Hello conscient podcast listeners,
Many of us do international travel, probably a bit too much.
When I travel, I consider it a privilege that comes with responsibilities.
For example, whenever we can we try to give back by donating to local charities in the region where I’m visiting or maybe making sure that we tip appropriately and that the people we am with get a fare wage. We also try to by buy credible carbon offsets. That kind of thing.
You might recall e235 lallan – art from the soil, which I recorded while in the Tirthan Valley in Northern India :
You might also recall e236 keiko torigoe – the power of listening, which was recorded in Tokyo, Japan:
Both episodes were recorded quite spontaneously on my iphone. I hadn’t planned to record these interviews, but as I listened to some of the stories around me and I thought it could be a gesture of reciprocity to make these voices available on this podcast to help raise awareness about activities in that country but also to point out commonalities between us all in the world.
So, what you’re about to hear is my third conversation in this series, this time with Francisco Rodriguez, a Chilean born banker, who with his wife Sylvia, manage the Anaconda Lodge on the shores of the Napo River near Tena, in Ecuador, where my wife Sabrina and daughter Clara were doing some eco-tourism.
So we had the pleasure of staying there and meeting Francisco and others from the region.
I sat down with Francisco – you’ll hear some birds and insects in the background - about his relationship with the Amazon forest as a living entity as well as their collaborations with the Kichwa indigenous people who are the traditional custodians of these lands and waters.
You’ll hear some beautiful sounds and good stories about the Amazon, which I found uplifting but you’ll also hear about some of the very serious challenges that they currently face, which call upon increased solidarity from the rest of the world, given that the Amazon is the lung of the earth.
You’ll notice this episode is a bit more than 15 minutes. I added some soundscapes that makes it a bit longer than usual, which I hope you’ll enjoy.
Warm thanks Francisco, Sylvia, all the guides and staff at Anaconda Lodge for their kindness and hospitality.
Episodes notes generated by Whisper Transcribe AI
Key Takeaways:
Story Preview
Discover the journey of Francisco Rodriguez, who left the banking world to dedicate his life to protecting the Amazon and working its Indigenous peoples. Hear how he and his wife Sylvia created Anaconda Lodge as a bridge between cultures, fostering understanding and solidarity for the ‘lung of Mother Earth.’
Chapter Summary
00:00 Introduction to Amazon and Indigenous Voices
02:44 From Banker to Amazon Advocate
05:50 Living with Indigenous Communities
09:58 Ecotourism and Amazonian Consciousness
14:25 Understanding the Amazon from Afar
20:00 Sustainable Living and Jungle Communication
Featured Quotes
Behind the Story
Claude shares his third recording from international travel, this time from the Anaconda Lodge near Tena, in Ecuador. He, his wife Sabrina, and daughter Clara experienced ecotourism firsthand which led to this conversation with Francisco Rodriguez. The episode highlights the value of reciprocity when traveling and making voices from different regions accessible to a global audience.
Transcription
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
[00:00:00] Francisco Rodriguez
Take care of the earth. We have grandsons, great-great-grandsons and we have to, we, our generation, has to teach the young people what we lived, the beauty of the world that we lived, not the disaster we have today.
[00:00:35] Claude Schryer
Hello, conscient podcast listeners. Many of us do international travel, probably a bit too much. When I travel, I consider it a privilege that comes with responsibilities. For example, whenever I travel, I try to give back by donating to a local charity in the region where I'm visiting and making sure that I tip appropriately and that the people I am with get a fair wage. I also try to buy credible carbon offsets, that kind of thing. You might recall episode 235 with artist lallan, called Art from the Soil, which I recorded while in the Tirthan Valley in northern India:
[00:01:40] Claude Schryer
You might also recall episode 236 with soundscape researcher Keiko Torigoe, called the Power of Listening, which I recorded in Tokyo, Japan:
Both of these episodes were recorded quite spontaneously on my iPhone. I actually hadn't planned to do it, but as I listened to some of the stories around me, I thought it would be a gesture of reciprocity to make some of those voices available on the podcast to help raise awareness about activities in that country, but also to point out commonalities between us all in the world. So what you're about to hear is my third conversation in this series, this time with Francisco Rodriguez, a Chilean-born banker who, with his wife Sylvia, managed the Anaconda Lodge on the shores of the Napo River near Tena in Ecuador. And this is where my wife, Sabrina, and my daughter, Clara, and I were doing some ecotourism.
So we had the pleasure of staying there and meeting Francisco and many others from the region. So Francisco was kind enough to sit down with me and you'll hear some birds and insects in the background. And talk about his relationship with the Amazon forest as a living entity, as well as their collaborations with Kichwa indigenous people who are the traditional custodians of these lands and waters. And you'll hear some very beautiful sounds and some really good stories about the Amazon, which I think you might agree are uplifting. But you'll also hear about some of the challenges, some of the very serious challenges that they face, and which call upon increased solidarity from the rest of the world, given that the Amazon is the lung of the Earth, the lung of Mother Earth. And this episode is a bit more than the regular 15 minutes. I added some soundscapes that I recorded while I was there.
So enjoy this longer episode. Warm thanks to Francisco, Sylvia, all the guides and staff at Anaconda Lodge for their kindness and hospitality.
[00:05:02] Claude Schryer
I have the pleasure of being in, where am I, Francisco?
[00:05:08] Francisco Rodriguez
We're in the Amazon part of Ecuador, near Tena, the capital of this province, for around three and a half, four hours from Quito.
[00:05:23] Claude Schryer
Well, we've been here for a couple of days and have been very well received, thank you. What I would consider ecotourism in the sense of a very sensitive approach to showing people how people live here, the Indigenous people and others, and just experiencing nature in ways that are very respectable and interesting, I would say. So what brought you here and what is your mission with the lodge, but also as an individual living in the Amazon?
[00:05:52] Francisco Rodriguez
What brought me here was, I'm from Chile, the last country in the world way south. I came to Ecuador 30 years ago. A big financial Ecuadorian group hired me to make a bank. It was a bank in Chile. I was a CEO of a bank in Chile. And, they brought me here to hire me and they came to make it back in a retail store. And I made it.
And then the year 2000, there was a big financial crisis in this country. A huge financial crisis. And that's when I realized that I was a crook with a tie. So I got fed up with the system and left the system. And it took me a couple of years to decide what to do. And finally, I decided to start helping and teaching the native people of Ecuador, teach them about this Western world that is arriving really fast. And to live with them, okay?
Because I decided to live with them because one of the problems is that there's a lot of NGOs or foundations that come into the Amazon and they stay here three months and they help the people to do things and everything, but then they leave. And they come back next year. So the people don't rely on them. You have to think one thing, these people have been beating up by our, by we Western people for over 500 years.
They don't rely on us. So what I decided is, was to live here with them so they can rely on me. Yeah, 20 years ago, year 2005, I decided to change my life and get out of the Western world and come and live with the Native people, learn about their culture, and then also help them to realize and to learn how this Western world is arriving. Okay? I do a lot of projects with them, especially my wife. She works a lot with Indigenous women, with small girls, especially with girls that have been raped. I work a lot with the men.
In the alcoholism problem with kids in the drug problem because drugs have arrived already to the Amazon. And I'm not talking about soft drugs, I'm talking hard drugs. And so, yeah, that's what I, that's what I, that's what we do with my wife. We made this large recede to live here for that too. To do something good for the world, to try to fight for the rights of the nature, the rights of these people. And that's what we have been doing, at least have been doing for the last 20 years.
[00:09:45] Claude Schryer
Well, we came here in part because our daughter loves geology and the beautiful natural formations here in the different ecosystems of Ecuador. For me, it's been a real pleasure to experience Amazon for the first time in my life. I'm 65. And one of the things we try to do when we travel is, you know, do travel offsets and whatever we can, but that's not really enough.
How can we give back? So one of the things I'll do is share our conversation about what you're doing and what I experienced, especially yesterday with the cocoa, you know, just making it and at a very slow and beautiful pace. It felt very authentic to me. Some of these experiences can be, when you're a tourist, can be very sort of glib and it wasn't like that. It was really beautifully led. So what's your approach to programming in a lodge like this so that people can not only be entertained, but also challenged and understand the ecological fragility of the place as well as its beauty?
[00:11:07] Francisco Rodriguez
We made this lodge with my wife. We opened in 2011. And we decided when we decided to make the lodge, we said we're going to make a different style of place. Not a typical place where the people arrive and they're just a number. And also they go, they see another type of things. We wanted to make a place where our guests can learn about these people and not in a sensational way or, I don't know, you go into communities, and they're all dressed up with feathers. And these people don't live with feathers anymore.
So we try to show the people, our guests, how they live today and how they handled their culture today. Our main goal is to make our guests to understand where they are.
Who lives here? Who are the native people that live in this area of the Amazon? Also, to let them know that Amazonas, not everything is so beautiful how it is. There's also a lot of issues here in Amazonas. A lot of issues. So we try to talk about that with our guests. We make consciousness.
And the only thing that we always try to do is when our guests leave, We always hope that when they go back home, they use less fossil fuel. Instead of going to buy the newspaper by car, walk.
Or take a bicycle. That's the idea. And so the people also can go back home and talk with other people and say, Look, Amazon is this. It's not only about monkeys and snakes and caimans, no. It's about the beauty of the Amazon. This is the lung of the world. Without this, we're going to die.
We, we people, are going to die. And regretfully, we're destroying it. We're destroying the Amazon. Here in Ecuador, at least over 30% of the Amazon is already destroyed. And there's no bad news. We're not, it's all going forward.
Keep going, you know? So the idea is that our guests make consciousness, that they understand that this is one of the most magical and beautiful places in the world, in our planet. And.
[00:14:16] Claude Schryer
Yet we can't all visit the Amazon or else it would be overrun by tourists and those with more economic means that could come. So there must be other ways to share and understand an ecosystem like the Amazon, I guess by storytelling, and culture and art. And that's what this podcast is normally about. I know you're not an artist, but the way that I've seen this program designed and the spaces is quite sensitive, and I would say, you know, beautiful design.
[00:14:50] Francisco Rodriguez
So.
[00:14:52] Claude Schryer
How do you suggest people who can't come to the Amazon at least be better informed, you know? But, I mean, we're not gonna get into politics and all that today, but there are, in the news, it's easy to find out what's going on, you know? With pollution and illegal activities and this and that. But how do you suggest people better understand the Amazon, who those, especially those the majority who can't come here?
[00:15:19] Francisco Rodriguez
To read more. To read more about the Amazon, about the cultures of the Amazon. We got thousands and thousands of cultures in Amazon. We have cultures that have more than 4,000 years. And Amazon. If you want to know about Amazon, it's the only way is reading. Reading or seeing real videos, not fake videos.
But it's reading. It's reading and learning about the culture, getting into the culture of the Amazonian people. There are thousands of nationalities here in the Amazon. And here in Ecuador, Amazonas, we have 14 nationalities. And I say nationalities because Ecuador is not a multicultural country by its constitution, it's a multinational country. So we have 27 nationalities in Ecuador, and 14 live here in Amazonas. So only in Ecuador we have 14 and more than 14 because we have sub nationalities also.
It's very interesting to learn about the uncontacted communities here in Equador. What we know is that there's two that don't want to be contacted. They have never been contacted. But I think there's more. In Peru there's around 14 or 16. That have never been contacted. And they don't want to be contacted.
They don't want to be contacted by us. They're happy how they live. They don't want to live like us. Okay? And regretfully, we Western people are trying to contact them. We're trying to go into their territory and teach them. Our style of life.
Take cell phones, take processed food. Here in Ecuador, there's a tribe, as we call them, Waorani. They were on contact until 1972. In 1972, they found oil in their territory. And the way to contact them so they could go into a territory was with Coca-Cola. Because Coca-Cola is one of the most addictive drugs in the world. So, they gave them Coca-Cola and today, this is on top of 1972, today you go to their communities, you have to go with Coca-Cola or bottles of three liters.
Not they don't receive you or they get mad at you. They're addicted to Coca-Cola. Even the kids, even the new generation there, because it's inside their DNA. So to learn about Amazon, if you can't come to Amazon, is read, read and look, search in internet. About the communities in Brazil and Peru, in Venezuela and Colombia. Amazon is only one. We don't distinguish the Amazon in different countries.
Amazon is one. Amazon has its own territories by their own people. We don't call it the Ecuadorian Amazon or the Colombian Amazon. No, it's all the Amazon. Then inside the Amazon, you have different cultures and that's their territory. Like here where we are now, this is the Kichwa. And the Kichwa go all the way to the Amazon River.
So this is the Kichwa territory. And we have a little bit more south. South we have the Shuar. So it's all divided by them, by their culture. So just go in and search and read, read. And if you know people that have been in Amazon, talk to them. Because the people that come in here to investigate and everything, they know a lot. You can talk with them and that's the best way.
[00:20:00] Claude Schryer
No, that's good advice. I have the privilege of being here, but there are many parts of the world I'll never get to and I do count on those who have been there in their journals and quality filmmakers and artists, you know, photographers, people doing sketching, who bring to life many ways of being. But the ones that I think are most precious at this time are those that are sustainable, right? Those people who have figured out how to live in harmony with the land. And so that's the ones we should be listened to the most, I think, as I think you were doing. In your facilitation and in your work. It's a really rich sonic environment.
And the parting we did this morning with Felix, at one point we were using the Massetti against a big tree to send signals out that would go two, three kilometers, right? For a sound A person like me that was very powerful. And to understand the acoustics of the jungle, how people would communicate through simply the acoustic properties of a tree.
[00:21:19] Francisco Rodriguez
Do you know why they use those sounds?
[00:21:23] Claude Schryer
For communication.
[00:21:24] Francisco Rodriguez
Yeah, for example, when you go into the jungle, the native people go in to hunt. And if they get lost, that's how they make noise so the other people can hear. And they also make noise so they hit a tree so the other person can know where to walk to. No, I see. No. Because it teases you to get lost in the jungle. It's very easy. I've gotten lost a lot of times.