Amazon Sweet Sea: Land, Life, and Water at the River's Mouth

Environmental History, Oct 2003 by Wilcox, Robert W

Amazon Sweet Sea: Land, Life, and Water at the River's Mouth. By Nigel J. H. Smith. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. xii 281 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $39.95.

Nigel Smith has a long and distinguished career studying the human geography of the Amazon River basin. In this latest work, he brings together material researched over the past thirty years in the estuary of the Amazon, particularly the island of Marajo. While Amazon Sweet Sea appears to be more suited to the coffee table than the academic bookshelf, thanks to the author's lush photos, Smith neatly brings both color and academic rigor to the subject. The study's intent is to reveal how the largely subsistence economies of the people of the river's mouth, the caboclos, illustrate a sustainable alternative to the rapacious nature of Amazonian development today. For Smith, the peoples' lives and experience offer a profound lesson in the understanding of human ecology in this vast and complex fluvial ecosystem.

Deriving the title from early European explorers' references to the mar dulce of sweet Amazon waters encountered far into the Atlantic, the book is organized into chapters that detail the various ecological and economic units that make up the lives of the people of the estuary, among them the agroforestry of palm tree cultivation (particularly acai), cattle ranching, fishing, hunting, and collection of wild fruits. The author's extensive knowledge of the plants and animals, as well as their many applications in caboclo diet, medicine, and religion, plus many illustrative anecdotes, combine to reveal the perceptive grace of the residents of the mouth and bring to life a region that "embraces a mosaic of habitats that locals have long tapped for food and other goods and in many cases have transformed" (p. 1).

While Smith is not a historian, Amazon Sweet Sea finds a welcome place in the growing historical and archaeological literature on the sustainability of Amazonia. This work reinforces other studies that reveal how pre-Columbian societies supported large populations along the Amazon River and its tributaries by sophisticated manipulation of their environments. Caboclo survival today illustrates the degree to which their judicious interaction with the environment often is based on indigenous practices of the past. (For a clear synthesis of pre-Columbian settlement in the Amazon, see David Cleary, "Towards an Environmental History of the Amazon: From Prehistory to the Nineteenth Century," in Latin American Research Review, 2001.)

While most of the book illustrates the ecological balance achieved in the estuary, in his last chapter Smith warns of several possible threats to this sustainability, and he offers some suggestions for maintaining the economies of the caboclos without unduly transforming the region. However, Smith's attachment to the people of the region may have clouded slightly his assessment of some critical developments, particularly continued migration to cities and diminishing incentive for young people to stay at home. And he only partially addresses the broader economic pressures of poverty that caboclos face as the overall Brazilian economy continues along its uncertain path.

Despite these questions, Smith has crafted a book in which the environmental lessons are subtle, yet profound. His sensitive presentation of the inventiveness and casual dignity of the people of the Amazon estuary evokes empathy in the reader and emphasizes just how much we still have to learn from such "marginal" populations, and yet how precarious their position is in today's globalized world. As such, Amazon Sweet Sea is highly recommended for general readers and experts alike.

Robert W. Wilcox, associate professor of history at Northern Kentucky University, currently is preparing a manuscript on the history of cattle ranchingin the southwest interior of Brazil from the mid-nineteenth century.