Washing in the Amazon Basin

This from a recent issue of David Batstone's SoJo Mail. David and his organization are on the forefront of humanitarian efforts in Latin America. He describes a educational trip taken last summer in the Amazon Basin in Peru, all part of the same land being destroyed by US funded fumigation campaigns. He and four students traveled with three indigenous men; a shaman, a lumberjack, and a hunter.

His observes the need for alternative economic development to reduce the lumbermen's impact on the fragile environment and the hunter's wise use of their resources with self imposed hunting limits. The shaman's world interested me the most however.

A local shaman introduced us to its biological treasure. The Amazon is home to more than 40,000 plant species, with nearly three-fourths of those species found nowhere else on the globe. With machete in hand, the shaman carved a virgin path through the rain forest. We followed him as best as we could, though we were unable to master his adroit skill at jumping over tree roots while vines swung at our heads. Fortunately, the shaman would stop periodically, hold up a plant, and carefully explain its medicinal properties. Two of us were stung by a nasty wasp. We were hoping the shaman would have a remedy to take away the pain. Instead, he congratulated us on getting stung, for it would help mitigate the future contraction of arthritis!

Almost all of our common medicines have been derived from just such plant lore, all the way down to aspirin which comes from tree bark. The Amazon still holds some medicinal secrets that could benefit man if we don't destroy 39,000 of it's species while prosecuting this failed war on some drugs and plants.

It is here that our planet draws it's breath and it's vital fluid, water, to make the rain that falls in your town. Once it's destroyed there is no getting it back.

The Amazon makes up 53% of the Earth's tropical rain forests and contains the world's largest river systems - it pours 175,000 cubic meters of water per second into the Atlantic Ocean.

It loses more than 17,000 square kilometers to deforestation each year. This is worrisome but the jungle will grow back if it's merely cut down. The greater danger to all of us is this wholesale poisoning of the earth and water table by reckless fumigation.

Please help stop this dangerous campaign, even if you only sign the petition at Mama Coca. The count seems to have slowed down a bit, (currently at 3584), so if you've already signed during our earlier appeals, please take a moment to forward the link on. Thanks.