Deep in Amazon, Isolated Village Tunes In
The fevered grip of the world’s largest sporting
event can be felt even in some of the most isolated areas of the rain
forest, where outsiders seldom visit.
Deep in Amazon, Isolated Village Tunes In
The fevered grip of the world’s largest sporting
event can be felt even in some of the most isolated areas of the rain
forest, where outsiders seldom visit.
World Cup
Deep in the Amazon, an Isolated Village Tunes In to the World Cup
Tuesday Afternoon Soccer in Brazil
Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
MANAUS,
Brazil — The PP Maués would not set sail for an hour, but its long and
narrow decks were already crisscrossed with hammocks for an overnight
trip down the Amazon.
By
the time it was to dock early last Monday at the regional port for
which it was named, the Maués would have traveled 15 hours from the
nearest World Cup stadium.
A
second boat would be needed to reach an even more remote indigenous
village that planned to watch Brazil play Mexico last Tuesday. The
village did not have electricity or cellphone signals and would rely on a
diesel generator to indulge its secluded passion for soccer.
While
Rio de Janeiro and its famous beaches provide the touristic backdrop of
the World Cup, the fevered grip of the world’s most popular sporting
event can be felt even in some of the most isolated areas of the rain
forest, where outsiders seldom visit.
“Football
is in our blood,” said Andre Pereira da Silva, 32, the chief of a small
community of Sateré-Mawé Indians in Manaus, the largest city in the
Amazon, who served as a guide. The intended destination was his home
village, Monte Salém, one of an estimated 150 Sateré-Mawé (pronounced
sah-teh-RAY mah-WAY) communities of about 11,000 residents along the
lower Amazon.
“Wait until you see it,” Pereira da Silva said. “You will feel you are in the middle of the stars.”
As
a boy in Monte Salém, he made soccer balls with the sap of rubber
trees, using a stick to shape the latex into an improvised if sometimes
uncontrollable sphere.
“Ten
trees for one ball,” he said, sitting in the boat’s tiny dining room
Sunday with his young son, his own thick hair tied in a ponytail. “The
problem was, it bounced too much.”
On
the passenger boat’s upper deck, the sentimental romance of Brega music
played from two huge speakers. More than 300 customers were aboard a
ship half the length of a football field. Children played among the
hammocks and the luggage or peered over the rails. Some passengers
transported used televisions or flat screens still in their boxes. In
the aft of the boat, a new washing machine and refrigerator were lashed
together, as if exposed as stowaways.
Most
passengers lay in their hammocks, sleeping, reading, or listening to
music and playing games on smartphones. Some watched on tiny green
screens as Lionel Messi and Argentina opened their World Cup against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The
game was also showing on a small, staticky television in the boat’s
galley. Two men sat on backless chairs. Two more peered in the doorway
as a cook made gelatinous soup from orzo, meat and carrots.
“Messi’s slow tonight,” Rodrigo Xavier, 26, said. “He’s not playing well.”
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Xavier, a Brazil fan, drew great pleasure from this.
Minutes
later, Messi passed the ball and retrieved it on a give-and-go. He
skimmed the top of the penalty area, dribbling past two defenders who
collided and fell behind him. Given wide space, he ricocheted a shot off
the left goal post and into the net. Xavier smiled. This was why Messi
was widely considered the best player in the world. Even a Brazilian had
to admit his appreciation.
Abruptly,
the kitchen cleared. The boat had no satellite dish, and the TV’s
antennas lost contact with the signal from Manaus. Paulo José, the
ship’s owner, was left to eat in silence. He did not seem to mind.
“I don’t like football at all,” José said. “I’m different from most of the men.”
A
nearly full moon appeared, sending a column of light rippling toward
the boat. A man pointed his flashlight at the water’s edge, searching
for caimans and their cigarette eyes. The stars seemed as white and near
as the blossoms that hung from trees like scoops of ice cream.
MONDAY
DAWNED COOL and overcast. Lightning flashed on the horizon. The rain
came, and rolls of blue plastic were unfurled along the sides of the
decks to keep passengers dry.
“It’s raining because the English are here” at the World Cup, Pereira da Silva said with a laugh.
By
8 a.m., only a drizzle remained as the boat reached Maués, a small
regional port where a caffeine-rich plant called guaraná is manufactured
for use in sodas, energy drinks and herbal teas. Firecrackers greeted
the ship’s arrival. Fishermen paddled canoes toward market, their foam
coolers full of prized fish with striped tails.
On
streets above the docks, Brazil flags fluttered from an armada of
motorcycles. The most deft or careless of the bikers steered with one
hand and held an open umbrella in the other. Shops sold soccer balls,
hats, plastic trumpets and jerseys of Neymar, the young Brazilian star
forward. Even a kitten wore a necklace in Brazil’s colors, yellow and
green.
Some
men wore jerseys of the big Brazilian club teams — Flamengo and Vasco
da Gama — allegiances built in the 1950s and 1960s, when the only radio
signal that reached Maués came from Rio, more than 1,600 miles away.
A few teenagers were spotted wearing their own versions of Neymar’s distinct Mohawk mullet, which he sometimes dyes blond.
Neymar scored twice in Brazil’s opener against Croatia, but Pereira da Silva was not certain that Neymar was ready for the World Cup.
“He
needs more experience; he needs to fight a little more,” he said. “He’s
only interested in his gold hair. That’s the story of footballers
today. They want to be good-looking.”
He
carried a large sack of clothes to give to the chief of Monte Salém or
trade for seeds to make necklaces and bracelets. He was to meet his
mother and father in Maués and then travel together to the family’s
ancestral village. At least that was the plan. Now there was a problem.
The generator in Monte Salém was broken.
Interactive Graphic: The World’s Ball
“Argentina,” Pereira da Silva said wryly, finding a convenient scapegoat. “Argentina breaks everything.”
After
a breakfast of soup and hot sauce, he found another village with a
working generator. It was called Nova Belo Horizonte. The trip would
take 75 minutes by power boat from Maués. In midafternoon Monday, the
equatorial heat was stifling, but Pereira da Silva’s parents yelled,
“Waku sese” as the boat reached the village. Everything is really good.
Nova
Belo Horizonte is home to 22 families, most of them living in wooden
houses with thatched roofs. A rudimentary soccer field, with wood goal
posts and no nets, has been cleared of stones and tamped flat amid the
surrounding groves of guaraná, pineapples, oranges, bananas, peppers and
the staple root called manioc.
For
the first time, men’s and women’s teams from the village are
participating in an area tournament of Brazil’s Indigenous Games. An
important men’s match is scheduled for Sunday. The winner of the
tournament will receive $1,500, which could readily be used in a village
that, like other indigenous communities, has tried to protect
traditional lands from encroaching development and perceived government
indifference.
Health
care is distant and inadequate, village elders said. There is no radio
contact with the hub Maués, four or five hours away on the most common
type of boat. Cellphones do not work.
The
front steps of the school have crumbled, and the ceiling leaks. Classes
for older students in Nova Belo Horizonte cannot be held at night
during the World Cup, villagers said, because area government officials
seem to be on holiday. Only a portion of the diesel needed to fuel the
community generator had been provided.
“They
only want our votes,” said Pereira da Silva’s father, Luiz Sateré, 56, a
community coordinator for the Sateré-Mawé. “It’s the only thing that
matters.”
Yet
even if spending on World Cup stadiums seemed wasteful in a country
with so many needs, it was important that the tournament returned to
Brazil for the first time since 1950, said Reginaldo da Silva Andrade,
27, the chief of Nova Belo Horizonte.
“Brazilian people are the ones who love and watch the game the most in the world,” da Silva Andrade said.
IN
NOVA BELO HORIZONTE, soccer serves many purposes: fun, fitness,
conflict avoidance and a diversion from alcohol and drugs. It also
provides a chance to socialize with other river villages. Teams travel
by boat, and tournaments are often accompanied by festivals.
More
important than the money available in the Indigenous Games, da Silva
Andrade said, is a chance to “show people on the outside that we are
capable of doing this.” He added: “We are realizing our dreams. People
think we can’t play. We’ve got to show them.”
On
Tuesday, when Brazil played Mexico, all classes were canceled in Nova
Belo Horizonte. It will be the same every time Brazil plays. At sunrise,
women in the village began hauling water from the well, carrying
buckets on their heads. Soon, children kicked around a soccer ball. Some
stood in the goal wearing flip-flops on their hands to cushion the
heaviness of the shots.
Two
small boys played with a ball made from plastic bags, paper and a
sleeveless T-shirt. One kicked the ball past the other and yelled,
“Goooooooal!” The generator rumbled on to test the television at the
chief’s home. The TV kept going on and off.
It
is a widely repeated story that soccer came to Brazil in the late 1890s
when a man named Charles Miller returned from schooling in England with
two balls in his suitcase.
Interactive Feature
How We Play the Game
Every team plays in distinct ways. To understand their
style, one must learn a bit about each country’s history.
But
Pareci Indians earlier made balls from the latex of rubber trees and
played a game called zicunati, which permitted only heading, according
to “Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life,” a book by the British writer
Alex Bellos.
An
Indian nicknamed Indio helped Brazil qualify for the 1958 World Cup,
the tournament that introduced Pelé to the world, Bellos wrote. In the
late 1990s, José Sátiro do Nascimento, a defender who sometimes used
coconuts for balls as a boy, became the first Indian to make one of
Brazil’s top club teams, Corinthians of São Paulo. In 2009, a
professional team of indigenous players was formed in the state of Pará.
Among
the Sateré-Mawé, female players are welcomed, which is not always the
case in the broader macho culture of Latin American soccer. One women’s
team in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, carries the name of the
initiation ritual in which boys in the tribe become men after being
repeatedly stung by venomous ants.
When
Brazil played Croatia in the World Cup opener, Janildzes Michiles, 28,
said, she took written notes, concentrating on the defensive work of the
mop-haired star David Luiz.
“It is a way to show women can do the same as men,” Michiles said.
On Monday night, while the generator in Nova Belo Horizonte ran for a couple of hours, Michiles watched the United States defeat Ghana, 2-1. Ghana seemed to play better, applying more consistent pressure, she said.
“The Americans ran hard for the ball, but they have to get faster,” she said. “They looked slow.”
EARLY
TUESDAY AFTERNOON, Nova Belo Horizonte hosted men and women from a
nearby village, Brasileia, for two pickup matches. The visitors traveled
in boats decorated with green and yellow streamers and announced their
arrival by blowing whistles.
Both
the women and the men from Brasileia prevailed by 3-1 scores in wilting
heat. After Rariani da Silva Andrade finished the women’s game for the
visitors, she lent her right shoe to her husband, Isaías Oliveira Gomes,
whose left foot remained bare.
“He has an injured toe,” she explained.
Friendly
defeat for Nova Belo Horizonte did not dampen enthusiasm for Brazil’s
World Cup match against Mexico. Some villagers watched from their own
homes. About 20 spectators gathered in the outdoor kitchen of the
community chief. A few wore festive crowns made from palm fronds.
Chicken stew and a crunchy flour called farinha were prepared. Eleven
minutes into the match, the television clicked on.
“We will watch and learn,” said da Silva Andrade, the village chief.
Neymar
soon threatened with a header, but Guillermo Ochoa, Mexico’s
goalkeeper, dived and pushed the shot wide. At halftime, the match
remained scoreless.
“I’ll be playing for Brazil in the second half,” da Silva Andrade joked.
Interactive Feature
Battle Cries
The world’s best soccer players bring their own unique
style to the game. So it is only fitting that the commentators react in
kind — calling a goal with passion and personality.
When
the game started again, Ochoa remained impenetrable. He deflected the
ball with his hands and his thigh. His positioning and anticipation and
reaction were impeccable. The villagers in Nova Belo Horizonte grew
nervous, frustrated
A
pet parrot began to squawk at the anxious voices. One woman held
tightly to her lucky beads. Michiles, the women’s player, hid her face
behind three palm fronds. In the final minute of regulation, the score
remained 0-0. Then the television went out.
It came back on briefly, then failed again as the game extended into three minutes of added time.
“The TV is angry with Brazil,” joked Pereira da Silva, the village chief and guide from Manaus.
Again and again, the screen flickered on, then went blank.
“The TV is scared,” said another villager, Geovani Miranda, laughing.
The
screen went dark another time. When the picture returned, Luiz Felipe
Scolari, Brazil’s coach, was giving a postgame interview. For a few
seconds, there was confusion in Nova Belo Horizonte. Then came
confirmation. The final score was 0-0 on an afternoon of intrigue and missed opportunity.
When Pelé appeared on the screen to give his analysis, the TV again went off. It was just as well.
“I
don’t want to hear any apologies; I don’t want to hear how it would be
different if Pelé was playing,” Pereira da Silva said, the humor gone
from his voice. “Even the TV doesn’t want to hear him.”
It
could have been worse. At least Brazil had not lost. In Nova Belo
Horizonte, the home team remained favored to win the World Cup.
“Brazil is a fighter,” said Luiz Sateré, Pereira da Silva’s father, who wore a Neymar jersey. “Brazil is a warrior.”
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