Anda, thirteen, is helped into a corset before going to a football game down the river. Established in by the Portuguese explorer Francisco Nogueira, its port of Cajuba was once a thriving home to a salt refinery that drew ships from as far away as the United States and Germany. Nonetheless, according to local elders such as Seu Severo, villagers were used as slaves. In the s, under international pressure, Brazil finally began to clamp down on deforestation.
Jararaca was devastated. Villagers eek out a living in whatever way they can. Ferries, rafts, canoes, ships: Day and night, the strait resembles a highway on the water, with locals latching small canoes to cargo ships, then climbing aboard to try and sell whatever goods they can to mariners.
Some villagers sell shrimp. The biggest prize for villagers is diesel oil. The lack of electricity has had a profound effect. Preserving food would be all but impossible without boats arriving daily with shipments of ice. Running machinery that could provide viable work is almost prohibitively expensive.
For the more experienced women of the cargo ships, their sexual encounters have become more like love stories, filled with gifts of perfume, sometimes televisions, and, most importantly, the promise of a better lifeβa way to escape the depressing reality of the ribeirinha. However silent, rules of the practice do exist. Each balseira frequents one specific mariner on each ship, who must be faithful to her only in the area where she lives.
In return for sex, she is rewarded with diesel, sometimes other gifts. They adhere to what may be called a localized faithfulness. The legend plays itself out daily in these straits.
