Below is the publisher’s description as well as a photo gallery of my work in Suriname for another book - The Riverbones by Andrew Westoll.

Rainforest Warriors is a historical, ethnographic, and documentary account of a people, their threatened rainforest, and their successful attempt to harness international human rights law in their fight to protect their way of life—part of a larger story of tribal and indigenous peoples that is unfolding all over the globe.

The Republic of Suriname, in northeastern South America, contains the highest proportion of rainforest within its national territory, and the most forest per person, of any country in the world. During the 1990s, its government began awarding extensive logging and mining concessions to multinational companies from China, Indonesia, Canada, and elsewhere. Saramaka Maroons, the descendants of self-liberated African slaves who had lived in that rainforest for more than 300 years, resisted, bringing their complaints to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In 2007, when the Inter-American Court of Human Rights delivered its landmark judgment in their favor, their efforts to protect their threatened rainforest were thrust into the international spotlight. Two leaders of the struggle to protect their way of life, Saramaka Headcaptain Wazen Eduards and Saramaka law student Hugo Jabini, were awarded the Goldman Prize for the Environment (often referred to as the environmental Nobel Prize), under the banner of “A New Precedent for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.”

Anthropologist Richard Price, who has worked with Saramakas for more than forty years and who participated actively in this struggle, tells the gripping story of how Saramakas harnessed international human rights law to win control of their own piece of the Amazonian forest and guarantee their cultural survival.

Story and photos by Jason Rothe

Hear the drums of Carnaval using the player below

Candombe is more than just a rhythm and a dance – it is a religion and a way of life…

This story is now online at The Ethnomusicologist.

Nikoberqui is a 27 year-old Argentine musician who’s roots (video interview) are the moist subtropical forests and marsh lakes of Corrientes (map), a province in northeastern Argentina…

This project has moved…it is now online here at The Ethnomusicologist

Hilltop overlooking the US/Mexican border at Andrade, CA

Every night at the border between Andrade, California (map) and Los Algodones, Mexico, dozens of men and women sneak onto US soil, where they are watched and pursued by US immigration officials and the National Guard.  I spent a week on the Quechan Indian reservation that hugs the border there (now also the site of a massive casino complex), sleeping in my Volkswagon van atop a small hill surrounded by foot trails in the sand and dust.

Dentist operating on an American patient in Los Algodones, MX

Whereas the days were hot and relatively quiet, the nights were truly surreal.  Black, shark-like military helicopters flew low over the hills and often stopped and hovered nearby.  Several times I heard voices come out of a loudspeaker from above, like some scene out of Apocalypse Now.  While sleeping in the thin tent atop the van I was often awakened by the scuffling sound of people fleeing and/or giving chase among the gravel and prickly desert shrubs below.  And every couple hours the border patrol trucks would slowly crawl past on the sandy roads, making an odd clunking and tinkling sound which I later discerned to be a metal rake which they drag over the dust so as to grade it and make any new footsteps visible come daylight.  Shooting photos early one morning in the pet cemetery there, I met a man camped nearby with a little dog who claimed that his pooch was especially adept at locating “illegals” among the bushes and had led authorities to the capture of several dozen.

Tourists returning from Los Algodones, MX

Nonetheless, as soon as the border opens at 6AM, a whole different breed of migrants arrive – thousands of Americans and Canadians who cross the border daily seeking vastly cheaper dental care, medical treatment, prescription drugs, fish tacos and plastic kitsch.  They come with swollen faces, in wheelchairs, many of them elderly and on limited retirement incomes.  But unlike their Mexican counterparts who by this time are hiding under a mesquite bush somewhere in the desert, locked in the back of a pickup truck or stranded at a depository back in Mexico, they don’t have to swim the canal or dodge helicopters to get to their destination.  Crossing the border is as easy as walking through a white gate, no questions asked.

Read the original story in the Star here.

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More photos in the gallery below:

]]> http://www.jasonrothe.com/?feed=rss2&p=1405 0 http://www.jasonrothe.com/?p=1396 http://www.jasonrothe.com/?p=1396#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:22:56 +0000 admin http://www.jasonrothe.com/?p=1396 The site is still under renovation, but things are slowly coming along.  Check out the new Nikoberqui project page, as well as Yemanjá, Goddess of the Sea in both English and Español.  The published page has also been redone.

I will be trying to make as much of the site as possible bilingual; it will just take some time!

Jason

Orion Magazine May/June 2010

Feature story and photos

Visit the “Devil and the Mountain” project page here to check out a video feature of this story.

Explore Magazine
Sept/Oct 2008

“Yes, the Andes Kicked Our Asses”

The Toronto Star

12/08/07:  “Sun, Sand…and Root Canal”

Dental Tourism in Mexico

Feature travel story and photos

View the full photo gallery below.

The Devil and the Mountain from Jason Rothe on Vimeo.