all of us.
They know that.
Part of what this team is doing
is bringing film equipment
so the community can record
historical information
from their elders.
So this, they have been
very excited about this.
(HOOTING)
(DOG BARKING)
(GROANS) Uh, first morning
with the Wauja on the Xingu, well,
tributaries of the Xingu.
Coming to life quite slowly.
Poured with rain
in the middle of the night.
It's rainy season.
Belted down with rain.
I think they may be just, um,
plugging a few leaks back there.
These houses,
and I must not call them huts,
I know that.
The houses are really fantastic.
Beautifully built.
Spent quite a comfortable night there.
Quite a buggy sort of atmosphere.
But then it is the wet season.
My first impression is,
it's almost more exotic than
that of the north, the Yanomami.
And yet, I think there's more
influence from outside here.
Urn, see, T-shirts.
A pick-up truck, there's
a satellite dish, and things like that.
Something's happening here
which is slightly different.
Very different, actually,
from the Yanomami.
These people have seen
more of the world outside.
Anyway, breakfast.
(WOMAN SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Thank you.
-You have real potential, Michael.
-(PALIN LAUGHS)
At last, something I can do in life.
PALIN: The preparation of food
is quite literally hands-on.
And the Wauja women have work for me.
That's… That's the tricky there.
Down here is a bit…
Maniac is a nutritious root
that grows all year round.
It certainly isn't a fast food.
You're very good at it.
Don't let my wife see this. She will…
She'll never peel a potato again.
After the peeling, the grating,
my technique here
is not taken altogether seriously.
(LAUGHTER)
What's so funny? (CHUCKLES)
(LAUGHING)
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
EMI: Don't go, don't go.
You should stay here and
we'll take you to the manioc garden.
(ALL LAUGHING)
You're the ideal husband,
the ideal husband.
Ah, well.
-(WOMEN SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
-EMI: This way, this way.
Oh, yeah. of course, of course.
That's it, yes, yes.
This is the best cookery course
I've been on, really.
You never do this with Jamie Oliver.
How long does it take them
to prepare this?
I'm just… I've just done five minutes,
I'm exhausted.
EMI: About three hours a day.
PALIN: Three hours a day, gosh.
EMI: They work hard, they work hard.
PALIN: They work very hard.
PALIN: No slackers.
EMI: No slackers.
PALIN: But the lazy person,
are they stigmatised
by the rest of the group?
-Oh, yes, very much, very much so.
-In what way?
Called rude names or…
Well, yes, and sometimes
the women won't want to marry them.
Is it very important for them to marry?
I mean, couldn't they just have
a nice life as a bachelor?
Well, imagine the kind of life…
How could you live well
if you had no manioc?
You need to have a female relative
to make it for you.
PALIN: Now I know
what the men's role is.
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
(LAUGHING)
PALIN: My final test. Could! turn
the grated maniac into bet ju,
the traditional Wauja bread?
(LAUGHS) It's getting fire in my hands.
Harder. Okay.
Ah, I just can't see anything 'cause
I'm just getting smoke in my eyes.
You are probably jealous that your wife
is entertaining affection
for someone else
and that's why smoke
is blowing in your eyes.
-Oh, is it? Oh.
-That's the reason.
PALIN: Okay, so where are we?
Over again?
-Yeah.
-(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Well, I think I'm better
on the grating, I think.
(BELLS JINGLE RHYTHMICALLY)
PALIN: Music and dance
are an intrinsic part of Wauja life.
These sacred flutes can only be played,
or indeed touched, by the men folk.
(BELLS JINGLE RHYTHMICALLY)
During sacred rituals, the women
are not even allowed to see them.
But today is more of a social occasion,
as young girls who have been
in puberty isolation
are welcomed back to the community.
(FLUTES PLAYING)
Later, Emi takes me to the house of
her oldest and closest confidante,
the shaman, Itsutaku.
I ask him if he feels confident
about the future.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
The new danger is that, um,
there are a lot of
very powerful interests
-that want to dam the rivers.
-PALIN: Yeah.
EMI: Damming the rivers
destroys the ecology
and slowly strangles
the whole community.
For instance now,
they're planning to build
a hydroelectric dam, Belo Monte,
which will be the third largest dam
ever built,
and scientists who have studied it
say it doesn't make any sense
unless there's a whole
complex of dams planned.
So, it is an ecological catastrophe.
And I said to him,
"How would you deal with that problem?"
And he said,
"We don't have a solution for that".
PALIN: I hope that Itsutaku's anxieties
will prove unfounded.
The Wauja may be few,
but that's no reason
to allow a culture, a language,
and a way of life to simply disappear.
Bye-bye. Thank you. Yeah. Ciao.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
The decisions on how
tribes like the Wauja
can be accommodated
alongside economic growth
fuelled in part by
exploiting the rainforest,
will be taken at the next stop
on my journey.
One of the most modern capital cities
in the world, Brasilia.
Finding the difficult balance between
wealth creation and conservation,
is being argued out here
in the country's parliament.
Designed in the 1950s
by a communist, Oscar Niemeyer,
and laid out by another communist,
Lúcio Costa,
Brasilia is a bold
and dazzling achievement.
From barren countryside
to national capital in only five years.
The flags of the 26 Brazilian states
fly outside the ministries
from which the country's future
will be decided.
The economic rise of Brazil
is in part due to the combination
of its rich natural resources
with an abundant and cheap workforce.
And at the very heart
of the Brazilian capital,
there's a statue that honours
the working man.
This is a monument to the candangos,
the people who built this city
over 50 years ago.
Next time, I'll be exploring where
many of those candangos went
when the building boom
in Brasilia subsided.
Their destination, along with
many others from the north,
were the rich gold and
iron mines of Menas Urias.
And the city
that is synonymous with Brazil,
Rio de Janeiro.
the world for the past 25 years.
I've met so many people
in so many countries
that everyone thinks of me
as the man who's been everywhere.
But in all these years, there's been
one big gap in my passport.
Nothing less than the fifth
largest country on Earth.
A country blessed with
a melting pot of peoples
and an abundance of resources.
A country that's risen
almost out of nowhere
to become a 21st-century superpower.
It's the host of the next World Cup
and the next Olympic Games.
It's a country whose time has come.
How can I say I've seen the world
when I haven't seen Brazil?
Okay, waterfall, we defy you!
We defy you!
PALIN: Brazil is now the sixth largest
economy in the world
with 80% of the population
living in megacities
where industry and technology flourish.
But alongside this
21st-century dynamism,
there are people in Brazil whose
way of life has remained unchanged
for thousands of years.
It's in their land that I start
this leg of my journey.
Amazonia is a region which has enticed
explorers and adventurers for centuries.
In this episode, I shall be
travelling its vast distances,
from the border with Venezuela
to the nation's capital Brasilia.
I'm excited and a little apprehensive.
Below me, thick rainforest cloaks
an area as remote and inaccessible
as anywhere on the planet.
(INDISTINCT TALKING ON RADIO)
When people from the West
landed in Brazil
just over 500 years ago,
there were some five million
indigenous people living here.
A fraction is now left.
One of the largest and least contacted
of these are the Yanomami.
I land at the recently built
government outpost
three kilometres away
from their village.
The sound of the plane
has drawn an inquisitive crowd.
(CHILDREN CRYING)
(LAUGHTER)
The Yanomami have a reputation
for being warriors and hunters.
I'm barely off the plane
before I'm into archery practice.
That rock there?
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Wow, pretty good!
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Do you want me to go and get it?
All right.
(MEN LAUGHING)
Error!
Looks like bone or something.
Maybe it's just wood.
Error!
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
That bird there, okay?
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Oh, wow!
Wow. Very good.
No, I am not going to get it.
He can go and get it.
(LAUGHS)
(INDISTINCT)
PALIN: They're much less fierce
than I expected,
and seem to regard me
and my accessories
as a considerable source
of entertainment.
Good to be here.
I've never been
in this part of the world before.
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's my own hair.
That's what you're saying.
I didn't expect to be doing comedy
on my first day in the Amazon.
(LAUGHS)
It's an hour's walk through the forest
to where they live.
And as we finally approach the thatched
walls of their village, or maloca,
I realise I'm entering
deeply unfamiliar territory.
Unlike us, the Yanomami live communally
in a huge, round, thatched house.
It must be at least
400 metres in circumference.
There appears to be
no privacy whatsoever.
I've no idea
where you're supposed to wash
or do all those other private things.
They don't seem to do toilets.
Perhaps they don't need them
with a million square miles
of virgin forest outside.
At last, I'm shown to my room…
Sorry, bed… Uh, sorry, hammock.
Now, yes, this is my hammock.
This is where I'm sleeping, I think.
Thank you. (CHUCKLES)
Well, yeah,
I've been in hammocks before.
I don't think I've ever spent
an entire night in one.
So this will be a bit of a first.
Everyone here, of course,
in the maloca,
they all sleep in hammocks.
So I think the thing to do is,
you have to get…
That's right in the middle there.
Oh, that's rather nice.
And then you got a kind of
swing the legs up.
Whoa! (SIGHS)
And then, stay here
for about another 12 hours.
Aah! That's lovely.
The maloca seems to consist entirely of
women, children, and one very old man.
But then, just as I'm settling in
to some quality hammock time,
I get the word that the rest
of the villagers are in the forest
preparing the traditional welcome
for outsiders.
The welcome is both
an opportunity to dress up,
in this case with red urucu dye
and white feathers from the harpy eagle,
and a way to intimidate anyone
who might cross their path.
Dressed to kill,
they head back to the maloca,
but there's still one important
ingredient for any Yanomami ritual.
The Yanomami are famed takers
of a powerful psychotropic snuff
made from the bark of forest trees.
Apparently, it puts them
into a trance-like state
so they can communicate
with the spirit world.
(YANOMAMI CHANTING)
Suitably prepared,
the welcoming party enter the maloca
and the ritual celebrations begin.
(CHANTING)
I can understand why the Yanomami
were nicknamed "the fierce people".
The women don't take the snuff
and are less intimidating
with their version of the hokey-cokey.
After circling the maloca repeatedly,
the men and boys go out
into the blazing heat of the day
and work themselves into a state
of stomping, rhythmic agitation.
I'm just exhausted watching.
It's hot out there, they need a break.
I'm worried about them.
(YANOMAMI CHANTING)
Feathers are blowing away.
Ah!
ALL: Oh!
PALIN: After the climax
of the welcoming ceremony,
participants are rewarded
for their exertions
with almost unlimited amounts
of a rainforest cocktail
made from fermented peach palm.
I'd quite like to try some.
Maybe I'll start with a child's portion.
Knock it back.
As the day draws to a close,
the effects of the snuff
and the cocktail
create a soporific air
as the maloca quietens down.
It's time for me to get ready for bed.
My first night in a hammock.
Malaria! mosquitoes
are a constant threat here,
and the Yanomami are as
anxious as I am to protect me.
I've a very bad record
with mosquito nets.
They always collapse.
Ah, yeah, that's it. Yes.
You just need someone who knows
how to do it, that's the thing.
What do I know?
Sydney Harbour Bridge, this.
Don't try this at home, certainly.
Four days later…
It's good.
The slow pace of life
is wonderfully infectious.
But as dusk draws in, I finally
find a way to make myself useful.
There you are, see,
great explorers of Roraima.
Telling bedtime stories to people
who don't understand a word.
It's fun, isn't it?
That's Teddy Roosevelt,
Theodore Roosevelt.
He was the President of America
and he came to this part of the world
when it was very difficult
to get through the forest.
He came on a trip with his son
that was called Kermit.
Yeah, honestly,
and a man called Rondon.
Mr Rondon was a Brazilian.
And, uh, they came here
and they got completely stuck
and they found a river
to take them away,
and, uh, they didn't…
They called it the River of Doubt.
They didn't know where it began,
didn't know where it ended.
But eventually, after many days,
they floated their way down this river
against a very hostile environment
and they came out of the other end.
And Rondon, the Brazilian, was so
thankful to his mates, the Roosevelts,
that he called one of the rivers
the Rio Roosevelt.
(IN LOCAL ACCENT) Rio Roosevelt.
-(BOYS LAUGH)
-Yeah, I know. You laugh.
And he also called one of the rivers
Rio Kermit after his son.
End of story.
Bedtime. Off you go.
(PALIN CHUCKLES)
Night time in the maloca is only
slightly less rushed than daytime.
The pet sloth they keep in the rafters
seems perfectly adapted
to the pace of life here.
Oh, there's the sleepless Englishman,
always wanting to improve his mind.
What is the point?
Things weren't always as secure
for the Yanomami.
For a long time,
their remoteness had protected them
from the trauma of contact.
But the discovery of gold
in the late 1980s
changed all of that.
Their land was invaded by thousands
of illegal miners, garimpeiros,
who not only poisoned the river
with the mercury
they needed to flush out the gold,
but brought with them diseases
like measles and tuberculosis
which swept through the tribe
killing hundreds
and changing forever the way
they perceived the outside world.
Only when the Brazilian government
under intense international pressure
took measures to get rid of the miners
did the Yanomami begin to recover.
But the lure of gold
will always be a threat.
And no one knows this better than the
shaman of this village, Davi Kopuena.
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
He has travelled in Brazil and overseas
to plead their cause
to impress on the outside world
the need for continued protection.
As I watch him in action today,
I see no remote tribesman,
but a consummate politician
working on behalf of his people.
The Yanomami have lived in the forest
for thousands of years.
Are you consulted by the government
about how best to use the forest?
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
MALE TRANSLATOR: They don't call us
to go to the capital, Brasilia,
so we can hear what the government
is planning to do with our land.
They don't ask us,
the indigenous people,
they just tell us.
"We are going to build
the Belo Monte Dam."
"We are going to build
the northern ring road."
"We are going to build
the army headquarters."
"We are going to open mines
in the indigenous territory."
They don't consult us.
PALIN: The fact that
they've cut and cleared
a football pitch
in the middle of the forest
shows the Yanomami are not resistant
to all outside influence.
As soccer mad as the rest of Brazil,
they save on kit
by painting their team colours
straight onto their bodies,
and the kop's filling up nicely.
But this outside influence,
like football, has a purpose.
Many Brazilians feel indigenous peoples
don't need such vast tracks of land
which could be better exploited
for logging, or cattle,
and of course, mining.
So by hook or by crook,
the government wants to bring
the Yanomami into this debate.
(WHISTLE BLOWING)
One hook is the provision
of health care.
Health workers come to the maloca
to treat injuries,
dispense drugs,
and inoculate the children.
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Today, a group of government workers
has flown in to tell the Yanomami
of a new initiative
in the way health care is delivered.
Despite all these
undoubtedly benevolent actions,
Davi the shaman remains wary.
You have a, um, a clinic near here,
you play football.
Do you see, um,
engagement with the outside world
as the way forward for the Yanomami?
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
MALE TRANSLATOR".
Our priority is health care.
This is what we need.
And other things like playing football,
this is really not a priority,
because this is the white man's custom.
Our priorities are health care,
our own culture, language, and customs.
This is what is important.
PALIN: Alongside the health programme,
is also a school
to teach them Portuguese,
a prerequisite for closer engagement
with the rest of Brazil.
What I've sensed from my brief stay here
is that the Yanomami
have no strong desire to change.
Like so many of the
indigenous peoples of Brazil,
it will be forced upon them.
But who am I to judge
whether a life of hunting with arrows
and snorting snuff
is preferable to a life of
iPads and TV soap operas.
But surely, the choice should be theirs.
In many of these really remote
northern areas of Brazil,
like where the Yanomami live,
there's no road access at all.
Everything goes in and out by plane,
including me.
So I'm heading south now
towards the Amazon.
PALIN: The mighty Amazon is at the heart
of a network of over a thousand rivers.
Together, they contain up to
20% of the world's fresh water.
I leave the headwaters of the Rio Branco
and head south towards Manaus
where all the great rivers gather.
I'm on my way to find out more about
the people who live from these rivers.
From the growing business
of eco-tourism,
to the declining fortunes of a people
almost as endangered as the Yanomami}
the Seringueiros.
150 years ago, wild rubber
harvested by thousands of Indians
and the caboclos,
those mixed raced
Indians and Portuguese,
created a boom which made
fortunes for the rubber barons
and a harsh and pretty miserable life
for those who collected it.
In 1876, an Englishman
called Henry Wickham
stole some rubber seeds
and sent them back to England.
By 1900, they'd been
transplanted to the Far East.
And by 1920, the Brazilian
rubber industry had all but collapsed.
Welcome to the Sao Tomas village.
In the village of Sao Tomas,
I'm met by my local guide, Gabriel.
He takes me to meet Elias,
one of the old Seringueiros.
He still taps the few
remaining rubber trees
which leak their now
not-so-precious fluid.
Rubber man, he knows
whereabouts rubber tree is.
He knows to cut a rubber tree.
-Hello.
-Hello, mister.
Michael.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
-This is the rubber tree.
-Yeah. Yeah.
MALE TRANSLATOR". And here,
they are wild trees.
They grow here and there and everywhere.
PALIN: So then, here's the sap
coming out. Yeah.
GABRIEL: Yeah.
PALIN: And this…
-Thank you. Ah, the seed.
-Yes, rubber.
These are the seeds of the rubber tree.
So this is what the seeds
look like that Henry Wickham…
GABRIEL: Exactly.
…took from the Amazon,
went back to Kew.
-They then took them out to Malaysia.
-To Malaysia.
And end of the Brazilian
rubber industry, yeah.
I might take one myself and
start the rubber industry in Sheffield.
-Yeah. (LAUGHS)
-They need some more investment.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
(ELIAS SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
It's dry, he said.
It's dry. I know, I know.
We're pretending. (LAUGHS)
PALIN: The key to turning the white sap
into big business
was a process in vented in 783.9
by Thomas Goodyear.
Vulcanisation, he called it.
By heating latex with sulphur,
he found that the brittle rubber
became elastic and malleable.
And so, the floodgates to a hundred uses
from tyres to Waterproofs were opened.
So the idea is to get it in
a nice sort of
flexible piece of variable material.
-Look here.
-Okay. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
-That's it, yeah. Here we are.
-Stick, yeah.
That's rubber indeed, yes.
God, it reminds me of the handle bars
I used have on my old bicycle at home.
Well, you wouldn't know, but I did.
Great.
Wow.
To collect latex,
then to make this process here.
So this is just
a larger version of that?
-You can throw.
-Ooh!
Yeah, like a ball.
Yeah, that works.
To you.
And so did people like him get rich?
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
(ELIAS SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
-So he said…
-The foreigners got rich.
-Only the rubber barons.
-Yes.
-But not the caboclos?
-Caboclos, no.
PALIN: Elias carries with him
an air of sadness and regret,
as do many caboclos of this generation.
Life goes on, but there will be
no more good times,
if there ever were.
Even a younger man like Gabriel believes
the river has magical properties.
Like the legendary pink dolphin.
Some caboclos, they believe that
the animal has the capacity
to become a man, like, midnight.
Oh, right.
And sometimes, it's possible
to find some girls here pregnant.
-They said that the dolphin did this.
-Oh, right.
All the guys who are to blame,
blame the dolphin, that's great.
They say,
"Oh, the dolphin is responsible".
PALIN: There's something about the
pink river dolphin that intrigues me.
Thanks to a local dolphin wrangler,
there is a way] can find out more.
Well, the first time
I've actually done…
Swam with the dolphins.
They are here, which is rather good.
But I have to wear this.
This is regulations
for the Brazilian authorities,
even though I'm only gonna be
standing on the board.
It's not some strange
incontinence garment.
So here we go.
The water's very black,
can't actually see anything at all.
Okay, I'm on the platform now.
And where is the dolphin?
Then quite suddenly, there they are.
She's quite alarming with the teeth.
Unable to resist
the lure of the sardine.
(SCREECHES)
Ooh.
(CHUCKLES) Whoa.
Terrific jaws. In fact,
rows of about 25 teeth on either side.
At first, it's slightly…
Oh, I can feel his body rubbing
against the bottom of my leg.
Once they've got the fish,
they just sort of rub against you,
and almost use you to bounce off
back into the water.
They're big, sort of sturdy,
quite heavy creatures.
I'm now actually off the platform,
free in the water and
a bit apprehensive of the beak.
(LAUGHS) Whoa! Oh, yes, very good.
I wish I could do that.
Wow. Fantastic.
Oh!
I so easily could have been
that sardine.
(DOLPHIN BARKS)
Okay, guys. Well, you can
all go home now.
Leave me floating in the Rio Negro
with my new friends, my new chums.
Whoa!
We are the sardine generation.
PALIN: There are many spectacular
sights in the Amazon.
But few can rival the confluence
of the regions two mightiest rivers,
the muddy Amazon itself, rich with
acidic sludge from the Andes,
and the tannin-black waters
of the Rio Negro.
It's an absolutely extraordinary sight,
because it's so clear and sharp.
It really is like a battle between
the black tea and the
milky coffee coming in.
The coffee colour wins
over the black tea in the end.
Leaving the new double strength Amazon
to flow another 1,000 miles to the sea,
we descend to the city which is
synonymous with this great river.
Manaus, once a jungle outpost,
is now home to two million people.
Rubber put Manaus on the map.
At the heyday of the boom,
it was the richest city
in the Southern Hemisphere.
The first in Brazil to have trams,
the second to have electricity.
At the turn of the 20th-century,
fortunes were made and spent here.
The rubber barons spared nothing
in creating a mini Paris
in the rain forest.
But when the British stole
the rubber trade away from Brazil,
the glories of Manaus quickly faded.
Except, that is,
for one magnificent survivor.
The Teatro Amazonas,
the Manaus opera house,
has been sumptuously restored.
Designed by Italians, built with
Scottish iron work and French marble,
it was intended to show that
jungle or no jungle,
anything Europe could do,
Brazil could do better.
(PLAYING OPERATIC MUSIC)
A hundred years on,
the Amazonas Philharmonic Orchestra
are rehearsing the overture
to a Brazilian opera called Il Guarany,
about a doomed love affair
between a Portuguese noblewoman
and a native Indian.
The musicians come from
all over the world.
Many from the former
East European countries.
The latest of a long line of immigrants
who have come to the Amazon
to find a better life.
Manaus might have had its day
as the centre of the great rubber boom,
but there was still one more act
in the great Brazilian rubber drama.
It was here at the ferry port
of Santarém on the Amazon
in the mid-1920s,
that a group of Americans
from the Ford Motor Company
set off to find a site in the jungle
where they could build
their very own rubber plantation.
I'm going to take a ferry myself
to see how their dream turned out.
The ferry's in there somewhere.
Let's go find it.
These tightly packed boats
are the lifeblood of the river system,
not just for people, but for goods, too.
No trucks are allowed at the jetty,
so all cargo which seems
to consist largely of beer,
has to be manhandled onto the boats.
(BELL RINGS)
But amazingly,
my 4:30 ferry out of Santarém
leaves dead on 4:30.
I'm now on my way
to one of the strangest locations
of modern Brazilian history,
a place called Fordlandia
which Henry Ford created in the 1920s.
An experiment in rubber production.
There wasn't a {at of room on board,
but not to worry.
The journey only takes 14 hours.
We shall navigate rivers
the size of lakes,
turning south of the Amazon
and up its tributary, the Tapajós.
I must say when I got on,
there was a bit of a chaos, I thought,
can I survive this?
But it kind of, sort of…
There is an order here,
and you settle down
and get your hammock, and I…
I just can't believe I've discovered
the joys of hammock travelling
so late in my travelling life.
They're just, they are…
They are wonderful.
And here in Brazil, of course,
you don't have the sort of
government hammock
or the shipping line hammock.
You have your own colour.
Look at all these lovely colours.
And you take up a minimum
amount of space, pretty simple.
If you want to have
a look around, you do that,
if you want to be a bit private,
you just, you know…
Ah…
I think I was just born
to swing from hooks.
(BELL RINGING)
It's a grey old morning on the Tapajós
and I transferred to a smaller ferry
which will drop me off
where the men from Dearborn, Michigan,
first arrived some 80 years ago.
And what looks like a mirage at first
is indeed my destination.
Fordlandia.
There it is.
To tum Ford's dream into reality,
factories were built,
and Midwestern houses and streets
sprang up as fast as the jungle
could be stripped and cleared.
Under the guidance of the top men
in the American motor industry,
schools were built
and a transport system
created to carry the workforce.
It was an epic adventure.
And in the end, an epic failure.
Ford's plan for his company
to produce all its own rubber
collapsed as disease
destroyed the trees
and ill health sapped the workforce.
In 1945, the Americans
finally packed up and went home,
leaving behind the ghosts
of a great enterprise.
This is all that remains
of what was once Fordlandia's
state-of-the-art hospital.
Now, the only signs of life
are colonies of bats
occupying the rooms
in the operating theatre.
This is it.
This is all that's left of
Henry Ford's great dream
of creating the perfect America
in Brazil.
Belém, one of the oldest cities
of the Amazon,
is the perfect place
to lift the spirits.
Located close to where
the river meets the sea,
it bounces and blossoms with life.
As the fishermen bring in the produce
of the fertile waters of the delta
watched all the way
by the resident rubbish collectors,
an enthusiastic flock
of turkey vultures.
This gothic extravaganza
made from Glaswegian ironwork
is the market they called
Ver-o-peso, "see the weight,"
a reference to the days
when the Portuguese extracted taxes
on the local produce.
Ver-o-peso is one of the
great fish markets in Brazil.
And I'm guided around it by Priscilla,
a young music manager,
and someone for whom quality is vital.
Belém's top-rated young chef,
Thiago Castanho.
Tucunare, tucunare.
Oh, yeah, tucunare. Yeah.
Got an eye on the back, yeah.
Yeah, this is beautiful.
What a beautiful-looking fish.
I mean, part of the thing
about food here seems…
There's so much of everything,
not just fish, but fruits and…
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
Belém, Amazonia,
has a lot of different food,
every fish, every fruit has its season.
All right, okay.
So you're always changing your menu
to reflect what is season.
THIAGO: Yes, yes.
Thiago had to go back to his kitchen,
but Priscilla is keen to show
another aspect of Amazonian produce,
dear to her body and soul.
PALIN: So what's all this?
PRISCILLA: These are traditional
medicines for almost everything.
PALIN: From the Amazon,
from the rain forests?
PRISCILLA: Yes,
all from the rain forests.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
-This is Andiroba. It is an oil.
-Yeah.
We use it for almost everything,
we even use it for hair.
You'll have beautiful hair.
-You just used for the hair.
-Yes.
And we use for pain, if you have…
-(STAMMERS) Arthritis?
-Arthritis.
-Yeah.
-Yes. On joints, yeah.
Do big companies come around
and look at these and say,
"Hey, we can make money out of this"?
Arthritis and shampoo
in the same bottle.
Yeah, there are now
shampoos in Brazil with this.
-Really?
-Really.
Because medic companies
are coming for this.
It is very traditional, everyone uses.
PALIN: What other things
do they have here?
I mean, you know,
we've been travelling for a long time,
I'm quite, you know, tired,
few aches, you know.
You feel just a little bit travel-worn.
Does she have something
that would, you know…
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
…liven me up. (LAUGHS)
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
FEMALE TRANSLATOR".
We have the natural Viagra,
which is an energising concoction.
It stimulates you sexually and mentally.
Not quite what I meant, but, yeah.
-(LAUGHS)
-Yes, yeah, okay.
What is the most popular seller here?
The most popular one you get asked for?
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
She sells a lot of baths for love.
That's the top seller.
Oh, yeah, baths for love, I love that.
Baths for love is like… Yeah.
So sex is a quite important
problem with people, I suppose.
Yeah, in Brazil as well?
You always imagine the Brazilians being
sexually very happy
and harmonious and fulfilled.
-Probably because of this one.
-Probably because of this, yes.
Well, that kind of bottled that!
Yeah, well, I don't think
I will take that because, you know,
I'm past that now, but maybe… (LAUGHS)
-You should have the spiritual one.
-Something… Yes.
Something to help me
learn Portuguese next time.
The reward for a hard morning's shopping
in this palace of delights
is lunch with Priscilla
at Thiago's newly-opened,
decidedly upmarket restaurant.
Thiago maybe the star
of his all-male kitchen,
but Priscilla makes it clear
the fairer sex
is the stronger one around here.
PRISCILLA: The strong people,
they are women.
Women are stronger in the Amazon.
"Really?
"Really!
A lot of the shopkeepers were…
Yeah. What…
PRISCILLA: You see, men,
they don't talk.
They don't talk that much.
They stay there, they keep their place.
That's interesting.
'Cause they originally were,
the Spanish were,
that wasn't… The women,
the warriors, you know…
-Yes.
-Entirely female warriors.
-That's how I see…
-Do you see yourself in that tradition?
Yes, I think so.
You're gonna meet Gaby.
-Yeah, I will.
-Gaby, the singer.
Gaby is who you manage, yeah?
You're going to understand the power
of Amazon women when you meet her.
(LIVELY MUSIC PLAYING)
Gaby Amarantos is quite something.
She's created a fusion
of old-style local music
with a modern beat that
she's christened tecnobrega.
(SINGING IN LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Gaby has been trying to
make it in the business
since she was a teenager.
What keeps her going,
even in a modest local bar like this,
is her strength and self-belief
which she attributes
to her mixed-race Amazonian roots.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
FEMALE TRANSLATOR: I think women
from the Amazon feel free and natural
because we are product
of our indigenous roots.
And I am very proud of my origins.
I feel free to say how] feel
through my music;
and I think this is a very particular,
special characteristic
of the women from the Amazon.
They are more relaxed.
PALIN: Gaby's been called
the Beyoncé of the Amazon.
But to me,
there's something else going on here.
Something more Boadicea than Beyoncé.
(GABY SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
FEMALE TRANSLATOR: I feel a force,
and the people that watch the show,
that have never seen me before,
that are not from here,
they see a force of nature
bringing them the power of Amazonia.
So, I feel something
that I can't explain
that gives me goose bumps,
that makes people fall in love
with this type of music,
and they know that
there is something behind it.
(CROWD CHEERING)
PALIN: With the sounds
of Gaby's tecnobrega
still ringing in my ears,
I head south from Belém,
up one of the major
tributaries of the Amazon.
The Xingu River.
It runs through one of the most
protected areas in Brazil.
Sixty years ago, a reservation
for the 10 tribes of the Upper Xingu
was created.
In contrast to the Yanomami,
their land is more accessible.
So it's been a constant fight
against incursions.
Today, only those invited by the
tribes themselves are allowed to enter.
(GRUNTS)
I have no idea what I shall find
or how I'll be received.
My legs are wobbly.
Hello.
Hi.
(VOCALISING)
We've been invited here
by the Wauja people,
of whom there are fewer than
500 left in the world.
The Wauja are feared warriors
renowned for their wrestling skills,
but they are equally well-known
for their elaborate rituals.
I'm not absolutely sure if this is
a war dance or a welcome.
Happily, it turns out to be both.
(PEOPLE WHOOPING)
Oh, brilliant. That was brilliant!
Fantastic! Thank you, thank you.
Their elaborate body decorations
and the feathers they use
on their arms and ears are beautiful,
but to a newcomer, quite mystifying.
As is the purpose of the
elaborate dances they've laid on.
(HOOTING)
Fortunately, I'm in good hands.
Our intermediary with the Wauja
is Emi Ireland,
an American anthropologist,
who on several visits here,
has learnt the language,
and developed a deep affinity
with the people.
What's the dance about?
Okay, this is the karapa dance.
-Karapa ceremony.
-Karapa.
-Karapa.
-Yeah.
And it's a small fish, it's a bait fish,
and, uh, it…
You find it in the shallows,
under the leaves.
And that's why the young men
are wearing leaves,
'cause they are the spirit
of the karapa fish…
PALIN: Oh, I see.
EMI: And so, they appear
just as they do in the street.
And the karapa fish
is a superb bait fish.
So people are very happy
to find karapa because…
-It leads them to another…
-A big one.
Yeah, I see.
So everybody's in a good mood
when there's lots of karapa.
PALIN: What do they…
Do they catch a lot of fish?
-Is that their main source of food?
-Uh, protein.
Uh, yeah, but along with…
They eat a lot of manioc.
-Manioc bread, you'll have some of that.
-Yeah.
EMI: And they also eat Pequi fruit.
It's an oily fruit, very nutritious.
PALIN: How long
does this dance go on for?
Uh, it usually goes on
for a couple of hours,
and they have other ceremonies
that go on for days,
but not this particular one.
What's nice is that
they have this big village
with a big population.
So it gives them
more options for everything.
More options for ceremonies,
more options for marriage partners.
For a long time, people grew up
with only one or two.
-Yeah.
-People who they could marry.
Wow, that's…
That takes a lot of
complication out of it.
(LAUGHS) Yes, it certainly does.
You know what you've gotta do,
who you've gotta do it with.
PALIN: Though fit not easy
to get to the Upper Xingu,
we're certainly not the first film
crew they've ever seen.
Indeed, they now have
film equipment themselves,
which they're using to make
a photographic record of their tribe,
their way of life,
what being a Wauja means.
But are they in danger
of losing something
because of all this outside influence?
EMI: The notion of purity, whether
it's racial purity or cultural purity…
PALIN: Yeah.
EMI: …is dangerous.
But what they have to maintain
is vigour and self respect,
self determination, empowerment.
And frankly, also, the forest,
it's very important for all of us.
They know that.
Part of what this team is doing
is bringing film equipment
so the community can record
historical information
from their elders.
So this, they have been
very excited about this.
(HOOTING)
(DOG BARKING)
(GROANS) Uh, first morning
with the Wauja on the Xingu, well,
tributaries of the Xingu.
Coming to life quite slowly.
Poured with rain
in the middle of the night.
It's rainy season.
Belted down with rain.
I think they may be just, um,
plugging a few leaks back there.
These houses,
and I must not call them huts,
I know that.
The houses are really fantastic.
Beautifully built.
Spent quite a comfortable night there.
Quite a buggy sort of atmosphere.
But then it is the wet season.
My first impression is,
it's almost more exotic than
that of the north, the Yanomami.
And yet, I think there's more
influence from outside here.
Urn, see, T-shirts.
A pick-up truck, there's
a satellite dish, and things like that.
Something's happening here
which is slightly different.
Very different, actually,
from the Yanomami.
These people have seen
more of the world outside.
Anyway, breakfast.
(WOMAN SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Thank you.
-You have real potential, Michael.
-(PALIN LAUGHS)
At last, something I can do in life.
PALIN: The preparation of food
is quite literally hands-on.
And the Wauja women have work for me.
That's… That's the tricky there.
Down here is a bit…
Maniac is a nutritious root
that grows all year round.
It certainly isn't a fast food.
You're very good at it.
Don't let my wife see this. She will…
She'll never peel a potato again.
After the peeling, the grating,
my technique here
is not taken altogether seriously.
(LAUGHTER)
What's so funny? (CHUCKLES)
(LAUGHING)
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
EMI: Don't go, don't go.
You should stay here and
we'll take you to the manioc garden.
(ALL LAUGHING)
You're the ideal husband,
the ideal husband.
Ah, well.
-(WOMEN SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
-EMI: This way, this way.
Oh, yeah. of course, of course.
That's it, yes, yes.
This is the best cookery course
I've been on, really.
You never do this with Jamie Oliver.
How long does it take them
to prepare this?
I'm just… I've just done five minutes,
I'm exhausted.
EMI: About three hours a day.
PALIN: Three hours a day, gosh.
EMI: They work hard, they work hard.
PALIN: They work very hard.
PALIN: No slackers.
EMI: No slackers.
PALIN: But the lazy person,
are they stigmatised
by the rest of the group?
-Oh, yes, very much, very much so.
-In what way?
Called rude names or…
Well, yes, and sometimes
the women won't want to marry them.
Is it very important for them to marry?
I mean, couldn't they just have
a nice life as a bachelor?
Well, imagine the kind of life…
How could you live well
if you had no manioc?
You need to have a female relative
to make it for you.
PALIN: Now I know
what the men's role is.
(SPEAKING LOCAL LANGUAGE)
(LAUGHING)
PALIN: My final test. Could! turn
the grated maniac into bet ju,
the traditional Wauja bread?
(LAUGHS) It's getting fire in my hands.
Harder. Okay.
Ah, I just can't see anything 'cause
I'm just getting smoke in my eyes.
You are probably jealous that your wife
is entertaining affection
for someone else
and that's why smoke
is blowing in your eyes.
-Oh, is it? Oh.
-That's the reason.
PALIN: Okay, so where are we?
Over again?
-Yeah.
-(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Well, I think I'm better
on the grating, I think.
(BELLS JINGLE RHYTHMICALLY)
PALIN: Music and dance
are an intrinsic part of Wauja life.
These sacred flutes can only be played,
or indeed touched, by the men folk.
(BELLS JINGLE RHYTHMICALLY)
During sacred rituals, the women
are not even allowed to see them.
But today is more of a social occasion,
as young girls who have been
in puberty isolation
are welcomed back to the community.
(FLUTES PLAYING)
Later, Emi takes me to the house of
her oldest and closest confidante,
the shaman, Itsutaku.
I ask him if he feels confident
about the future.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
The new danger is that, um,
there are a lot of
very powerful interests
-that want to dam the rivers.
-PALIN: Yeah.
EMI: Damming the rivers
destroys the ecology
and slowly strangles
the whole community.
For instance now,
they're planning to build
a hydroelectric dam, Belo Monte,
which will be the third largest dam
ever built,
and scientists who have studied it
say it doesn't make any sense
unless there's a whole
complex of dams planned.
So, it is an ecological catastrophe.
And I said to him,
"How would you deal with that problem?"
And he said,
"We don't have a solution for that".
PALIN: I hope that Itsutaku's anxieties
will prove unfounded.
The Wauja may be few,
but that's no reason
to allow a culture, a language,
and a way of life to simply disappear.
Bye-bye. Thank you. Yeah. Ciao.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
The decisions on how
tribes like the Wauja
can be accommodated
alongside economic growth
fuelled in part by
exploiting the rainforest,
will be taken at the next stop
on my journey.
One of the most modern capital cities
in the world, Brasilia.
Finding the difficult balance between
wealth creation and conservation,
is being argued out here
in the country's parliament.
Designed in the 1950s
by a communist, Oscar Niemeyer,
and laid out by another communist,
Lúcio Costa,
Brasilia is a bold
and dazzling achievement.
From barren countryside
to national capital in only five years.
The flags of the 26 Brazilian states
fly outside the ministries
from which the country's future
will be decided.
The economic rise of Brazil
is in part due to the combination
of its rich natural resources
with an abundant and cheap workforce.
And at the very heart
of the Brazilian capital,
there's a statue that honours
the working man.
This is a monument to the candangos,
the people who built this city
over 50 years ago.
Next time, I'll be exploring where
many of those candangos went
when the building boom
in Brasilia subsided.
Their destination, along with
many others from the north,
were the rich gold and
iron mines of Menas Urias.
And the city
that is synonymous with Brazil,
Rio de Janeiro.