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Editor’s note: The most common
form of inter-city transportation in the Amazon is by boat. The
wooden ships that carry passengers and cargo are often unsafe
and often travel at over capacity. Shipwrecks are all too
frequent. This article doles out the blame for one in May 2008.
Blame for shipwrecks in the Amazon like that of the Comandante
Sales recently should be placed on the owner of the boat, the
crew, the passengers and, above all, officials who fail to
provide proper oversight.
Of course most of the blame for the cadavers that once again
piled up on the bed of the Solimões River in Amazon state in the
early morning hours of May 4 falls on the owner of the boat,
Francisco Alves de Sales. His unequaled love of easy profits
blinded him to the predictable tragedy that would result if the
ship took to the water with too many passengers and without a
properly trained crew. A fair amount of blame must be attributed
to crew members who able neither to steer the boat nor to take
stock of their irresponsibility in taking jobs they couldn't
handle. It could be argued that they were ignorant and, unlike
their boss, didn't fully understand the risk to which they were
submitting the passengers, who would have little chance of
saving themselves in the event of an accident.
But as practically every time that such a tragedy has struck in
the cloudy waters of the basin with the largest volume of
navigable water on the planet, to speak in terms of an accident
is to join in the complicity for the genocide that has been
practiced systematically in that abandoned region. In defense of
the crew, you could say that they went down with the passengers
and that some of them perished. (Editor’s note: the owner also
numbered among the fatalities.) This argument fails. Just as
suicide cannot be justified, neither can the not-so-smart hide
behind their lack of intelligence when they try to be clever.
Blame, albeit not so much, must be attributed to those who took
a chance on sailing in a boat that clearly lacked the capacity
to carry so many people. These idiots of insight that, correctly,
Nelson Rodrigues despised so much would respond that all boats
in the Amazon sail overweight and that they usually arrive
safely at their destinations. But the numbers of deaths in the
all too frequent disasters belie the cynicism in this argument.
Even more cynical, my friends and enemies, to quote Manuel
Bandeira, is the Port Authority that complains that the owner of
the boat failed to comply with the regulations after promising
to do so. This is a serial crime, like others before it.
Officials in charge of the oversight of ships in the Amazon
Basin are the leading accomplices. Boats like the Comandante
Sales sink because of the greed of their owners, the
irresponsibility of their crews, the recklessness of their
passengers and especially the incompetence and ineptness of
indifferent and incapable authorities.
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© BrazilMax. JStraight to
the Point by José Nêumanne Pinto - published on May 18, 2008.
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© Original: Jornal da Tarde,
terça-feira, 6 de maio de 2008, p2. "Os naufrágios da autoridade
inepta".
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