The DMZ Read online

  John raised a hand in acknowledgment. Removing a camcorder from the handbag over his shoulder, he focused it in on a trio of naked brown toddlers wrestling in the shade of a mango tree. As his lens traveled on to an elderly Indian woman twisting goat hair into thread on a handheld spindle, his companion hunkered down on her heels to tap the computer screen.

  “Okay, then,” she told the chief, “you understand that this line here represents your country—or rather the country of the españoles who took over your land. The green here is the jungle. These blue lines are rivers. Right here is the one on which you live—see the red dot there? That’s your village. The brown here is rainforest that was designated as national wildlife reserves by the Colombian government. And over here—this ugly black splotch—that’s what the oil companies want to dig up just to keep the world’s wheels turning for a few more months.”

  The woman paused. “Are you following me this far?”

  The chief nodded slowly, maintaining the serenity of his expression.

  “Good. Now these red dots over here are the villages where the rest of your people live—quite a ways from your own, I’m afraid. This orange line shows the reserve that the Bureau for Indigenous Peoples has set aside for your tribe. But of course that doesn’t include your own village, and as you’ll see from this new line”—with a touch on the keyboard, a purple line fell into place on the map—“it’s only a fraction of the land your people once held before the españoles came. So this is what we want to do. Your tribal leadership, that is, with a little logistical help from C-PAP.”

  A third line—this one turquoise—fell into place on the screen. “We’re going to extend your tribe’s claim to include all of this. It’s still a million hectares or so short of your tribe’s original ancestral lands. But we figure it’s a reasonable settlement. As you can see here, the oil company’s drilling site is outside the original reservation and national wildlife reserves but well inside the land we—that is, your tribal authority—are claiming. If the reservation is approved, the oil drilling will have to stop.”

  Her passionate gaze turned back to the chief. “But we need your help. You’re the only village from your tribe in this part of the jungle. Unless you stand with the rest of your tribe in demanding that the oil drilling stop and the land be returned to your people, the courts won’t even consider including this territory.”

  The chief studied the screen unblinkingly, using bends in the rivers and the brown and white of mountain peaks to mark in his mind distances he had not traveled in many years. For all its strangeness, this was much better than the old paper maps he had once learned to use from the riowa. Then he shook his head slowly.

  “But this is much land—many, many days’ travel. And my people are few—only a few thousand even with those who live in these other villages. I do not understand. What would we want with so much? And what about those others who are not of my people who live on these lands?” The chief pointed to a scattering of other dots marked with the names of towns and villages. “How then would we be different from the españoles if we wished to take all this land for only a handful of people?

  “And this place for drilling the oil of which you tell us. It is a great distance from here. Two fall days in canoe along the river. It is not even good hunting land. So why should we care if the riowa wish to put a hole in the ground there to remove the oil for their villages and their houses? We do not need it.”

  “Why should you care!” the woman gasped. “How can you ask that? The oil is the life-blood of our Mother Earth. If it’s ripped from her veins, it will destroy her. Your tribe has pledged itself to protect our Mother Earth from violation. Isn’t that part of the sacred teachings of your people?”

  “Who told you this foolishness?” The chief moved his contemplative gaze to Quiroga, who reddened and looked away. “How could this petroleo be part of our sacred teachings? Until the riowa began digging it from the ground to burn in their machines, we did not even know it was there. My people who have never left this village do not yet understand what is this stuff of which you speak.”

  The woman cast her own accusing glance at Quiroga. “Look, the briefings we received on your tribal beliefs said the oil was sacred to you. That’s the basis of our legal suit. Maybe the translators got a few things wrong. But whatever your beliefs, you must see what the oil companies will mean to you and your people. Just look how many already have come into your lands over the years, thinking they’re superior and demanding that you give up your own culture and heritage for theirs. First, the españoles, greedy for your land. And in your own lifetime, the missionaries. We know how the missionaries came in and tried to push their white man’s religion on you and get you to change from the ways of your ancestors.”

  The woman leaned forward appealingly. “If the oil companies are allowed free rein, it will be far worse. There will be roads through your hunting grounds. There will be towns and laws and schools in another tongue. But if you’ll stand with us to push through this reserve, you’ll be able to shut out the outside world forever. Only those your tribe permits will be allowed to live and build in your territory. You can go back to living as your ancestors did, nurturing and protecting the earth that is your Mother. And no one will ever again try to bring change to your people. The Coalition for the Preservation of Amazonic Peoples has sworn to fight—”

  “And if we do not wish to live as our ancestors?”

  This quiet interjection stopped the woman at full flood. Was this some kind of a jungle joke? But the chief’s expression was as stolid as ever.

  “You!” the chief went on abruptly. “Tell me! Do you live as your ancestors?”

  As the woman bit her lip, he answered, “No, I do not think so, for then you would not be here speaking as a man. You would be in your hut with your babies, where a woman belongs.

  “And these machines. The one that takes pictures.” His gesture took in the photographer whose camcorder now focused on a young girl pounding corn in a hollowed-out wooden mortar. “And your com-pu-ta-do-ra,” he pronounced carefully. “These are not the ways of your ancestors. I know. I have been in the outside world, and I have seen the pictures of long ago and of the things your people have built. So why do you think that my people are so different from yourselves? That we should wish only what belongs to the past? That we do not choose to wonder and question and explore as your people have done?”

  The woman paused to study the village chief with a frown. Somehow this wasn’t going as she’d hoped. The chief was very old, his brown face creased into a map of wrinkles, his people’s black mane of hair reduced to a few white wisps, his once-stocky body wizened to the size of a child and so frail it had taken two of the village women—daughters? wives?—to settle him onto the stump they’d rolled into the dusty clearing that served as village green. She’d been prepared for stubbornness and the querulousness of age, but not for the intelligence that was gazing calmly back at her out of those shrewd black eyes. She opened her mouth defensively, then shut it again as the chief went on mildly.

  “I am old, and there are few who remember the old days better. When I was a boy, I wandered through the jungle and watched the night stars, and I too wondered many things. One day I found a new way to make an arrow. It killed the monkey and the jochi from a greater distance than the old way, and I was pleased. But when I showed it to my father, he was angry. Like you, he said that this was the not the way of our ancestors, and he beat me for having different thoughts.

  “Then our chief heard of my arrows. He was pleased as my father was not. But he did not use my arrows to hunt the monkey and the jochi. He had many of the arrows made, then he beat the drums for war with our enemies. The arrows shot farther than theirs, and their village was destroyed. But the dead had relatives in another village. They came and attacked our village. We fought them off, but my father and all my family were killed. The chief said that my arrows had brought the evil spirits into the village. He had the witch doctor pu
t a curse on me so that I was driven from my people.”

  The chief looked directly at the woman. “That is the world to which you demand we return. When I left my people, I wandered for many years in the outside world, and I found much of which to wonder and learn. I learned of the oil and the electricity and the machines. And I learned that all things are not good just because they are new. But the riowa outside were not my people, so I returned to my home.

  “When I returned, I found the missionaries of whom you speak. Yes, perhaps they did change our ways as you say. They did not fear the evil spirits but taught of a God who wished us to love Him and to love each other. Not all followed their ways but enough that the fighting stopped. Not since my son was a child have any of the peoples of these jungles gone on the war path. The missionaries brought their healing ways too, and our children stopped dying. They taught us how to coax more food from the earth. Were these things so wrong just because we had not known them before?

  “Now the last of the missionaries are gone—driven away by the guerrillas who also wish these lands. And I—I am old. But I do not forget. When the young men ask questions, I do not tell them, ‘No, you must not think new thoughts. You must do only as your ancestors.’ I tell them, ‘Go! Learn! There is a world to know beyond our village. But of what you learn there, bring back only that which will help your people.’”

  The chief’s tone grew suddenly stern. “You and your companions—you are not the first to come and speak to us like this about the ways of our ancestors. We have had the antropologos here before. You do not do what you demand of us. You allow your own people to learn and question and grow. But my people—you would keep us always the same, never changing. And why? So that you may come and study us and take your pictures and say how interesting are our dances and our festivals and our ways. It is as though to you we are like the animals I saw in the zoologicos in the riowa cities.”

  Almost, the woman could imagine a twinkle behind the chief’s shrewd gaze as he waved a hand toward the thatched huts behind him. “If you truly believe our ways are the best, then come and live them. Me—my grandson is going to the university.”

  There was a chuckle behind the woman. She swung around angrily. “What’s so funny?” she snapped in English. “You’re not being a whole lot of help here, John.”

  The photographer snapped a shot of her furious face before lowering the camera. “Hey, Winnie, I like this guy. He’s made some good points. He’s no fool, for all you treat him like one.”

  “It’s nothing to joke about,” the woman said stiffly. “We have to get these people’s cooperation. Just look at the size of those hardwoods. You realize we were flying for hours over all that without seeing so much as a town? And we’re supposed to let all that go down the drain because a bunch of greedy Westerners can’t control their thirst for oil? They’ve built a technotrash society on the rape of our planet’s remaining resources.”

  The photographer grinned maliciously as he glanced down at the open laptop. “You mean technotrash like computers and satellite modems back to C-PAP and that nice little airplane that flew us in here so you didn’t have to walk? Like the old guy said, I don’t see you trying to do without or go back to nature. Hey, if you’re really serious about your convictions, I’m sure the chief could find you a man who wouldn’t mind an extra pair of hands to scrub his clothes and rub his back.”

  The woman glanced around the circle of Indian men standing impassively with their arms crossed over their bare chests. The closest ones had been hunting that day, and the rank smell of a recently cleaned monkey skin tucked into his G-string warred with his own body odor. She shuddered. “That’s not the point! Okay, so our current civilization won’t run without oil. But at least they can get it elsewhere. You’ve seen what’s been happening here. Every time they build a pipeline, the guerrillas blow it up. That’s millions of gallons of oil spilled into the ecosystem all over Colombia these last few years. And there’s no way it isn’t going to happen again if they go putting down wells around here. We’re right in guerrilla territory.”

  “Then tell them the truth,” John said reasonably. “Come on, Winnie, you know as well as I do you don’t care a pile of turtle droppings about these people or their culture—or any other human being on this planet, for that matter. Nor do you really give two hoots about whether the oil companies are exercising proper environmental controls. If they met every demand you’re throwing at them, you’d still be hollering to keep them out of here. The truth is, Dr. Winifred Renken just doesn’t want anyone occupying one more inch of her precious rainforest.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” Her Ph.D. project had been the study of an obscure Amazonic orchid. The destruction of that rare flower by a careless lumber company before the ink was even dry on her thesis had shifted her focus from botany to environmental activism. Dr. Renken scowled at her companion. “This is one of the last unspoiled stretches of rainforest on the face of the planet. Who knows how many plant and animal species are here that we haven’t catalogued yet! Maybe even the cure for cancer. And where do you get off with knocking my convictions? You’re supposed to be my backup here. If you don’t support our goals, you have no business with C-PAP.”

  “Hey, C-PAP didn’t hire me to hug trees,” the photographer retorted. “They hired me to take pictures. Oh, sure, I’m politically correct. C-PAP wouldn’t have touched me otherwise. I don’t like seeing trees chopped down anymore than the next guy. But I’m not blind. You think I believe those tribal leaders back at base decided on their own to lay claim to a major chunk of this country? C-PAP was behind that from the start. You know it, and I know it! I mean, let’s get real; if every ethnic group is going to start claiming the lands their ancestors lived on four hundred years back, we’d have to redraw every atlas in the library! What are a few thousand people supposed to do with that much territory anyway? Nothing! Which is precisely the point, isn’t it? You want the rainforest, untouched and undeveloped, and these people are the easiest way to legitimize your claim to it.”

  The photographer leaned far down from his lanky height to bring his malicious grin closer to his companion’s stormy expression. “Come on, Winnie, I just want to hear you admit it. C-PAP isn’t about preserving the Amazonic peoples. It’s about preserving the Amazonic jungle. Which is fine with me. I’m all for saving the rainforest. But just don’t kid yourself as to how or why you’re doing it! And don’t try to kid that old guy over there. He’s smart enough to see through you like a jug of bottled water.”

  “Oh, shut up, John!” Dr. Renken said wearily. She pushed her damp bangs back off her forehead. “Okay, fine, we’ll try it your way. But it better work, because I’m not leaving without a solid verbal commitment on film.”

  Slamming shut the laptop, she nodded toward his camcorder as she got to her feet. The villagers had been waiting in patient silence during their English exchange. Ignoring Quiroga’s swift offer to translate, Dr. Renken faced the chief.

  “Please forgive us,” she said with a meekness she hadn’t used since she was an undergrad student. “We criticize others for coming in here to tell you how you should live, and now we’ve been doing the same thing. You are right, and we were wrong. It’s up to you to decide how you want to live, whether the ways of your ancestors or a new direction for a new world.”

  Her hands went out appealingly, not just to the chief but to the whole circle of villagers. “But surely, whatever changes you might choose to bring to your people, you can’t want to see all this—the trees, the animals that put meat in your cooking pots, the fish in the river—destroyed. That’s what will happen if the extranjeros—the foreigners, the white men—are allowed to come into these forests. Not just the oil companies, but those who will come afterward to cut the trees to ship lumber overseas, and dig for gold and silver, and drive away the animals to make room for cattle and farms.”

  She had the chief’s attention now, the conviction in her tone carrying the weight her earli
er arguments had not. “You say it doesn’t matter if the foreigners come, because what they wish to do is far away from your village. But you must believe me that they will not stay far away. When they have finished destroying one part, they will move on and on until one day your grandchildren will find that there is no more jungle left for their own children. We have seen it happen in other places. That’s why, if you love these lands, you must stop the foreigners here and now before they begin.”

  The startled murmurs and sideways glances were all she could hope for. Evidently, the chief wasn’t the only village man who had been in the outside world long enough to learn Spanish. She threw a triumphant glance at the photographer. “We’ve got them, John. Get that camera rolling.”

  Her pleasurable assurance lasted only until the chief spoke up, his wrinkled old face showing his bewilderment. “But didn’t you know? Those extranjeros—the white men—they are already here!”

  * * *

  The photographer followed Dr. Renken closely on their way down to the river. “Come on, Winnie, this is ridiculous! We can’t just rush off into the jungle like this! What if those were guerrillas the hunters saw out there? We could be walking right into their hands! That safe passage your ecologically minded FARC commander gave you was for the village, not for wandering around guerrilla territory. At the least, we should call C-PAP and see what they want to do about it.”

  He knew some of Dr. Renken’s colleagues; they’d probably just cheer her on, he thought sourly.

  Keeping pace with the six village hunters ahead of her, Dr. Renken didn’t slow her rapid strides. “No time. Besides, the chief is adamant those weren’t guerrillas his men saw out there. And Roberto interviewed the hunting party himself. Whoever they saw, it wasn’t just nonindigenous Colombians. They know the difference. It was gringos. White foreigners. And that means the oil companies have decided not to wait for the courts. They’re already sinking their exploration wells, figuring we’d never find out. If they can pinpoint exactly where the oil is by the time the courts rule, they’ll have a year’s head start. They’ll be moving in here like a plague of locusts before we can even file an appeal.”