1. On Globalization

The capacity of the `hospitality’ industry here in Belem, the city of mango trees and the mouth of the Amazon river, was around 30,000 before this event. The World Social Forum, which offically starts in 1 minute, and to which celebration I will likely arrive at an hour later, and still be early, expects 80,000 participants. And then some.

 

Yesterday Cholmes and I went to one of the campuses of the Forum to try to get registered. We ended up at the wrong site, met the right guy, and within 30 minutes had run into someone we had never met, who already had a pass with Cholmes’ names on it, and was willing to facilitate getting one for me.

 

So that happened, beautifully, perfectly, and without hassle. Another triumph of dusty Portuguese (it seems so wrong to call it that, when the language is clearly Brazilian) and the ever-present smile, so at home, here in the Amazon. While getting the passes we met three characters right out of the movie Cidade de Deus (City of God, full of gorgeous cinematography, violence, and Brazilian funk), up from Sao Paolo, making a documentary, and wanting to interview us.

We walked a few minutes towards one of the rivers, sat in front of a giant tent sponsored by the Cuban Government (celebrating 50 years of the cuban revolution with music and cultural programs), and talked. The thing I remember best, after the initial introductions of Cholmes work and my own, was when he threw forth a word and asked us to speak on it:

 

Globalization.

 

Cholmes grunted me the right to go first. And all I could think of was the Amazon, wide and brown and powerful and everywhere and right behind us. Globalization. the Amazon.

 

We just got off a boat, our shared home for 5 days, with 300 other passangers, motoring and floating and blowing along from Manaus to Belem (you~ll neeed a map), stopping along major and minor ports along the way to pick up and drop off humans and other cargo.

Friends on the boat included a group of 70 indigenous people from 7 different ethnicities, all living near the border of Brazil and Colombia, and all going to present at the forum. Friends including a travelling circus from Colombia, an industrial dropout from a South African accounting firm, itinerant professors of language and sociology. A couple — half German and half Brazilian — who bicycle all around South America and draw portraits for petty cash.

It was a pretty cool group for a while, with nothing to do but play music, drink beer, and be absorbed in the Amazon happening all along us.  And then, all of a sudden, maybe by day 3 or 4, it was a family.

We bought each other ice cream and drank from each other~s cups without asking, entered each others cabins and slept in each others hammocks. We even missed each other. Walked through the narrow verandas of the boat became a forest of thumbs ups and high fives, proferred fruits and impromptu jam session.

No two people spoke the same set of language, it seemed, and everybody~s hair blew in the wind alike. We became the Amazonian boat people, and raised a flag for cooperation, understanding, and ultimately, globalization.

That~s what I told the documentary anyways, and, in a way, I felt my World Social Forum was over by the time we arrived in Belem to join 70,700 other friends and lovers from all over the world. We~ve run into Ekta Pariksha from India, a whole Zambian delegation (women for change, with men with them wearing tshirts that said, women for change), and countless artists and performers from all over the globe. Tomorrow the workshops will start in earnest, and I~ll be wading my way through the 160 page programme in 8-point font, trying to figure out how best to participate.

But we ate 60 mangos in 5 days, 3 cupuaçu, 2 kilos each of maracuja, papaya, pineapple, bananas, and countless other fruits offered and shared. And that was the forum for me. Staring at the Amazon which reached unto the horizon and learning about lives in indigenous communities where hunger is the norm in the most abundant rainforest on the planet, because missionaries accidently wiped out food-gathering culture along with religious-culture when they came to preach to the heathens. You know the story, I~m sure.

There~s really too much, too much humanity, and too much river to get into. But a 5-day cruise down the Amazon is the best way to arrive at the Social Forum that much I know, so good it might just have obsoleted the forum entirely.

 

In any case, the miracles show no sign of letting up. Neesha and I have stopped to look for solidarity accomodation at a high school we passed on the road, and they made us wait for a bit before coming out, addressing us as honored guests of state, and asking if we wouldnt might waiting in the airconditioned library while one of their professors finishes an errand before taking us to the appropriate housing. Constant amazement at the random goodness of people, and I~m happy to acknolwedge its not just about India.

Anyhow, thats the fruit of the day.

As for what we~re doing here, Cholmes and I wrote a paper on the Amazon about some ideas weve been developing. I’ll post it tomorrow after the presentation.

 

harmony and açai

ankur