The small town of Iceland: the Amazonian Venice in Peru

In the depths of Amazon Peruvian and built on stilt houses, the small town of Iceland it seems like a Venice in the middle of the jungle Members of a peculiar religious mix of Adventist Protestantism and Inca traditions await the end of time in their remote “Promised land”.

The comparison with the famous city of canals can be a bit daring, but Iceland, with almost 3,000 inhabitantsis indeed “a city on the water, without cars or motorcycles”, presumede Linda Pimentel Santa Cruz, the city clerk.

“It’s small, it’s pretty, people like to visit us. Little by little, we are developing to improve”he adds smiling.

In the suffocating equatorial humidity, where the Yavari and the majestic Amazon rivers converge, Iceland is a lakeside town on stilts that rises three feet above the brownish water.

Devotees of the Israelite Mission of the New Universal Pact congregation wander along the canals: men in colorful tunics and women with their heads covered with veils, peasants of Andean origin who have come by the thousands to this part of the Amazon since the 1990s, convinced that this is the best shelter to survive the end of the world.

These “israelites”, as their followers are known, they work the land and produce many of the vegetables consumed in the area. Today they expand throughout numerous settlements on the banks of the Yavarí and this part of the Amazon, playing a key role in the local economy and trade routes.

As a consequence of progress and the ban on the use of wood, cement gradually became part of the landscape. Large straight concrete alleys, lined with red and white steel railings, crisscross the town.

An imposing concrete building still under construction, like the bow of an aircraft carrier, dominates the pier of the small port where motorboats and fishing barges dock. Under the most merciful late afternoon sun, dozens of teenagers in T-shirts dive.

“This is the children’s pool”Santa Cruz smiles.

Fishing, trade and traffic

Iceland will turn 82 in June. The dry season begins in the second half of the year, when the river decreases during the dry period. Meanwhile, plastics and other rubbish float under the clapboard, brick and tin dwellings.

There is a Chinese store, a single restaurant for tourists, a fish market, shacks open to the wind. where you can see the mothers busy in the kitchen or the owner relaxing in his hammock.

“People live from fishing, trade, a bit of everything (…) There are also officials”, explains the secretary of the City Council. He would like Iceland to become “a tourist attraction” and ensures that “there is security”although he admits that “Some young people get carried away by bad things.”

Peruvian enclave in Brazilian territoryIceland is located in the heart of the triple border, a river crossing between Brazil, Peru and Colombia.

In an area of ​​remote jungles, a pioneering front conquers the dense nature and enters the heart of innumerable traffic: drug traffickers, gold prospectors, poachers, fishermen and illegal loggers abound.

Iceland marks the entrance to the mysterious Yavarí Valley, the second largest territory of original towns of Brazil and home to the last indigenous communities in voluntary isolation.

Although permanently guarded by a large khaki green ship of the Peruvian army, this lost city is “a nest of traffickers of all kinds”, explains a regular visitor who asks to keep his identity confidential.Ç

Source: AFP