CARNIVAL 2000

Amazonia - A Future Together

Papagaio won the competition!

The 500-year jubilee of Brazil was the inspiration for the parade theme in year 2000 of samba school Império do Papagaio. We wanted to pay tribute to the culture and tradition of the country where samba was born. This year all samba schools of Rio de Janeiro presented episodes of Brazilian history in their parades. Even if Brazilian history does not relate very easily to Finland and Finnish way of life - except for the Helsinki sambistas, goes without saying - we wanted to choose a theme that would connect also with us Finns!

In the parade you will see a story about the connection of wild life, plants, rains, winds, rivers, mountains, people, machines and natural resources in the perspective of millions of years, of today and of the future. What takes place in Amazonia today will affect the lives of all people on earth.
No doubt, the rhythm beats faster in the rainforest than in the Finnish forest. One single hectare of rainforest provides more variety of animal and plant life than the Finnish nature in total, but all forests have their input and value for the biodiversity and carbon balance. Finland must sustain the richness of its forests and we all together must see to it that the rainforests will remain for the generations to come. The human kind is about to lose half of the abundance called life. Estimates say that tropical rainforests contain even 50 per cent of all plants and animals of the globe. Inhabitants of rainforests are dying out: their traditional, modest from a material perspective but yet beautiful and happy way of life is about disappear for ever.

The pictures you see in the media about Amazonia speak a language of total destruction - rainforests of gigantic dimensions vanish completely, and therefore people seem to have adopted an inherent anguish and despair when talking about Amazonia. Yes, the preconditions and means for total destruction of the region avail and are in use as we are speaking. Yet it is possible to find entirely untouched nature in the rainforest, and essential parts of the variety of life forms can be saved.
Indigenous people of South America are the sole communities with the necessary knowledge, expertise and tradition to survive in the jungle of Amazonia. Not only do they profoundly respect their environment but also have a better understanding for the ecological interdepence of the Amazonian ecosystem than any contemporary ecologist. Indians have lived in harmony with the nature for more than tens of thousands of years. People from industrialized western countries lack any proof of viability in this terrain.

We have brought ourselves into trouble just during the last few centuries. We are facing enormous powers, as the clearance sale of the future is profitable from a financial perspective. Can we save the rainforests, since without them the human kind would be in great trouble and the globe would look quite different than now?

The lands of the Yanomamis have been split and gold mine reservations have been established there. Davi Yanomami once said: "When all Yanomamis have died, all pictures of us must also be destroyed." We must only pray this will not happen!