Amazonia, a huge territory where life can be uncompromisingly difficult. In its dense forests and intricate water systems, riberinhos, or river dwellers, cross paths with the garimpeiros, gold hunters. Riberinhos eke out a living from the boats that ply the rivers. Paddling out to meet the river traffic in small homemade canoes, they risk death by trying to fasten onto the often fast-moving boats. Remarkably, many are children, aged as young as five, who try and sell jungle delicacies for a few pennies to passengers and crew. Often, their families depend on them to make ends meet. Jesse’s family, for example. The 14-year-old youngster learned how to swim and handle a canoe almost before he could walk. Jesse turned to crime, in a desperate attempt to escape grinding poverty, and was shot and killed by a crewmember on board a barge he was trying to rob. A moving insight into the misery and frustration of those whom society has virtually abandoned. Elsewhere in the jungle, a woodsman recently found a small nugget of gold at a place called Eldorado Do Juma. It sparked a frenzy of gold fever Brazil hadn’t witnessed for more than 30 years. Young and old, experienced prospectors and tyros, flocked in their thousands to this remote corner of Amazonia to seek their fortunes. With them came shops, restaurants, even brothels, as man’s desire for riches turned virgin jungle into a virtual battleground. Few have found gold, and the slum-like conditions in which more than 10,000 people now live is a festering breeding ground for malaria and violence.

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