American geography professor Michael Williams published in 1992 his book The Earth Deforesting the Planet. From Prehistory to Global Crisis) extensively exposed the disaster already suffered by the Amazon as most tropical forests. A photograph published by NASA with the following plant appears on page 453: “Brazilian States of Rondonia and Mato Grosso at the time of the fires, in August 1984. The thermal engine of the smoke comes above the smoke cloud caused by the demolition of the forests towards the camera of the space shuttle that has carried out the photograph.”

35 years later, photographs taken by another NASA satellite to the fires in the Amazon have been more shocking. The world is used to seeing the Amazon in times of drought, as it is known to be used to clear forests: to remove wood, to create pastures for cattle and to dig new mines. This year, however, satellite tracking warned that burning is more numerous and bigger than usual.

The Brazilian Government already had news that it was about to happen, as reported by the media Globo Rural and published in Europe by journalist Ivan Roy. Many of the fires that ravage the Amazon have been caused by large Brazilian landowners, who have claimed their right to dismantle the forest, have shown their commitment to Bolsonaro and, in passing, have succeeded in ending the sanctions imposed by previous governments for illegal dismantling. “They have coordinated through Whatsapp to organize burning. Specifically, in the state of Para, Dia do Fogo, the day of the fire, was organized for 10 August, 70 fazendeiros (large landowners) and grileiro (specialized in falsifying illegal property titles for the acquisition of land). The criminal fires affected the vicinity of the roads BR 163, which have been arrested by firefighters. The BR163 crosses a large part of the Amazon, dependent on Brazil, uniting giant fields and farms with ports along the Amazon bank.

If they were looking for an echo, they did. In a few days, everyone had seen pictures of the Amazon rainforest burning. In strict compliance with the rules of the show, politicians had to respond to the shock caused by the disaster and the issue reached the summit of the G7 in Biarritz, with the well-known clash between French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

In Europe, where one of the hottest years in history is being known, Brazil is worrying the population about its importance for climate stability. According to Le Monde Diplomatique in his atlas, it has a third of the world's tropical forests, 20% of the fresh water and the Amazon takes one-tenth of all the C02 that can swallow the entire planet. The same pages were in July (Viktor Gorxkov, who has shown that for life the destruction of forests is more serious than CO2) than the stability of the Earth's climate is at stake in the Amazon.

However, the citizens of rich countries who care about the climate live in a serious contradiction. It is well known that the rich countries have made their own progress, inter alia, by locating and exploiting at a distance the forests that have been depleted at home and by the new areas in which their wealth is represented. Today, European forests, abandoned by the deforestation of centuries, are still alive by the relocation of the destruction of forests by Europeans.

Now, on the other hand, Europeans want the tropical forests of the world to stand, because the dazzling climate attacks them more and more. But how can we avoid catastrophe by consuming as it is now food produced by remote destruction, construction wood, new technologies... and without dealing with the reverberation of deserted areas of Europe, including the Basque Country?

Ash from the Tropics in our house

Brazil has 215 million cattle, 40 per cent of which are fed on rainforests. But in addition to native cattle, the primary forests that until recently have been transformed into fields also feed the distant ones. Soya plantations are progressing more and more through the Amazon Valley and Brazil must soon take off the title of production champion of this crop to the United States. Transgenic soya, of course, is 90%. Only the state of Mato Grosso collected last year 30 million tonnes, which will be used together with the rest of the Brazilian soya both for the fattening of native cows and for export, mainly to China and the European Union, for the fattening of native hens, cows and pigs.

The title of the last conference of Iñigo Segurola and Jakoba Errekondo suggests the road between the destruction of the Amazon and the mouth of Europeans: Landscape we created from the orchard to the plate. It also creates new deplorable landscapes for the nearby victims, which are not mentioned too much: the indigenous people who always live in these areas, the militants and the guides who dare to confront the invaders and, in general, those who are forced to work in harsh conditions on large farms and mines. In the Bolsonaro era, the BR163 roads are growing as it progresses.

Bolivia has also suffered fires, which have ravaged over 700,000 hectares of the special forest of Chiquitania between 18 and 23 August, as well as all that is burned in two years. Some expert witnesses say that it will take two centuries to restore what was the driest tropical rainforest in the world, so peculiar are the species and ecosystems that inhabit it.

The disaster in Chiquitania, according to the local press, has been caused by farmers who each year clean up the areas, whose flames have escaped the flames due to the temperature and drought this year. But it may not be a coincidence that this happened soon after Evo Morales announced new measures to increase meat exports. The Government of Morales authorized the large landowners of the Department of El Beni, by a supreme decree published last July, the use of 4.5 million new hectares to feed cattle and produce crops for them, bringing down trees and forests.

A number of social organisations have protested at the possible violation of the Constitution to which the new law is submitted. In addition to the damage caused to nature by the disaster in Chiquitania, the whole area of Santa Cruz has been legged upside down. Morales first denied and eventually had to accept international aid. Indigenous leader Alex Villca told reporters: “President Evo Morales must be held accountable for damage to the indigenous population and to Mother Earth.”