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In 1982, during his expedition to the Amazon, oceanographer Jacques
Cousteau made a declaration that sounded like a premonition: "Today,
the world is concerned about nuclear war, but this threat will disappear.
The war of the future will be between those who defend nature and
those who destroy it. The Amazon will be in the eye of the hurricane.
Scientists, politicians, and artists will land here to see what is
being done to the forest".
 Cousteau's
interlocutor, Francisco Ritta Bernardino, owner of a hotel in Manaus
where the French explorer and his team stayed, memorized that prophetic
statement. In 1986, three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall
buried the nuclear threat, he started building a small jungle hotel
(only four suites) on the bank of the Negro River, three hours by
boat from Manaus. Ten years later, Ritta Bernardino commands a business
that brings in about US$ 1.5 million per year, a figure that could
well increase fivefold by the year 2000. Unique in its category because
it was built in the treetops, the Ariau Jungle Towers has been host
to people such as Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Norwegian Prime
Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. Work is currently underway to make
it, yet this year, the second largest hotel of the Amazon region,
with more than 200 suites.
"I am preparing for the wave that's coming. For the time being,
this is a promising business, and it is going to be an excellent business",
says 60-year-old entrepreneur. Pioneering in the exploration of ecological
tourism lends Ritta Bernardino stature as the prototype of a new model
of Amazonian entrepreneur. He is light years away from the rubber
tappers of the early 1900's, and especially from the horde of migrants
that invaded the region twenty-five years ago, encouraged by the military
regime's project aimed at occupying the region at any price. This
new entrepreneur knows how to take advantage of the Amazon's endless
natural riches without leaving a trail of devastation. |
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