Nature used to give those who live along the river Beni fair warning of looming threats. If rings appeared around the sun, the leaves of the ambaibo tree twisted to reveal their white undersides or lines of ants began to march into people’s houses, members of the indigenous Tacana nation took it as a sign that heavy rain was on the way.
But neither portents nor two months of ceaseless downpours prepared them for the deluge in northern Bolivia in February, drowning their livestock, ruining their crops, and sweeping vipers and anacondas through their half-submerged villages.
“Some people were saying it was the end of the world,” says Wenceslao Mamio, the phlegmatic corregidor, or chief, of the Capaina community. “We were flooded as never before and left under a metre and a half of water. The waters killed our crops – bananas, cassava, pineapples, avocados, everything – as well as our pigs, ducks and chickens.”
Those who could grabbed their children and animals and ran as the river burst its banks and its rain-swollen waters rushed 50m into their homes and fields. Not all of Capaina’s 140 inhabitants, however, were quick enough.
Dilma Mamio Cartagena spent most of that day standing on a bench, shivering and praying. With the water rising and her ears filling with the cries of petrified children and animals, the 76-year-old watched her pots and pans float away as snakes slid around her.