In 1955, Claude Lévi-Strauss published his classic "Sad Tropics". Even back then, the author wrote, "Without forests, man would never have existed. When I think of Brazil, the first thing that comes to mind is the smell of burning." Sentences that are more relevant today than ever.
The Amazon rainforests are burning in Latin America. Not only Brazil is affected by the worst forest fires in decades, in neighboring Bolivia around 10,000 km² of rainforest is also on fire.
Even today, Latin America often seems far away from us. What happens in the southern part of America rarely gets any attention in Europe, even though the effects have a direct impact on us. Brazil, which is dominated by European immigrants, is even more in focus, while the forest fires in Bolivia are barely noticed.
Brazil has been the focus of international media coverage in recent months, mainly due to a change of government. The new president, Jair Bolsonaro, also known as the "Trump of the Tropics," has his own perspective on the fires in the Amazon. While he accuses environmentalists of setting the fires themselves in order to put him in a bad light, Bolsonaro primarily supports the Brazilian farmers who are profiting from the Amazon fires.
Brazilian farmers use the deforested or burned rainforest areas as pastureland for their cattle. Brazil is one of the largest beef exporters in the world. Meat exports are an important pillar of the Brazilian economy. Bolsonaro is supporting the farmers and thus tolerating the deforestation of the Amazon, one of the most important ecosystems on earth. Around 72,000 Amazon fires were recorded by space probes this year alone. How lasting the damage to the Amazon region will be remains to be seen.
The French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote in 1955 in "Sad Tropics": "In my imagination, Brazil was a sheaf of bent palm branches, behind which bizarre architecture was hidden. The whole thing was enveloped in the smell of incense burners, a detail that, it seemed, crept in through the unconsciously perceived similarity of the words 'Brésil' (Brazil) and 'grésiller' (crackling), but which explains more than any other experience gained since then why even today, when I hear the word Brazil, the first thing I think of is the smell of burning."
Lévi-Strauss was already living in Brazil in the 1930s. The philosopher had been appointed to the University of São Paulo, a university originally founded by the French. During his stay, he made repeated excursions to the Amazon and came into contact with various indigenous peoples who had been spared from Portuguese colonialism at the time.
Impressed by his experiences in the Amazon and his encounters with the indigenous peoples of Brazil, he incorporated his experiences into his academic work when he returned to Paris. In his ethnology, Lévi-Strauss assumed that indigenous peoples, whom he also associated with wild thinking, could not exist permanently, not even in the dense forests of the tropics.
"The world began without man and it will end without him," writes Lévi-Strauss. Man would never have existed without forests. In the West, man sacrificed the forest long ago for progress, culture and order.
The philosopher came to this realization not without regret, and his work "Sad Tropics" bears witness to this. The book itself is a wild work that captures the originality of the Amazon and contains many things: essays, poetry, and even a scientific treatise. The original French title "Tristes Tropiques" is a play on words, since "Tropiques" also stands for literary irritation. Lévi-Strauss's sadness and irritation did not only refer to the tropical forests; he believed that people long for an originality that they cannot achieve and because they already suspect that our civilization will not last either.
Among the burned areas of the Amazon, archaeologists often find remnants of ancient civilizations whose civilizations collapsed and whose traces were once again overgrown by tropical forests. In Lévi-Strauss's "Sad Tropics," the Amazon is also both: beginning and end.
