A2 · Elementary
11 min
travellatin americaenvironmenthistory
The Forgotten Place: Acre, the Amazon, and Traveling to the Edge of the World
El Lugar Olvidado: Acre, el Amazonas y los Viajes al Fin del Mundo
This week, a school shooting in Rio Branco, Brazil, put a spotlight on a city almost nobody knows: the capital of the state of Acre, deep in the Amazon. Fletcher and Octavio explore what Acre is, how it became Brazilian, and what it means to travel to the places the world forgets.
Esta semana, un tiroteo en una escuela de Río Branco, Brasil, puso el foco en una ciudad que casi nadie conoce: la capital del estado de Acre, en el corazón de la Amazonía. Fletcher y Octavio exploran qué es Acre, cómo llegó a ser brasileño, y qué significa viajar a los lugares que el mundo olvida.
7 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| viajar | to travel | Me gusta viajar a lugares nuevos. |
| el viaje | the trip / journey | El viaje a Acre es muy largo. |
| la selva | the jungle / rainforest | La selva amazónica es muy grande. |
| el barco | the boat / ship | Hay un barco para los pasajeros en el río. |
| la frontera | the border | Acre está en la frontera con Perú y Bolivia. |
| el guía | the guide | El guía local conoce bien la selva. |
| estar de viaje | to be away / to be traveling (as a current state) | Esta semana estoy de viaje y no estoy en casa. |
There was a school shooting this week in Rio Branco, Brazil.
Two people killed, a thirteen-year-old suspect in custody.
Awful story.
But when I went to find it on a map, I realized I had no idea where Rio Branco actually was.
Río Branco es muy lejos.
Rio Branco is very far away.
Es la capital de Acre.
It's the capital of Acre.
Acre es un estado de Brasil.
Acre is a state in Brazil.
Far west.
Right up against the Bolivian and Peruvian borders.
I pulled up a map and there it is, this city of about four hundred thousand people, tucked into a corner of the Amazon that feels almost unreachable.
Sí.
Yes.
Acre no es fácil de visitar.
Acre is not easy to visit.
Los vuelos son caros.
The flights are expensive.
Las carreteras son malas.
The roads are bad.
And that combination, expensive to reach, roads that wash out in the rainy season, no major tourist infrastructure, it means a city of four hundred thousand people is essentially invisible to the outside world.
Which got me thinking about what travel actually is.
Acre tiene selva.
Acre has jungle.
Mucha selva.
A lot of jungle.
Y el río Acre es muy importante allí.
And the Acre river is very important there.
The river gives the state its name.
And here's the thing about Acre that genuinely knocked me sideways when I read it: Acre was not originally Brazilian.
It was Bolivian territory.
And Brazil basically bought it.
Sí, es verdad.
Yes, that's true.
En 1903.
In 1903.
Brasil pagó dinero a Bolivia por Acre.
Brazil paid money to Bolivia for Acre.
The Treaty of Petrópolis.
Brazil paid Bolivia two million British pounds and gave them some land along the Madeira River.
But before the diplomats even sat down, there had already been a rubber tapper revolt.
Brazilian settlers living in Bolivian territory declared an independent republic, the Acre Republic, and basically forced the issue.
El caucho.
Rubber.
El caucho era muy valioso.
Rubber was very valuable.
Muchas personas fueron a Acre por el caucho.
Many people went to Acre for the rubber.
The rubber boom.
Late nineteenth century, early twentieth.
Before synthetic rubber, before Malaya, the Amazon was the only place in the world you could get it in large quantities.
And Acre was one of the richest parts of the rubber zone.
Manaus también.
Manaus too.
¿Conoces Manaus?
Do you know Manaus?
The opera house in the middle of the jungle.
I have wanted to go since I was twenty-five years old.
They built a grand opera house in Manaus in 1896, marble imported from Europe, tiles from Alsace, chandeliers from Bohemia, all of it shipped up the Amazon river.
Because of rubber money.
Manaus es interesante para los turistas.
Manaus is interesting for tourists.
Pero Acre es diferente.
But Acre is different.
En Acre, los turistas son raros.
In Acre, tourists are rare.
That word, rare, that's almost a selling point for a certain kind of traveler.
I spent years as a correspondent going to places that weren't on anyone's itinerary, and there's something about a place that doesn't know it's supposed to perform for visitors.
Sí.
Yes.
En Acre, la naturaleza es increíble.
In Acre, the nature is incredible.
Hay animales muy especiales en la selva.
There are very special animals in the jungle.
Jaguars, tapirs, giant river otters.
And indigenous communities that have, in some cases, had almost no contact with the outside world.
Acre has one of the highest concentrations of uncontacted or minimally contacted indigenous peoples anywhere on earth.
Hay muchos grupos indígenas en Acre.
There are many indigenous groups in Acre.
Viven en la selva.
They live in the jungle.
Es su casa.
It is their home.
And that raises a genuinely uncomfortable question about travel, doesn't it.
Because some of the most extraordinary places on earth are extraordinary precisely because humans haven't arrived with cameras and hotels yet.
El turismo puede ser malo para la naturaleza.
Tourism can be bad for nature.
Puede ser malo para las personas también.
It can be bad for people too.
The paradox of travel.
You go because you love a place, and the act of going changes it.
I saw this happen in real time in places I covered: Luang Prabang in Laos, parts of Morocco, certain neighborhoods in Havana.
Beautiful, then discovered, then slowly hollowed out.
Pero el turismo también da dinero a las personas.
But tourism also gives money to people.
Es trabajo para las familias.
It is work for families.
And that's the real tension.
For somewhere like Rio Branco, more visitors could mean better hospitals, better roads, more economic resilience.
The city that showed up in global news this week because of a tragedy might benefit from being seen for other reasons.
Río Branco tiene historia.
Rio Branco has history.
Tiene cultura.
It has culture.
Tiene comida buena también.
It has good food too.
Tell me about the food.
Because whenever I've been in Amazonian Brazil, I've found the food completely disorienting in the best way.
Things I had no name for.
En Acre comen mucho peixe, el pescado del río.
In Acre they eat a lot of peixe, river fish.
Y frutas de la selva.
And jungle fruits.
Frutas muy diferentes.
Very different fruits.
Açaí growing wild, not in a smoothie bowl at a wellness café in Brooklyn.
Cupuaçu, which I tried once and couldn't decide if I loved it or feared it.
The Amazon has more edible plant species than most people will encounter in a lifetime of eating.
La Amazonía es grande.
The Amazon is large.
Muy, muy grande.
Very, very large.
Brasil tiene mucha Amazonía, pero también Perú y Bolivia.
Brazil has a lot of Amazon, but also Peru and Bolivia.
Nine countries share the Amazon basin.
Nine.
And Acre sits at the point where three of them meet.
That tri-border area, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, is one of those places geographers find fascinating and governments sometimes find inconvenient.
Las fronteras en la selva son difíciles.
Borders in the jungle are difficult.
No hay muchos controles.
There are not many checkpoints.
Las personas pasan libremente.
People pass freely.
Which for travelers is fascinating and for customs officials is a nightmare.
I remember talking to a Brazilian federal police commander in Tabatinga, another Amazonian border town, who described the frontier as, and I'm paraphrasing, a line drawn by someone who had never been there.
Sí.
Yes.
Los ríos son más importantes que las fronteras en la Amazonía.
Rivers are more important than borders in the Amazon.
El río es el camino.
The river is the road.
The river as infrastructure.
That's a concept that takes a minute to recalibrate around if you're used to highways and airports.
In Acre, in the rainy season, the only reliable way to move between some communities is by boat.
En la Amazonía, los barcos son como los autobuses.
In the Amazon, boats are like buses.
Hay barcos para pasajeros, para familias.
There are boats for passengers, for families.
I took one of those slow river boats once between Belém and Manaus.
Four days on the water.
You string a hammock on the deck, watch the jungle go by, eat whatever the cook makes.
It's one of the great slow travel experiences left on earth.
I'd do it again tomorrow.
¿Cuatro días en un barco?
Four days on a boat?
¡Eso es mucho tiempo!
That is a lot of time!
¿No tienes trabajo?
Don't you have work?
It was work.
I was supposed to be writing about deforestation.
I ended up writing about the boat.
My editor was not thrilled.
But the piece won something, so he forgave me eventually.
La deforestación es un problema muy grave en Acre.
Deforestation is a very serious problem in Acre.
Cada año, la selva es más pequeña.
Every year, the jungle is smaller.
And that changes the travel calculation too, in a grim way.
Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper union leader who fought deforestation and was murdered in 1988, he was from Acre.
His assassination made international headlines and basically launched the modern Amazon conservation movement.
He came from exactly the kind of community we've been describing.
Chico Mendes es muy famoso en Brasil.
Chico Mendes is very famous in Brazil.
Hay un parque nacional con su nombre en Acre.
There is a national park with his name in Acre.
The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve.
It's a model that other countries have looked at: protected areas where local communities can still live and work sustainably, harvesting rubber, Brazil nuts, açaí.
Not locking people out to preserve nature, but building conservation around the people who already know the land.
Hay turismo en la reserva también.
There is tourism in the reserve too.
Los turistas pueden ver la selva y aprender sobre ella.
Tourists can see the jungle and learn about it.
Ecotourism done right rather than done for brochure purposes.
That's a distinction that matters enormously on the ground.
The question is always whether the money actually reaches the communities or gets absorbed somewhere upstream.
Es difícil.
It is difficult.
Pero hay proyectos buenos en Acre.
But there are good projects in Acre.
Pequeños hoteles en la selva.
Small jungle lodges.
Guías locales.
Local guides.
The local guide as the whole value proposition.
I have never had a better travel experience than when I was with someone who grew up in the place I was visiting.
Not an app, not a tour bus, not a laminated information card.
A person who remembers the river when it ran higher, who knows which tree the macaws nest in.
Sí.
Yes.
El guía local sabe muchas cosas.
The local guide knows many things.
Sabe el nombre de las plantas.
He knows the names of the plants.
Sabe los animales.
He knows the animals.
And here's what strikes me about Rio Branco making the news for a school shooting: a place that rich in history, in ecology, in human complexity, surfaces in international consciousness only through tragedy.
That asymmetry bothers me.
It's been bothering me all week.
Las noticias malas viajan rápido.
Bad news travels fast.
Las noticias buenas no viajan.
Good news does not travel.
That's essentially the entire theory of newsworthiness summarized in two sentences.
My students would hate me for saying that, but they'd also know I was right.
Which brings me back to travel as a corrective: you go somewhere, you see what the headlines missed.
Oye, ¿puedo preguntarte algo?
Hey, can I ask you something?
¿Tú dices «viajar» o «ir de viaje»?
Do you say 'viajar' or 'ir de viaje'?
¿Cuál es la diferencia?
What is the difference?
Caught me off guard there.
I actually don't know.
I use both and I've never been sure when to use which one.
Mira, «viajar» es el verbo.
Look, 'viajar' is the verb.
Es la acción.
It is the action.
«Ir de viaje» significa que tú tienes un viaje específico.
'Ir de viaje' means you have a specific trip.
So «me gusta viajar» means I like traveling in general, as a concept.
But «voy de viaje a Acre» means I have an actual trip to Acre planned.
One is a habit, the other is a plan.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y también decimos «estar de viaje».
And we also say 'estar de viaje'.
Por ejemplo: «Estoy de viaje esta semana».
For example: 'Estoy de viaje esta semana'.
Significa que tú no estás en casa ahora.
It means you are not at home right now.
«Estar de viaje» is almost like a state of being rather than an action.
You're in travel mode.
Your normal life is on pause.
That's a useful phrase, actually.
I've spent probably a third of my adult life «de viaje» and I didn't have the right words for it until just now.
Y si yo pregunto «¿adónde vas de viaje?», tú puedes decir «voy a Acre».
And if I ask '¿adónde vas de viaje?', you can say 'voy a Acre'.
Fácil, ¿no?
Easy, right?
«Voy a Acre.» You know what, that might actually happen.
After this conversation I feel like I owe Rio Branco a visit.
Not because of the news this week, but because of everything the news couldn't tell me.
Bien.
Good.
Pero no pongas hielo en el açaí, por favor.
But don't put ice in the açaí, please.
That one I actually deserved.
Thanks, everyone.
Go find a map and look up Acre.
It'll be ten minutes well spent.