The Smell of Water: A Liquid Witness to Environmental Change in the Amazon

In Amazonia, there are over 1,100 tributaries. Seventeen of these are more than 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) long, and the Amazon is responsible for 20 percent of the Earth’s fresh water entering the ocean. The longest and most famous river in the region is the Amazon River, at 6,400 kilometers (3,977 miles). Other rivers include the Madeira, Purus, Japura, Tocantins, Rio Negro, Tapajos, Xingu, Ucuyali, and Nanay. For Amazonians, these rivers are like roads. Villagers use these waterways to move from one town to another and, for some areas, water routes are faster and more dependable than actual roads. Many communities depend on rivers for their food and livelihoods. Fresh fish is a staple of the Amazonian diet, and families catch fish to sell at local markets. The Amazon basin has “the largest share of freshwater species in the world” and also “provides essential ecosystem services such as the transport of nutrients and sediment” (Amazon Aid Foundation 2022). Water is more than just part of the scenery—it is a way of life.

Protecting waterways in the region is also important to Amazonian cosmologies. According to the cosmovisions of Indigenous groups and non-Indigenous riverine communities, spirits that live in the rivers of Amazonia regulate myriads of environmental functions. For example, the Yakumama, a name that means “Mother of Water” in Quechua, is a transformational being that can change shapes and lives in the river. Taking the form of a giant serpent, reminiscent of the serpentine shape of the Amazon River, the Yakumama travels up and down river ways and brings with her an abundance of fish.

In a 2020 interview with the Shawi Indigenous philosopher Rafael Chanchari Pizuri, Rafael Chanchari explains the meaning of water and the various spiritual beings that live in Amazonian waterways according to Shawi Indigenous cosmovisions. Rafael Chanchari explains that water is what sustains life and that Shawi children learn much from their relationship with the river. The river teaches them to be afraid, to face their fears, and to develop a relationship of reciprocity with this natural entity. According to Pizuri, the Yakumama

The Yakumama represents an important transformational being that ensures the health of water systems and protects other species. Without her, many species would die and an area would lose its native diversity. The Shawi Indigenous people, along with many other communities that believe in the Yakumama, highly value the rivers of the Amazon and view these spaces as the homes of many influential beings (see Uzendoski 2016).

A polluted waterway is thus not just a health hazard but also the death of a spirit. Elsa, a shaman who lives along the Nanay River, explains how this loss takes place: “The more the river is contaminated, the more the spirits in the river disappear.…If the Yakumama dies, the water loses an important element that protects us” (Galeano 2018: 44:38–45:12). Since the shifting smell of water is an indicator of contamination, water pollution stemming from industrial, municipal, and underground activities, it is likewise a sign that the health of spirits is at risk. The Yakumama, in this cosmovision, is thus necessary to the survival of waterways and ensures that riverine communities can continue to thrive off of coastal and ancestral activities.

Like the Yakumama, the Krenak Indigenous people believe that their river, the Doce, is an important spirit that watches over the community. In Ideas to Postpone the End of the World, Ailton Krenak, Indigenous activist and leader, explains: “We at Krenak village have been mourning our Doce River for decades now, watching it defiled by industrial and agricultural pollution, deformed by hydroelectric stations, and, more recently, choked with toxic mud from a burst tailings dam” (2020: 2). The Doce River is “Watu,” or grandfather, “a person, not a resource” (43). The destruction of the river is the destruction of a being, of a living spirit that is part of the Krenak’s cosmovision. Similarly, the Kukama people have spoken out about pollution and development projects’ impact on their spiritual beliefs along the Marañon River (Fraser and Imaina 2015). They believe that people who drown or disappear live in the river and that attempts at dredging will disrupt these spirits.

Whether the Yakumama, the Yaras, the Renaco trees, or other beings, according to local folktales and cosmologies many spirits live in the rivers of the Amazon and influence the way that water is thought of and perceived. These tales are powerful containers of knowledge systems and exceptional educational tools that “are important because they contain knowledge, advice and morals. These stories are valid and continue to be told.…Preserving the knowledge of the waters, of spiritual beings and preserving the health that guarantees the continuity of life is the importance of these stories and the experience of our ancestors for the new generations”³ (Pizuri 2020: 46). Understanding the spiritual perspective of Amazonian communities changes what is at stake when it comes to the health and wellness of waterways. We come to realize that there is an ancestral, animist nature to water that complexifies and adds nuance to the connections that exist between human beings and their environment, connections that follow the thread of what Eduardo Viveira de Castro calls Amerindian perspectivism (1998). When faced with devastating environmental changes, these stories can be used as “‘seeing instruments’ that allow humans to make comparisons between past, present, and future conditions of a river on which all their lives, and those of many nonhuman others, depend” (Adamson and Galeano 2016: 229). When it comes to the Amazon, freshwater dolphins, manatees, and fish are already in decline (see Adams 2016), and more serious changes are surely ahead if nothing is done to protect the water. A strong smell, a loud noise, or a discarded piece of plastic are all sensory stimuli that can make the spirits of rivers “go away” and destroy the health of this important biome.

When Walter Arimuya smells the water of the Nanay River and notices that something is wrong, his nose is doing its job in protecting him from what it registers as potentially harmful. The nose is an incredibly powerful tool with which we can understand the world and register changes in our environment. Smell, registered in the parts of the brain that process emotions and memories, is incredibly personal, emotional, and subjective. Thus, when odors shift in an environment, this can impact one’s mood, wellness, and sense of security.

The human nose is extremely sensitive and is capable of identifying changes in the environment and potentially harmful substances. Researchers focusing on the sense of smell have long noted its importance and linked its various uses to primeval survival instincts. Cognitive scientist Ann-Sophie Barwich, for example, argues that “Your nose is the best biosensor on the face of the Earth” (2020). When molecules reach our olfactory sensory neurons, our odor receptors, information is then transmitted to the limbic system, the ancestral part of the brain responsible for our emotions, impulses, and memories, and for rewarding us for repeating and executing certain activities like eating or drinking (Frasnelli 2021). No smell is inherently “good” or “bad”; rather, a scent will take on a certain emotion based on the situation in which an odor is first perceived and the attitude with which one approaches a scent. Smells are important to our survival, and without them the world is perceived quite differently: “Without a sense of smell, our ability to know ourselves and others is obscured; our emotional world becomes deadened or disturbed; our ability to enjoy food is lost; our health may decline; and our sexual desire, and indeed our capability to identify with whom it would be biologically best to conceive a child, is severely weakened” (Herz 2007: xv). Our nose is a lifesaving tool, allowing us to identify threats and seek safety in our environment. Environmental malodors and shifting smellscapes are types of smell pollution that highlight potentially disruptive environmental changes.

Our natural impulse to recoil from stenches demonstrates our body’s physical response to our environment and links the outside world to our inner instincts. Since humans can distinguish more than one trillion olfactory stimuli (Bushdid et al. 2014), we should be able to perceive changes in our environment and be able to notice when the health of natural entities, such as rivers, is at risk. In fact, human noses can even detect scentless toxins: “Smell’s viscerality and chemical vulnerability make it a powerful tool for communicating about atmospheric toxins even when some of those toxins are scentless” (Hsu 2020: 5). Many Amazonian waterways are threatened by mercury, a toxic, scentless, metal that is used in mines to extract pieces of gold from soil and sediment.⁴ On top of this, sewage, wastewater, landfills, trash, oil spills, and other events degrade water quality throughout Amazonia.

While our nose is a powerful indicator of environmental change, shifts in smellscapes can take place at such a slow speed that, coupled with corporate attempts to underscore environmental impact, these scents can go unnoticed and remain unreported. Slow smelling describes the slow violence of naturalized, unrecognized smell pollution. Slow smelling mirrors slow violence in that environmental malodors and pollutants slowly saturate natural entities and are distributed unevenly across spaces. Perhaps smell pollution goes unnoticed because “the perceived intensity of a smell declines rapidly after one has been exposed to it for some time” (Porteous 2006: 90). We become accustomed to the smells in our environment and have a weakened sensitivity to them. Living near industrial structures, such as factories, or near fields that are sprayed with pesticide (Shrestha et al. 2019) may impact olfaction and weaken one’s sense of smell, making it less likely and more difficult for slow smelling to be perceived. Furthermore, smell pollution is not well defined and not as trackable as other forms of pollution. When comparing odor pollution to noise pollution,

It is not always possible and certainly not simple for shifts in smellscapes to be perceived and slow smelling is, like slow violence, a pervasive and clandestine phenomenon. There are, however, instances when slow smelling can be resisted; there are methods of smelling, what I call “smelling slowly,” and particular situations that create the right conditions for smells to transmit information regarding environmental change in the waterways of Amazonia.

When smells can be perceived, when the shifting smell of water, as in Walter Arimuya’s case, is purposefully and directly engaged with—that is, when one smells slowly—the smell of water translates and denounces threats on the river. It is an indicator of a slow violence that is disproportionally affecting minority communities of Indigenous groups and riverine dwellers. Scholar Hans J. Rindisbacher proposes that smell “denounces the abuse of power on the human body. Smell plays an essential role in an aesthetics of resistance. Because it is passive, it is always only reflecting existing power structures, denouncing them” (2006: 141). The changing smell of water in the Amazon announces and denounces certain power dynamics at play that are destroying ancestral ways of life and disrupting the natural rhythms of an ecosystem of global importance. The smell of water pollution is an instance of slow smelling where a dispersed and present stench is disrupting the spiritual functions of waterways for local communities. To resist this slow smelling, one needs to smell slowly, that is, smell in a slow, purposeful, and engaged manner. To smell slowly means to partake in attempts to uncover sources of pollution and contamination by recognizing changes that have long gone undenounced. To smell slowly is to resist slow violence by trusting sensory perceptions and recognizing the health impact that harmful odors can have on environments and individuals. To smell slowly is to smell ancestral scents, to believe that it is not too late for changes to take place.

Since water is central to the daily life of Amazonians, olfactory disruptions impact typical relationships with water and jeopardize the relationships that future generations will be able to have with Amazonian rivers and water sources. Walter Arimuya is not alone in discerning that the water in the Amazon no longer smells the same—others have similar perceptions.

In December of 2020, with the help of poet Juan Carlos Galeano, author of Folktales of the Amazon (2009), I interviewed four individuals from different communities located along the Nanay River, including Walter Arimuya. These four individuals gave me insight into the smell perceptions of riverine dwellers and the widespread odor pollution in the region. These interviews show the type of language used to speak about the odors discharged by waterways and the range of emotions that these odors elicit. The individuals interviewed came from the communities of Bellavista, Padre Cocha, Ninarumi, and Anguilla, shown on the map in figure 1.

The city of Iquitos, the capital city of the Maynas Province and Loreto Region of Peru, is located on the edge of the Amazon River, near the mouths of the Nanay River and Itaya River. Known as the capital of the Peruvian Amazon, it is the ninth most populous city in Peru and is a large metropolis with crowded ports. There is a significant difference in population size, waste production, and lifestyle between Iquitos and smaller communities such as Anguilla.

Anguilla, a community of thirty-two inhabitants (as of December 2020), is located far down the Nanay River near the National Reserve Allpahuayo-Mishana, a protected area of Peru known for its colorful birds and diverse flora and fauna. Iris Cruz Noguera, a resident of Anguilla, explains that Anguilla is less polluted and smells fresher than the water near Iquitos. In Anguilla, “the water smells pleasant. It is all clean”⁵ (Noguera 2020). The water near Iquitos, however, smells “something like trash. It smells ugly. There’s a rotten smell”⁶ (2020). She says that the causes for this bad smell in the water can be linked to “the peque-peques,⁷ the boats. Those who cook throw their scraps into the water. They throw everything into the water: plastic bags, trash”⁸ (2020). Anguilla, she explains, retains the smells of plants, flowers, and fruits, while Iquitos smells like trash and pollution. Since Anguilla is located far from Iquitos and has a very small population, the smell of water remains pleasant and natural. It is only near Iquitos that the shift in water quality can be perceived through olfactory cues.

From Ninarumi, a community near Puerto Almendra, José Pizango describes a similar juxtaposition between the smell of water near Iquitos, at the edge of the Amazon River, and the smell of the Nanay River near his village. Where he lives, the water smells, “clean. Like fruits, trees, and flowers,”⁹ while the water by Iquitos is “pure smoke. There are toxic fumes everywhere. It smells like cardboard”¹⁰ (Pizango 2020). The trees and flowers around the Nanay near his village become the smell of the water there, while the smoke and cardboard produced by the city of Iquitos become the smell of the Nanay in that area. His description of smoke and toxic fumes is especially poignant as it relates to the atmosphere; he notes how scents can spread and flow well beyond their source.

José Luna Paima, in Padre Cocha, the next big community down the Nanay River after Bellavista, is nostalgic for a past when the water near his community smelled fresh and was clean enough to drink. He remembers his childhood and is upset that the water is now contaminated. When he was young, “the water smelled of good things, it smelled like flowers”¹¹ (Paima 2020). Today, “the water is contaminated with gasoline, petrol, oil…I smell worse things now that I am an adult. I am 52 and things have changed a lot. These changes are not natural”¹² (2020). He is emotional when speaking of how things used to be and says, “Now I am afraid”¹³ (2020). These olfactory changes impact his mood and feelings of safety. There is a grave discrepancy between the water quality when he was young and the water quality today. The community of Padre Cocha is close to Iquitos and thus more susceptible to environmental malodors coming from the city. The fact that the water was drinkable when José was a child shows how much the environment has slowly changed over the years in the region and signals an ongoing trend toward environmental destruction and water pollution.

The community of Bellavista, located at the mouth of the Nanay River and on the edge of the Amazon River, has experienced the brunt of changes in the water quality of the river and reports more acute malodors coming from the water. Walter Arimuya explains that his community of Bellavista suffers from the terrible odors that come from the river and that this phenomenon has worsened over the years. The smell is “one of putrefaction. It is a warm air, a bad air…It smells like something burning like a chimney…It especially comes at night when the water evaporates. If the wind picks up, oh my god!”¹⁴ (Arimuya 2020). As a lifelong fisherman, these olfactory signs of pollution are most concerning to him because they are an indicator of a contaminated food source.

Arimuya, who makes his living by fishing on the Nanay River, has identified concerns in regards to fish quality and taste: “I can’t fish, the fish is contaminated…the fish have a different color, a different flavor, a different odor”¹⁵ (Arimuya 2020). The increasing water pollution is impacting not only the smell of waterways but also the smell of fish, meaning that the fish carry a different odor and thus a different flavor. Arimuya described to me how the fish in the Nanay River are much smaller in size than ten years ago and how the fish do not have the same fresh taste. Areas where he used to catch an abundant amount of large fish at the start of his career are now sparsely populated by small fish that do not hold the same value in the marketplace. These small fish carry the pungent smell of the river and do not have the same bright colors they once had. Many fishermen in the area have likewise noticed this shift in fish quality and are concerned about the health impacts that eating such fish could have on their families. This important food source to riverine and Indigenous communities is under threat as water pollution continues to spread downstream.

Arimuya explains that the communities near Iquitos suffer the most: “Before, I used to drink the water from the river but now it smells rotten, the water of Bellavista and the Amazon, it smells bad, you can’t drink it”¹⁶ (Arimuya 2020). He described how various Amazonian communities are not in the habit of boiling their water before drinking it and are therefore at risk of contracting various waterborne diseases as the water is increasingly polluted. When he was young, the water did not carry these scents; he hopes the water can be cleaned because currently he feels sick in Bellavista and finds the bad smells disturbing.

These interviews paint a shifting smellscape of the Nanay River as the pollution stemming from the city of Iquitos slowly spreads down the Nanay into more and more rural, riverine communities. A general feeling pervades that smell pollution has worsened over the years, that the water was much cleaner twenty to thirty years ago. The residents of these communities have identified severe environmental changes stemming from industrial and consumerist practices that are degrading the water quality of the Amazon and Nanay rivers and impacting day-to-day life for residents living in the villages nearest Iquitos.

Smells are disrupting activities such as fishing and harming the well-being of communities who must deal with the wafts of putrid air entering their homes. The testimonies of these four individuals all show examples of smelling slowly to identify environmental malodors and examples of smell pollution that are often ignored by authorities and disregarded as proof of environmental change. Each of these four individuals, of course, has their own subjective and unique view of the smells of the rivers. Their particular social class, lifestyle, and occupation can all impact their smell perceptions and sensitivity to environmental odors. In fact, “human olfactory experience depends on several factors, including genetic profile, ethnic background, gender, age, cultural background, and overall physical environment” (Bembibre and Strlič 2017: 4). There are many differences between the community members of Anguilla and Bellavista, for example, that complexify the results of these interviews.

Overall, José Luna Paima and Walter Arimuya both highlight the emotional toll that these olfactory shifts are having on their lives and the way that olfaction is revealing deeper issues. While the communities of Ninarumi and Anguilla are not reporting any malodors coming from the river, there is a feeling that the Nanay River must be protected before this pollution spreads along to other communities further downstream.

Negative smells can have serious impacts on local communities and their way of life and spiritual beliefs. These odors envelop communities and determine the atmosphere of a place. It has been shown that “odors that are viewed as unpleasant, embarrassing, or sickening may interfere with mood, beneficial uses of property, and social activities that are central to the quality of life” (Wing et al. 2008: 1367). Unpleasant scents must be taken seriously because they can disproportionally harm populations that cannot move to a different, scent-positive space and disproportionally harm Indigenous communities whose lands are sacred and ancestral. A growing body of research shows the “debilitating and, for many, fatal effects of atmospheres mobilized against Indigenous and racialized populations”; this work supports how “prolonged exposures to risky atmospheres biochemically transform people’s bodies, minds, and moods” (Hsu 2020: 8–9). Since stench translates a type of political and social power that promotes environmental change through slow violence, there is an urgent need to defend the waterways of Amazonia and to punctuate slow-smelling practices.

The Committee for the Defense of Water [Comité de Defensa Del Agua] (Iquitos-Loreto), a group formed in 2012, gathers community members to fight for the defense of waterways in and around Iquitos, in the region of Loreto, Peru. Employing slogans such as “For water, for life,”¹⁷ “The defense of water is our defense,”¹⁸ and “Without Nanay, there is no water,”¹⁹ their goal is to organize local communities around the issue of water quality to put pressure on local and national government to exact measures to protect the rivers of the Amazon and to ensure sustainable development for future generations. In 2013, they released a statement asking for new research studies on the water quality in the local rivers, the identification of sources of contamination and those responsible for this contamination, the exclusion of the Nanay River from all activities that could alter the ecological equilibrium of the space, the cancellation of petroleum projects in the region, and greater attention to the needs of communities to assure a sustainable future (Comité de Defensa del Agua 2016).

One of the members of the committee, Professor José Manuyama, gave an interview with the Amazon Center for Anthropology and Practical Application in which he discussed the causes of water pollution in the region and the reasons this water needs to be protected. He notes that pollution is worsening because of a “predatory culture of consuming and consuming. In other words, it is a package of things that ends up suffocating life. It is not an isolated issue, it is an entire economic, social and cultural system that ends up destroying the foundations of life”²⁰ (Manuyama 2018). The mercury and lead in the water are the two most serious toxins that his group is tracing and attempting to keep out of local waterways. For Manuyama, water is of significant importance to life in the Amazon: “The Amazon is a wonderful place. Those of us who have grown up here have grown up with joy. This thousand-year-old Amazonian way of life is the one that is affected”²¹ (2018). He emphasizes that we are running out of time to protect these rivers, that now is the time to unite. Through the committee’s Facebook page, the group continues to organize events and connect with community members and politicians to seek solutions (Comité del Agua- Iquitos 2022).

In a soon-to-be-released documentary film Stepping Softly on the Earth (2022) by director Marcos Colón, Professor José Manuyama is interviewed by radio station Radio La Voz de la Selva LVS, providing further details about his work. Manuyama explains that SANIPES, an organization under the Ministry of Production in Peru that works to protect the fishing industry, has identified amounts of lead and chromium in the fish of the Nanay River that exceed maximum levels set by international and national organizations (SANIPES 2022). In the film, Manuyama laments that “there’s shocking passivity and there’s a lack of action from the authorities” (Colón 2022: 25:00–04). In reference to the mercury and toxic metals that enter waterways, he explains, “this is a complete crime because it not only destroys the water, the fish…It’s going to destroy large areas of forest and put at risk the health of half a million people” (Colón 2022: 29:20–35). Professor José Manuyama’s work with the Committee for the Defense of Water strives to bring public awareness to water pollution and fight against corporations that want to dredge or mine along the banks of Amazonian waterways.

The smell of water floats in and out of homes, drifts across the faces of children bathing in rivers, seeps through the bodies of fish, and sits on top of every cup of water poured. It is the smell of a resource that is necessary to human survival and the reason why the Amazon has been the source of flourishing civilizations and diverse species of flora and fauna. When this smell begins to shift, grave consequences ensue. The communities living near the Nanay River are experiencing shifting odors in their environment like never before, and these smells highlight severe environmental changes due to consumerist practices, industrial practices, illegal mining, logging industries, waste mismanagement, and other ventures to extract valuable resources from the banks and soil of the Amazon.

While smell is passive, it carries with it the strength of a slow violence that is harming the way of life of local communities and impacting the well-being of residents faced with environmental malodors. The stench coming from the water that is obfuscated by slow smelling has consequences not only for community members but also for the spirituality of these individuals who believe that spiritual beings in waterways will be dispersed due to unpleasant odors. While organizations such as the Committee for the Defense of Water denounce the environmental changes impacting local rivers, there is an urgent need for more to be done to protect the waters of the Amazon before irreversible changes occur. As José Paima says, “We do not know yet how to live on this planet”²² (Paima 2020). Smells will continue to spread and to reproduce a slow smelling until the global, capitalist, and consumerist rhythm can be reversed and resisted by smelling slowly to allow for a sustainable and clean environment for future generations growing up around these ancient and life-bearing rivers.