A few years ago whilst wandering through the Peruvian jungle near Atalaya ,I came across a group of children playing in a stream, the smallest one, about three years old, looked at me and started screaming hysterically whilst all his older friends bawled with laughter. Asking what the problem was I was informed that a common bedtime story was about a white man who steals the fat from small children to use as fuel to “fly his spaceship to the moon”. “Don’t worry “ I said to the toddler, “I’m vegetarian” the toddler probably didnt know what a vegetarian was, but his terror was transformed into unsettled curiosity. This is the legend of the “Pishtako” , the fat stealer, once famously exploited by Peruvian Police to cover up their extrajudicial killings. Another sinister gringo – the Pela Cara (Face peeler) roams the jungle at night peeling peoples faces off and is often accompanied by high tech gadgets , expensive motorbikes etc. Not the best myth to surround a gringo who spends a lot of time wandering remote parts of the jungle recording sounds on startrek–esque devices. On the surface these myths are as absurd as Schrodinger’s Haitian – immigrants who are accused of pocketing 1000s of dollars of foodstamps each month, yet also need to eat cats to survive. Nonetheless an introduction from a local is essential in remote part of the Peruvian Amazon and once introduced they become some of the most funloving and delightfully sarcastic communities on Earth . Yet legends such as these likely have roots in deep and painful history of European colonisation of the area.
When we think of the lost civilisations of the pre columbian Americas we tend to think of the Maya, the Aztec and the Incas. When we think of the Amazon we generally think of small scattered tribes hunting with blodarts and bows and arrows. Yet recent research, as well as old accounts, speak of sophisiticated civilisations in the Amazon. Initial reports of Spanish conquistadors such as Francisco de Orellana, the first European to travel the length of the Amazon, described huge thriving civilisations along the banks of the river; large cities populated by thousands and thousands of people, and an extensive road network, with roads 30 metres wide and “so clean you would not find a leaf on them” . He was not believed for centuries, but recent lidar scans of the Amazon have indeed revealed huge cities and wide roads many km long, capable of supporting tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.
(Source: BBC news “huge city found in Amazon”)
There is more evidence with the presence of areas of “Terra Preta” or black soil – a self-regenerating super fertile dark soil developed by the Omaguas who lived on the river bank. It is now believed that most of them died of Smallpox and other diseases that were bought with the conquistadores. Their descendants can still be found around Yurimaguas – a town who’s name I was informed comes from two tribes, the Yuris, and the Omaguas.
In Addition to this huge loss, the rubber trade was one of the most brutal and repressive episodes in human history with a large part of the Amazon population in the area being murdered and enslaved. Where I was staying in lagunas they told me Pacaya Samiria used to be populated by German rubber tappers and they had a pit with 3 hungry jaguars in it that they used feed uncooperative native people to.
There is much speculation that the uncontacted tribes who still live in the Amazon – originally left to flee the rubber trade. When Irish revolutionary Roger Casement wrote his report to the British govt of the atrocities committed by the Britain’s partnership organisation, the Peruvian Amazon company, amongst the Putamayo group it helped end the rubber trade in the area. Roger Casement is still remembered fondly to this day in the area around Iquitos.
So It’s understandable with such a traumatic history of contact that there’s a few unflattering myths around white people – what’s really amazing is despite all of this how friendly people still are to outsiders…. once they know you’re not going to peel their face off.