The Amazon Basin: Culture, History & Politics | Study.com

Territory

The wide territory of the Amazon Basin spans from the peaks of the Andes Mountains on South America’s western edge, where its water originates, all the way across the continent where it spills into the Atlantic along the coast of Brazil. Parts of the Amazon Basin can be found in the countries of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, and Peru.

The Amazon River and its major tributaries

The country to contain most of the Amazon Basin is Brazil. There are nine states of Brazil which are within the Amazon Basin, politically called the Amazonia Legal. The states of the Amazonia Legal tend to be less populated than other Brazilian states, but are also very diverse, including over 150 ethnic groups.

The second-largest political unit of the Amazon Basin is the Peruvian Amazon, which is the part of this drainage system that is in Peru. More than half of Peru is part of the Peruvian Amazon, and in fact, this is where the headwaters of the Amazon originate. Other important political divisions within the basin include the Venezuelan state of Amazonas, as well as major portions of Colombia, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

History

The first European to map out the Amazon River was the Spaniard Francisco de Orellana. This is the guy who saw female warriors along the banks of the river and decided to name it after the female Amazon warriors of Greek mythology. Orellana traveled the Amazon in 1541 and 1542, and noted the number of civilizations he saw along the way. For centuries, people assumed that he was exaggerating his claims and that the Amazon Basin was basically empty.

The expedition of Francisco de Orellana brought the first Europeans into the Amazon Basin

Now we know that the Amazon Basin has been home to a rich diversity of cultures for thousands of years, and that many established settled civilizations in the rainforest. Unfortunately, many Amerindian nations were killed by European diseases, which spread through the basin much more easily than Europeans themselves, and archeology in the region is difficult as the jungle quickly reclaims and decomposes most evidence of human cultures.

After Orellana’s expedition, it was over a century before Europeans really tried moving into the Amazon Basin. This was motivated by a need for agricultural land, and forests near the edge of the basin were cleared. For another century, that was as far as European people made it. In the 1800s, however, new technologies made travel into the jungle (relatively) easier and the emerging demand for rubber motivated corporations to start tapping rubber trees. The need for labor in lumber, mining, and rubber often resulted in virtual enslavement of Amerindian populations.

Political Issues

So, what’s the status of the Amazon Basin today? Divided between the nations that politically control it, the Basin is still at the center of many political debates.

First is the conflict between industry and environment. The Amazon Basin is unbelievably rich in resources, and industries from rubber to fishing to mining to lumber have been exploiting it for centuries. However, this is seriously impacting the health of the Amazon Rainforest, and so most South American nations have placed serious restrictions on resource extraction within the Amazon Basin. The problem is that because the region is so remote, lots of illegal logging and other extraction is still taking place.

The sparseness of the Amazon Basin leads to another political debate that’s common among countries to share this region: representation. People who live in the Amazon Basin tend to be very isolated from the rest of their countries and have a history of being underrepresented within South American politics. There have been growing demands to address this since the 1970s and 1980s.

Additionally, a vast number of people who live in the Amazon Basin are Amerindian. This adds an ethnic component to the issue of underrepresentation. Because the Amazon Basin is so dense, the Amerindian nations that developed there often did so in isolation, even though other nations were relatively close. As a result, they all developed different languages and cultures. The Amazon Basin is home to roughly 400 recognized Amerindian tribes and almost that many ethnic groups, most of who have been increasing demands for political representation.

The Amazon Basin is still home to a number of un-contacted tribes

This issue gets even more interesting when we consider that within Brazil alone there are approximately 100 tribes labeled as ”un-contacted”. These are tribes that choose to remain isolated from the Brazilian state and live in traditional, generally nomadic, societies. Some have had minimal contact with Brazilians for generations. So, do they get rights as Brazilian citizens? How do their interests compare to the economic needs of the country? Within Brazil, many of these questions are handled by the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), which is responsible for protecting the human rights of un-contacted peoples, including the right to live their own lives. The Amazon Basin is one of very few places in the world where cultures like this still exist, so the political challenges are pretty unique.

Lesson Summary

The Amazon Basin is the drainage system of the Amazon River within South America. It covers parts of Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, and Suriname and remains relatively sparsely populated. This area has been home to a diverse array of Amerindian nations for thousands of years, but was one of the last parts of the Americas to be populated by Europeans. Today, the Amazon Basin faces unique political challenges in managing legal resource extraction versus environmentalism, providing political representations to its remote inhabitants, and addressing the position of Amerindian tribes, particularly those that maintain limited to no contact with Euro-American societies. Ultimately, here’s a lot more to the Amazon Basin than meets the eye, and this dense jungle is already quite the eyeful.