ABSTRACT
Eighteen-year-old Matheus and his family recently moved to Rio de Janeiro from Paricatuba, a village on the outskirts of Manaus in central Brazil. Paricatuba is situated along the many tributaries of the huge Amazon River basin. With giant logs regularly transported downriver from the tropical rain forest, the village and its surroundings have suffered from mass deforestation. Among the many consequences of this largely destructive and illegal industry are environmental changes due to the loss of high-level tree canopy, as well as the departure of wildlife in the river and forest that have lost their natural habitats. This destabilization has made the small-scale farming and fishing industries that maintained the livelihood of Matheus’s family more and more precarious. After years of delay and uncertainty, his father finally took a job in a shoe-making factory in Rio de Janeiro, allowing the family—father, mother, and four siblings—to migrate to this huge city of over six million inhabitants. They joined Matheus’s two uncles who had moved there some years earlier. Matheus’s younger brothers and his sister now find themselves in public schools that are overcrowded, and their rural life skills (such as picking fruit, cutting wood, and fishing) have little value in the large metropolis. Matheus himself finished eighth grade in Manaus, and did passably well, but never found steady employment. On weekends he would earn some cash by helping deliver vegetables from a neighbor’s farm to the market. In Rio, however, he is still looking for a job.
