Walking up the wooden ramp in single file, nearly an entire Indian village crowded onto the Aquidaban’s forward deck. The Tomárahos had taken the boat downriver to vote in the national elections and then had slept in the open air for four daysyes, waiting for the Aquidaban to take them home.
Now more than 200 of them were squatting, crammed into hammocks and lying on the ground. No one was sure how many life jackets were on board, but almost everyone was sure they were outnumbered by the Tomárahos.
“Since I was a child, the Aquidaban has always existed,” said Griselda Vera Velázquez, 33, an artisan in the Tomáraho village. She regularly travels on the ship to see medical specialists, 400 miles away, for her daughter with Down syndrome. “We are isolated,” he said. “We have no other way.”
Nearby, four cowboys drank beer and dumped their empties into the river, en route to a month’s shift in the fields. Above, a young indigenous couple held her 17-day-old daughter in their arms on the long journey home from the hospital.
For 44 years, the 40-meter white wooden boat has been the only regular ferry service to reach this depth of the Pantanal, a floodplain larger than Greece, traveling 800 kilometers both ways on the Paraguay River from Tuesday to Sunday, delivering everything from all-terrain bikes, to newborns. Its lower level is a floating supermarket, with 10 vendors selling vegetables, meat and sweets.
As vital as the Aquidaban has been for locals to travel more freely through their forest home, it is also a melting pot for the cultural hodgepodge that has long been a hallmark of Paraguay. This landlocked South American nation of 7 million has generations of attracting a constant parade of fanatics, idealists, utopians, and outcasts from abroad. And for decades, the ship was one of the few places where everyone lived together.
On board are Mormon missionaries and Mennonite farmers, indigenous chiefs and Japanese chefs.. Mothers nurse young children in hammocks, peasants tie chickens to deck rails, and hunters sell headless capybaras. But now the ship’s tours could be coming to an end.
Paraguay has been building new roads through its remote north, as part of a project to build a transcontinental corridor, from Brazil to Chile, to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Those roads and others have affected the Aquidaban’s cargo sales, and the family behind the ship says the business is going under.
“This is possibly the last year,” said Alan Desvars, 35, the ship’s co-owner, standing on the forward deck.
The Aquidaban is noisy and unclean. Food arouses suspicion. The crew is grumpy. Mosquitoes eat you alive. And by the fourth day, the air is thick with the smells of rotting vegetables, cattle, and ranch workers returning from months in the bush. For the Desvars, a family of shipbuilders, it is their pride.
They started selling wooden canoes down the river almost a century ago. Over time, the younger generation realized that remote riverside communities needed more than just canoes. They needed everything. So they built a boat made of wood from the pink lapacho tree and powered by an old Mercedes truck engine, and named it Aquidaban after a nearby tributary.
It was an instant hit. After her launching in 1979, the crew sometimes had to lower people into ports to prevent her from sinking. Since then, the Aquidaban and about 10 crew members and 10 vendors have cruised the river 51 weeks a year — some for more than 25 years.
The cavernous cellar pit is packed with milk crates, oil tanks, and televisions. Oddly shaped items—scooters, a mirrored cabinet, a goat—go on the deck. Inside, vendors sell bananas, frozen chicken, and deodorant. The four toilets discharge directly into the river, while the adjacent showers pump water from the river. Upstairs, eight bunk cabins offer privacy for those who can pay. The fee is $19 for the entire river trip; a stateroom is $14 more. Most of the passengers sleep in hammocks, benches or on the floor.
When the Aquidaban stopped in a town on a Friday night, a crowd of young Indians hurried up. They walked out of the dining room into the hallway, drinking 69-cent cans of Brazilian beer. In a village without electricity, it was the village bar, they said — during a 45-minute layover every Friday night.
The Tomárahos were followed. Nathan and Zach Seastrand were on their way to the group’s village to film what they called the “rain dance” of the Tomárahos.
“It looks like something straight out of Indiana Jones,” said Nathan Seastrand, as he ate the stew from Humberto Panza, the chef. The Seastrands came to Latin America from Utah years before—as Mormon missionaries. So, they were clean shaven and wore ties. Now they were long-haired, bearded social media influencers who had drawn hundreds of thousands of followers as two beer-drinking, Spanish-speaking “gringos” venturing into the jungle.
Now they were filming a documentary about indigenous groups that they planned to submit for consideration by the Sundance Film Festival.
Néstor Rodríguez, the Tomáraho chief who drank beer on deck, said they were the fourth group of foreigners to take the Aquidaban into town in the last two years. “They are doing a positive project to support the community,” he said.
The Seastrands said they understood they would have to pay for access.
For decades, missionaries have relied on the Aquidaban to reach indigenous communities along the river. Its northernmost stop, Bahía Negra, is home to perhaps the most remote church in the Mormon faith.
When the Aquidaban arrived one recent morning, the townspeople gathered on the riverbank, awaiting the weekly arrival of their floating supermarket. Among them were two young men in ties, current Mormon missionaries, placed there, they said, by divine intervention.
Down the street, a group of Chamacoco women were weaving baskets in the backyard of their bungalow. “Before them, there was no church; just shamans,” Elizabeth Vera, 64, said of the Mormons. “Then the Americans came.” She pointed to one of them, A. J. Carlson, 18, from Texas, and said, “He is a messenger of Christ.”
Derlis Martínez looked nervous. The 25-year-old federal policeman was transporting his first prisoner in the crowded boat. Handcuffed, Agustín Coronel, 37, seemed relaxed. “He is my bodyguard,” he said. The two were traveling together from Bahía Negra, where Coronel had been detained after beating his wife. “I was to blame,” he admitted.
Martinez had to take him to a court hearing downriver—a nearly two-day trip.
“I can’t sleep,” Martinez said. “I have to guard it.”
Colonel said he would also stay awake to keep her company.
By morning, they were in the dining room and admitted that they had fallen asleep next to each other. How were they now?
“Spectacular,” replied Colonel.
“We started a friendship,” Martínez confessed.
JACK NICAS
The New York Times
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6803992, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-07-14 15:20:07
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