Much of the imagination surrounding the South American region called Amazonia characterizes it as a natural reservoir that is not“ contaminated” by culture. These stereotyping views are born from the Western divide between nature and culture, as well as human and nonhuman, and are rooted in the colonialist enterprise behind the so-called discovery of the Americas.
Even the history of how the region was named is marked by the fantasy of an empty land and an extractivist ethos: the name comes from the narratives of Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana, who in 1541 carried out an expedition in search of El Dorado. Leaving from the Andes, he found a very large and extensive river that lead him to the Atlantic, and he described to the king of Spain how he had encountered matriarchal societies where“ land was subject to women, who lived in the same way as Amazons, and were very rich, possessing much gold and silver.”¹
The“ Amazonia açu”— the latter a Tupi – Guaraní term for“ large” or“ expanded”— is
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