New voices echo through the rainforest announcing the news of the day, which, here in the Amazon, is also the news of the era: A fire yesterday. An invasion this morning. Partly smoky skies today—rain unlikely. Scattered throughout the forest, the voices strain to be heard, shouting at the top of their lungs not only the headlines, but also the explanations, investigations, confirmations and corrections that might help a passerby better understand the catastrophe happening around them. In Acre, the western corner of the Brazilian Amazon, the voice is named Varadouro and calls itself “um jornal das selvas”—a jungle newspaper. “Communicate to preserve,” its motto reads and it tells stories with the jungle as setting, character, audience and plot. On the other side of the forest in Belém, where the Amazon links to the Atlantic Ocean and the rest of the world, other voices have begun telling similar stories. Agência Carta Amazônia chronicles the encroachment of the palm industry into a forest quilombo (a settlement occupied by the descendants of runaway slaves) while Amazônia Vox describes the promise of local chocolate production in preserving plant diversity. From Manaus, where the Rio Negro and Rio Solimões collide in the middle of the forest to form the Amazon River, the voices of Amazônia Real detail the death of Yanomami Indigenous people at the hands of illegal gold miners and Vocativo reveals the Amazonas government’s inaction during the state’s worst drought in decades. In the river port city of Santarém, Pará, Tapajós de Fato reveals the pollution of waterways by an advancing mining industry. In nearby Altamira, where construction of the third-largest river dam in the world has wreaked environmental havoc, Sumaúma tells the story of a young girl unafraid of snakes but terrified of the land invaders who burned down her school. In São Gabriel da Cachoeira, the municipality with the highest percentage of Indigenous people in Brazil, Rede Wayuri broadcasts over radio, podcast, and WhatsApp life-saving fact-checks about COVID-19. Up north in Boa Vista, Roraima, Correio do Lavrado investigates the advance of sport fishing in the rivers of the Northern Amazon and in Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia that was smothered with a cloud of smoke earlier this year, Voz da Terra shouts about the human-started fires blazing through Indigenous lands. Looking at it all from above, InfoAmazônia relies on satellite images and maps to narrate the progression of farmers, ranchers, gold miners, drug dealers and loggers and the retreat of the largest rainforest on earth. As a group, the voices represent a new age of journalism and communication in the Amazon Rainforest. Over the last decade, recent college graduates, career reporters, and community communicators across the Amazon have created websites, podcasts and WhatsApp channels to publish original journalism uninfluenced by the government or corporations. Working in teams of one or two or 10 and relying on grants, donations and the tireless passion of a handful of volunteers, these journalists have taken on a lofty mission: protecting the Amazon Rainforest and its people through rigorous and accurate reporting.
Reporting the Understory
