The Amazon: Structuring Community
[March 2017]
It’s a five-minute walk to the biggest store in town, with fresh greens, live tilapia, toilet paper, and sandals all lining the walls of the open-air room. Another two minutes and you hit the big blue Catholic church; two minutes more and you reach the school on the right, the sports court on the left. There’s a soccer tournament held on that turf every weekend, and families gather to watch mothers, uncles, sisters, and cousins show their skill.
The air’s buzzing with activity as my program friend and I join the families cheering on their players. A kid I met playing outside yesterday calls a fearless hello before she scrambles straight up those bench steps and onto my lap. My heart quickens a beat and the world slows around me as she melts into my open arms with a grin. Her mom’s about five meters away, her siblings in tow, and the neighbors are a few feet farther down. A group of teenagers purchases salchipapas from one of the local food vendors camped just outside the fence. The sweat-drenched players coming off the field eagerly seek water as the next teams start warming up on the turf. There’s some kids too young to play who have started their own games of tag and pick-up basketball off on the side, and one boy brings a rhinoceros beetle half the size of my hand up to the stands to show his friends.
Every weekend they come. Every Saturday and Sunday, after a week of working in the fields or the mines, whole families make their way out to the soccer field. It’s a simple structure, just a field of turf lined with concrete stands, but it’s the heart of the town. They’ve made space here for community.
How often do we rush to our cars and our virtual conversations and miss the people just next door? We like to forget that we live our days bound by dimensions, by space as well as time. We go the distance to seek specified connections according to our preferences but often neglect to engage with those placed directly around us. We love to choose the people with whom we want to spend our time; can we choose to love those already right beside us?
The next day I can hear a toddler wailing from within the house next door as dogs run barking down the road. A motorcycle revs and rolls down the street. To ease the year-round heat, the walls here are thin with slats that allow for air flow, and the neighboring sounds waft in loud and clear with the slight breeze. On Saturdays, the whole neighborhood can hear the new karaoke bar on the corner blasting music late into the night.
About 500 people call this town home, and small-town living is no utopia. When you’re living in close quarters, you share storms and sunshine alike. Neighbors trip on nerves. Families are broken. Rivals stoke gossip. Pueblo pequeño, infierno grande, the saying goes. Little town, big inferno. I stayed there a week; most of those around me had lived there a lifetime.
The bridge on a central road in town has been broken for years. On foot, we cross by sidling over a beam; for cars, the path is closed. In the monthly town meeting, frustration brews because, once again, the economy is tight and the local government has no money to repair the bridge.
Afterwards, though, men and women talk in groups and intermingle, joking and smiling and discussing the mundane. Children come running in from dribbling a basketball on the sports court. Aunties ask after nephews and nieces, and young men scheme weekend plans. The hundred-and-something adults present at the meeting represent every family in the community. Not everyone is satisfied with the meeting’s outcome, but they’re looking for a solution together and leaving the building in pairs and trios. A kid is headed over to his neighbors’ place later for dinner. Our host family’s got a piece of land just a two-mile walk away, and we eat fresh lemon and cacao straight off the trees that afternoon, every single one of us grinning happiness.
Who came up with the lie that happiness comes from money? There’s a richness here that a struggling economy can’t dint: in the land, in the food, in the community. It doesn’t take money to squeeze down the bench and make room for one more at the table, nor do you have to be rich to clear a little open space in a dorm room and keep handy an extra mug for tea. Amid the messiness of life, these people know one another, and in that lies their strength. The Amazon basin’s humid heat melts into the warmth of friendship, and there’s a whole community out there cheering by the soccer field.
I’ve heard more than one story about how the town got its name, but in every version the key point hinges on the same trait: this town works together as a team. They’ve structured room for community.