Charcoal, used for barbecues and for making pig iron which goes into the manufacture of automobiles, is pre-burnt wood. Those who gather this wood and stack it into igloo-shaped kilns lined up across what used to be the Amazon rainforests have been doing their backbreaking jobs for generations, that is, as long as they can keep their jobs. The are called the Charcoal People, and are the primary subject of a documentary by the same name.
As children, they learn from their parents how to build the round brick kilns, just tall enough to stack wood head-high, with an opening that one must stoop through then close up with more bricks. Hour by hour, logs are hauled off a truck by hand and placed into these kilns until they are full, then a fire is lit to reduce the wood to coal. The coal is removed and loaded onto other trucks, and the process is repeated, by 9 year old boys, 75 year old men, and every age between.
The wood is gathered by a relatively primitive form of strip mining. Heavy chains are secured to the rears of two heavy duty tractors, then driven across the rainforest like a tripwire, uprooting every tree tall enough to be in its path. What once was the home of South America’s most exotic and beautiful animals now lies, acre by acre, in ruins, looking more like the aftermath of a severe tornado. Without the trees and roots to hold the soil in place, the Amazon is dealing with erosion as a side effect of the mass deforestation.
The unfortunate reality is that saving the rainforest will leave a whole culture of people without a livelihood, meager as it is. The documentary goes to great lengths to point out that this is the only life these people have ever known, hard as it is, and it provides for them self respect and a means to care for their families. One of the highlighted families in particular was a young woman of 16 who looked twice her age, with a small child at her feet, one in her arms, and another on the way. Her husband had recently been dismissed from his job of making charcoal, and they once again found themselves packing up their possessions and travelling in search of another employer. Because there are so many seeking work, the companies and supervisors can afford to be easily offended and dismiss people for the slightest accusation of insubordination. Those who have work are ever perched on the edge of being without.
Appropriately, the film ends as it began, in yet another cycle of reducing strong trees, and strong lives, into little more than a marketable product in high demand.