Following Aguirre's Footsteps Into Madness and the Amazon

Aguirre: The Re-Creation of a Sixteenth Century Journey Across South America – Stephen Minta (1994)

            As a whole, I am not a big fan of travelogues, although I do enjoy them when I happen to come across an interesting one in a magazine or online article.  The kind I do find very interesting, however, is the type that attempts to recreate a journey from history.  I know that people have written books about their attempts to follow great explorers such as Marco Polo, or the route Alexander took to India.  This cool little book is a similar attempt to follow in the footsteps of an explorer, although one far more tragic and brutal than Alexander or Marco Polo.  Stephen Minta sets out to retrace the path Aquirre de Lope, and the Spanish expedition he was a part of, took to leave Lima Peru and head out on the search for the location of the legendary, and wholly fictional, lost city of El Dorado.

            Mr. Minta is very well-read on this topic, having researched the topic extensively.  His insights into the difficulties faced by Aguirre and the others alongside him resonate with his and his traveling partner’s current-day experiences as they seek to retrace the route.  His view of the modern-day issues in Peru, from poverty to corruption to the difficulties of the terrain to the deeply inhospitable nature of the mountains and rain forests surrounding him also help to underscore how, despite the passage of time, the difficulties of governing and living in the high Andes mountains do not seem to change.  The jungle is ever present.  The heat is unbearable.  Roads and trails are sometimes destroyed by who knows what.  The smells of age and sweat and dirt and rot and death are always near.  If it is this difficult to traverse this terrain now, imagine doing it with hundreds of soldiers, hundreds of dogs, horses, and natives, all trying to make headway through what is truly a green hell.

            Lope de Aguirre is one of the oddest historical figures around.  He was described by contemporaries as a severely common, half-lame, unrefined, unattractive, overbearing, and illiterate life-long soldier.  Mr. Minta states that “there is no one who knew Aguirre who ever wrote a good word about him.”  That is a rarity indeed.  In fact, it was during the long and arduous journey across South America that he became even more of a monster, causing the following proclamation to be passed upon his death requiring that: “Wherever the said Lope de Aguirre may have left dwelling houses, these should be leveled to the ground, that no trace or memory of them should remain: and that when they have been so leveled, they should be plowed over and strewn with salt.”  That is something straight out of a horror movie!  To think that this lowly man wrecked so much shop that the Spanish provincial government had to make an example of him after his death is something unprecedented.  I think part of the appeal of Aguirre’s story is that it resonates with that most basic of American myths, the idea that anyone, born anywhere, with nothing to their name, can come reinvent themselves in the New World, even if it is to become a monster.

I am so glad that someone like Stephen Minta has braved the inhospitable Amazon basin to recreate this journey.  I would never do so!  Thank goodness for books.  I first heard of Lope de Aguirre due to the Werner Herzog film, “Aguirre, The Wrath of God.”  I highly recommend the film.  Herzog actually took his cast and crew on a similar, and similarly ill-fated trip through the Amazon to film this movie, and it appears that the spirit of Aguirre was very much alive inside Klaus Kinsky, the madman actor who portrays Aguirre.  The madness is evident on the screen.  Having seen that movie several times, the tale told in this great little book really came alive in my brain.  Being a city-slicker myself, the idea of leaving all I know to traipse through an unexplored wilderness rife with disease, predators, and native tribes seems like pure madness, but then again, it may have taken a madman such as Aguirre to even contemplate these expeditions.  Normal, happy, well-adjusted people do not normally seek to explore, risking death all the while.  Humanity must give thanks sometimes to the nuts amongst us.  They risk what we cannot.

(This book is available for purchase here: AGUIRRE )

You never know what you will find when you explore, but you will never be the same once you do.

Keep The River on Your Right: Tobias Schneebaum (1969)

In the same vein as the previously reviewed Beasts, Men & Gods, This short book is the first-hand account of a man’s trip into one of the remote regions of our planet, his experiences there, and the changes wrought upon him by his journey.  Whereas in the aforementioned book, the writer was escaping the reach of a destructive and dangerous political revolution, in Keep the River on Your Right, Mr. Schneebaum heads out into the jungles of Peru on a scholastic and artistic mission.  This affords him the time and mentality to explore his inner world and question what he is experiencing and why.

Tobias Schneebaum was a young man who was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to go to Peru and paint.  He hitchhiked his way from New York to Peru and eventually found himself more interested in exploring the wild, unknown jungle than in completing paintings.  He headed out alone and went from small towns, to villages, and ended up in a distant mission, headed by a slightly demented Spanish Priest, and several dozen native people.  He lived with them for several months until hearing about an even more remote tribe, about 6 days travel away.  He headed out alone and upon arrival was welcomed by the group he found.  He describes his assimilation into that tribe, and their day to day lives, all the while detailing his own internal journey. 

This all takes place in a journal that Mr. Schneebaum keeps as he travels.  His writings, purportedly being scribed with several old friends he names “C” and “M” as the audience, read like a mind in discourse with itself.  His descriptions are personal, embroidered with an artistic sensibility, and contain deep thoughts which vex, torment, and delight him as his “old self” dissolves away, leaving him to reconcile who he thought he was with who these native people are.  Being a gay man in the 1950’s USA, his discovery that the men of these tribes regularly engaged in what the western world terms “homosexual” behavior with no shame, or guilt, or anything other than familial kindness and caring really stands out.  The tribe’s interpersonal relationships, their daily lives, and the ever-present lushness of the jungle, are wonderfully described.

This book gained a real level of notoriety, not only because of the openly homosexual subject matter, but because the author details how, after weeks of living with this tribe, and taking part in their hunting parties, fishing expeditions, and daily rituals, the men all gathered up, and went off into the woods together.  They traveled for days, arriving at another tribe’s camp, and the author’s companions proceeded to attack and kill every male in the tribe, leaving the author in shock and violently nauseous.  They then butchered the people, saved some of the meat to take back with them, and cooked some of the flesh.  When one of his tribe-mates offers him a piece of the flesh to eat, he does, and that moment haunts him deeply. 

This book is widely seen as one of the few first-hand accounts of cannibalism that is not tainted by judgmental damnation, such as the accounts of the early Spanish priests in the New World.  It is just one small part of this story, but it weighs heavily on the author, understandably so.  Having lost himself in this insular world where the only concerns are waking up, eating, laughing, loving, and sharing what is available, he finds that who he is cannot be tossed aside so easily.  What he sought was an escape from the world he originally knew, but what he found was that he was a product of that world and could not leave it behind without losing many of the things which made up who he was at his core.  It is a good lesson. 

Mr. Schneebaum was coaxed to travel back to Peru by filmmakers almost 40 years after he departed that world.  He was afraid that he would have to confront his cannibalism, and that all the people he knew would be dead, but he did find some of them again.  They were not unchanged by time.  They had been “civilized,” wore clothes, accepted christianity, and did not speak of their past as cannibals except to show the shame and revulsion experienced by those who had only recently learned that they were “sinning” previously.

(The documentary where Tobias Schneebaum goes back to visit the places he lived in in his youth can be seen in its entirety here: https://youtu.be/hsy2SRu79yw ) 

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )