Traveling through the Ecuadorian Amazon to gather material for his book Savages,
author Joe Kane came across a determined priest, a Spaniard who had spent years
teaching a tribe of hunter gatherers, the Huaorani, how to survive outside their rainforest
habitat. They have to learn this world, the priest insisted. The lessons are hard, but they
must be learned. “Why?” Kane asked, “For the petroleum companies will end their life
as they know it. Of that there is no doubt.”
Savages, published in the U.S., Canada and England last fall and soon to be released
in Europe, is the story of how the Huaorani have fought to avoid that fate - to preserve
their land and ancient culture from destruction by oil companies rushing to extract the
black gold beneath the forest. As the reader quickly guesses in this compelling tale, it is
not the Indians that Kane regards as savages.
Though he is obviously an environmentalist as well as a journalist, Kane has written
more than a save-the-rain-forest polemic. Rather, it is a sometimes comic adventure in
which the author sets out to answer the question that has puzzled oil companies and
ecologists alike: Who are these Huaorani? In the course of finding out, Kane spent many
days being soaked by the constant jungle rains and bitten by countless insects. He
contracted a rash of fungal infections and during one expedition nearly starved to death.
He grew inured to Huaorani food, including smoked howler-monkey arm and the tribe’s
version of chicha – manioc that has been chewed, spat into a bowl and left to ferment
into an alcoholic drink.
For all the hardships Kane endured, he found the Huaorani a charming people. Once
an extremely war-like people, they have fought off every effort to “civilize” them,
beginning with incursions by the Incas. But modern opponents are craftier than any Inca
warrior. They are the smooth-talking government officials and company executives who
try to convince the Huaorani that oil can be sucked from under the tribal homeland
without doing any damage.
Kane befriended half a dozen tribal leaders, and together they launched a protest
campaign to prevent the Maxus Energy Corp. of Texas from building a new oil road
through the heart of Huaorani territory – a cause that was taken up by environmental
groups across Europe and the U.S. But with Ecuador deep in debt and dependent on oil
revenues for more than half its foreign exchange, the government could not be pressured.
At the time of Kane’s last postscript, oil drilling was proceeding apace, and most of the
Huaorani leaders had gone over to the other side; they were on the petroleum companies’
payrolls.
【題組】45. Which of the following is NOT true?
(A) The priest Joe Kane came across was a Spaniard, who had spent years teaching the
Huaorani.
(B) Kane and some tribal leaders launched a protest campaign to prevent the Maxus
Energy Corp. of Texas from setting up a new company.
(C) Kane is an environmentalist as well as a journalist, traveling through the
Ecuadorian Amazon to gather material for his book Savages.
(D) Ecuador was dependent on oil revenues for more than half its foreign exchange,
but was still deep in debt
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