History and geography of the Madre de Dios
During the empire of the Incas, the Amazon jungle occupied by the river known today as Madre de Dios was called Antisuyo (hence the name Antis, Andes). The Incas obtained some merchandise such as gold, coca, medicinal plants and fruit, which were later exchanged throughout the empire.
According to the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Royal Commentaries, 1609), the emperor Tupac Inca Yupanqui, son and successor of the mythical Pachacutec, undertook an expedition in the Antisuyo jungle in the 15th century.
It is said that he left in command of an army of about 15,000 men and that he subdued some tribes of Mojos, Amaracaeris and Huarayos. He also had to face enormous snakes (probably anacondas), from which he derived the name of the Amarumayo River or River of Serpents (Mother of God).
According to legend, originating from the years following the Spanish conquest of Peru, a group of Inca priests hid in these forests and, in the attempt to preserve the traditional culture, founded a city called Paititi (from the Quechua Paikikin, the same a, in relation to Cuzco), where they hid, in addition to very ancient esoteric knowledge, enormous treasures.
From a geographical point of view, the Madre de Dios basin, belonging to Peru, has an area of approximately 85,000 square kilometers.
The Madre de Dios, whose main tributaries are the Manu and the Río de las Piedras, has a length of about 1100 kilometers and is a tributary of the Beni, which in turn, joining with the Mamoré, forms the Madeira, one of the most powerful tributaries of the Amazon River.
The territory is mountainous and rugged in the western part, characterized by tropical vegetation called high jungle. Continuing towards the east, on the other hand, you advance into the tropical rainforest, with constantly high temperatures and high relative humidity.
The first adventurer who entered the jungle of Madre de Dios was Pedro de Candia, one of the conquerors of Peru, lieutenant of Francisco Pizarro. As he had obtained information from some of his indigenous concubines, who described a city rich in gold called Ambaya, he decided to undertake the expedition. He left Paucartambo in 1538 advancing in the rainforest towards the east for approximately 150 kilometers. The expedition, however, did not have the expected success as it was attacked by ferocious natives in a village called Abiseo, where he decided to return to Cuzco.
In 1566, Juan Álvarez Maldonado entered the jungle in search of Paititi, but had to quickly give up after suffering indigenous attacks and illnesses.
From the beginning of the 17th century, the Jesuits founded several missions in the area, and obtained important information about a hidden city, of Inca origin, in the Madre de Dios jungle.
Particularly, Father Andrés López, in a letter to Claudio Acquaviva, superior general of the Company of Jesus, transmits detailed information about Paititi, a city paved with gold and rich in precious stones.
This document was discovered in 2001 by archaeologist Mario Polia in the Vatican archives.
Also other missionaries, in subsequent years, such as Francisco de Cale in 1686 and Benito Jerónimo Feijoo in 1730, described the city of Paititi. It seems that the Vatican jealously guarded this information over the years. Why?
The Madre de Dios area was not only a place explored by adventurers and archaeologists in search of Paititi. At the end of the 19th century, a Peruvian entrepreneur, Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald, distinguished himself with an epic enterprise, which aimed to commercially exploit the Madre de Dios basin, then threatened by invasions by Brazilians and Bolivians stimulated by hope of making huge profits from the gum tree or rubber.
Fitzcarrald, whose adventure was produced in a feature film starring Klaus Kinski and Claudia Cardinale, was the owner of enormous rubber plantations in the Ucayali area. Having realized that the sources of the Serjali, which was part of the Ucayali basin, were a few kilometers away from the sources of the Caspajali, which was part of the Madre de Dios basin, he decided to build a passage between the two rivers, later called 'Fitzcarrald Isthmus'. In 1894, after having dismantled his ship Contamana, Fitzcarrald, with the help of hundreds of indigenous people, had it transported to the other part of the slope, in the Madre de Dios basin, where he was rearmed. He then sailed along the Manu River and across the Madre de Dios to the fortification of a Bolivian rubber tapper, Nicolás Suárez, with whom he sealed important trade agreements. The passage of the Contamana through the hill was a success that allowed Fiztcarrald to significantly increase his fortune by also taking advantage of the Madre de Dios basin. The adventurer died a few years later, in the Urubamba pond, trying to save the life of a friend of his.
Around 1925, when the rubber fever died out, after the fall in the international price of rubber, the Madre de Dios basin once again became unattractive to entrepreneurs, who abandoned it to its fate.
In the second part of the 20th century, searches were restarted to find Paititi, the lost city of the Incas.
In the 60s of the last century, the Peruvian Carlos Neuenschwander LandaHe carried out 27 expeditions in search of Paititi. Although he collected important archaeological material belonging to the Inca era, he did not find the desired city. In 1970, the American Robert Nichols and the Frenchmen Serge Debrú and Gerard Puel mysteriously disappeared while trying to find the mythical city.
According to archaeologist Fernando Soto Roland, Paititi is defended by a group of indigenous people of Inca origin, known as Kuga-Pacoris, whose bravery is well known in popular beliefs. It was they, according to Neuenschwander Landa, who prevented access to the two Frenchmen and the American.
One of the most important expeditions in search of Paititi took place in 1979, when Herbert and Nicole Cartagena discovered the ruins of an Inca fortification that was called Mameria. The crafts that were found in the surroundings indicate that Mameria represented an agricultural fortress and an observation post.
Since the 80s of the last century, the American explorer Gregory Deyermenjian carried out several expeditions and although he documented and studied several archaeological sites, he did not manage to find the city of Paititi.
In 2002, the Polish explorer Jacek Palkiewicz undertook an impressive expedition in the Madre de Dios area. After 21 days on the road, he discovered a swamp completely hidden by vegetation. With the help of radar instruments, some archaeologists on the expedition found an underground labyrinth located underwater that could be part of the city. It is still not known if the immense wealth of the Incas is at the bottom of the pond found by Palkiewicz or if that place 'only' has enormous archaeological value.
In the Madre de Dios basin is the Manu National Park, with a size of more than 1,700,000 hectares (half of Switzerland). It is one of the best preserved protected areas in the world. This sanctuary of animal and plant biodiversity extends up to 4000 meters above sea level, in the mountains called Apu Kanahuay (close to God in the Quechua language), from 200 meters above sea level in the tropical rainforest, in where the Manu River meets Madre de Dios, near the village of Boca Manu.
In Manu there are more than 1,300 varieties of butterflies (441 in all of Europe), 1,000 species of birds, 100 different genera of bats, as well as apes, reptiles, parrots, felines (jaguar) and naturally fish such as the zungaro or the paiche (pirarucú) in addition to an imprecise number of different species of insects, some still unknown.
In the Manu National Park there are several indigenous groups. Some chose to live inside the primary jungle and thus avoid any contact with the Peruvians. Tribal groups are classified by linguistic affiliation.
The Mascopiros speak in languages belonging to the Pano. The Huachipaery and the Amarakaery express themselves in the Arakmbut language. Most of them live in the communities of Queros, where the petroglyphs of Jinkiori and Santa Rosa de Huacari are located.
The largest group of natives is the Matsiguenkas ethnic group, whose language belongs to the Arawak group.
Over the years, the Matsiguenkas maintained frequent contacts with the Quechua-speaking Andean peoples, especially in the vicinity of Kosnipata.
Most of them live in the villages of Palotoa-Teparo, Tayakoma, Yonubato and Santa Rosa de Huacaria. They grow rice, cassava, potatoes, fruit and some of them use the coca leaf, which they chew to alleviate fatigue and hunger. They often burn the trunk of a tree called manakarako, obtaining charcoal, whose ashes are mixed with coca leaves to obtain a more effective effect. They also hunt with arrows and fish to vary their diet.
Inside the national park there are also the Kuga-Pacoris, recognized for their aggressiveness. It is difficult and dangerous to try to find them because they prefer not to have contacts with other peoples.
One of the most interesting places from an archaeological point of view in the entire Madre de Dios basin are the Pusharo petroglyphs, located near the Palotoa River. This watercourse, which arises at about 1000 above sea level in the mountain range called Pini Pini, is a tributary of the Madre de Dios and joins it downstream in the village of Santa Cruz.
The Pusharo petroglyphs, initially discovered in 1909 by a rubber tapper, were described as Gothic letters carved into the rock. In 1921, the Dominican missionary Vicente de Cenitagoya, accompanied by other religious and Matsiguenka indigenous people, visited the place and came to the conclusion that the engravings are a form of oriental writing that represents scenes from the Old and New Testaments. These petroglyphs were made using stone axes, probably around the first millennium AD. On the rock walls adjacent to the Palotoa River there are engraved anthropomorphic figures, such as human faces, zoomorphic figures, such as snakes or footprints of felines and birds, and geometric-abstract, uninterpreted figures. The latter are divided into circles, squares, labyrinthine spirals, intertwined chains, triangles. There are also representations of the sun or the moon. The figures that most impact the visitor are the head-shaped engravings, which perhaps illustrate the masks used by ancient inhabitants of the jungle. From careful studies of the place, it was concluded that the dominant motifs of these engravings are the feline totem and the sun, considered the bearer of life. These petroglyphs have been interpreted over the last few decades by several adventurers and archaeologists. Some of them have related them to Paititi, thinking that they are a kind of map to reach the mythical city. In my opinion, these rock engravings are a form of expression of an Amazonian people who lived in the Madre de Dios basin in remote times. Perhaps these are the ancestors of the Matsiguenkas. It is possible that the mysterious authors of the masterful engraving were influenced by the Incas and that they retouched the petroglyph in later centuries, as demonstrated by some signs of Inca origin. In any case, these artistic images represent the first step that would lead those people to more complex forms of expression such as pictography and hieroglyphs.
For the distinguished archaeologist Reichel-Dolmatoff, rock engravings could be abstract representations of mythologies or cosmological conceptions, created by subjects who were under the influence of hallucinogenic plants such as ayahuasca (yajé). Indeed, the sensations perceived after having used ayahuasca, often associated with other plants such as charcuna (psychotria viridis), are alterations of the visual sense. You can see intense colors and hexagonal networks. Curiously, these geometric shapes frequently appear in the rock art of the New World.
Sailing down the river along the Madre de Dios, you will find the town of Boca Manu, just beyond the confluence of the homonymous river.
After about 10 hours of peque-peque, you will find the Colorado River (also called Karene). In this area and in neighboring rivers, such as the Iñabari (which was called Río Magno by the Spanish), the Huepetue and the Pukiri, small amounts of gold were discovered, starting in 1970, mixed with the sand of the river banks. In a short time the towns were filled with settlers in search of their fortune. Citadels such as Colorado, Mazuko and Labyrinth, until now inhabited by a dozen people, were incredibly enlarged not only by desperate gold seekers but also by greedy merchants. As gold is found mainly in clay or sand sediments, sometimes located three meters deep, it is necessary to dig and then filter the material into very fine networks that do not allow the gold dust to pass through. Liquid mercury is then added to serve as a glue to bind the various metal particles together. The last procedure is fusion: the mercury melts and finally it is possible to see small golden nuggets. Mercury, which ends up remaining in rivers, is a powerful poison that kills fish and sterilizes the water and humus on river banks. The extraction of gold with artisanal processes is, therefore, dangerous for the natural environment since, with the elimination of humus, the growth of new trees is increasingly difficult.
Continuing towards the capital of the department, Puerto Maldonado, there is a huge uncovered highway, which will quickly be paved and interconnected with a Brazilian Amazon road. The Madre de Dios attracts a lot of large multinationals, and must be connected to Cusco with a paved road as quickly as possible.
As can be seen, the Madre de Dios is the place of contrasts: immense and decontaminated parks to the west, where uncontacted indigenous people still live, mining exploitation in the center. It is expected that local rulers will know how, in the not too distant future, to reconcile the demands of preserving protected natural areas with equitable economic development, which can benefit all strata of the population, including indigenous people, respecting their secular culture.
YURI LEVERATTO
