A Campaigner's Return to the Amazon

Floating down the Xingu River's "Big Bend" in the Brazilian Amazon last November I was struck once again by the splendor of this unique environment. Its waters low for the dry season, the Xingu's magnificent white sand beaches stretched for miles while rock islands emerged from the current, shrouded in verdant shrubs and trees. Mesmerized as always by the raw, primeval beauty of this place, I was shocked awake from my daydream by huge walls of earth, rock, concrete and steel rising imposingly before me. This is the aberration of Brazil's Belo Monte dam: stagnant waters, leveled forests, shattered communities and the death knell of an Amazonian paradise.

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