Impossible Roads

The Amazon: an immense territory, very difficult living conditions... It is one of the last lands of adventure on the planet. Between the jungle and the rivers, the riberinhos, the local residents, and the garimpeiros, the gold diggers meet there.

The trip begins in the Guatemalan village of Tecum Uman, separated from Mexico by the Suchiate River. Some 350,000 illegal immigrants attempt to cross the river each year. A real ordeal begins for them, at the end of which the luckiest will perhaps succeed in entering the United States. The price can reach $10,000. Fear is there, everywhere, omnipresent: fear of the authorities, of the corrupt police, of the gangs who control access to the trains. Rape, assault and forcible confinement are commonplace.

A road meanders through these valleys, the only means of communication between La Paz, the administrative capital of the country, perched on the Altiplano, and the riches of the Amazon basin. The Bolivians nicknamed it “el camino de la muerte”, the path of death. Highest point: the La Cumbre pass, 4700 meters, at the exit of La Paz. 78 kilometers further, we are barely 900 meters away. Along this road of the impossible, we follow the story of a community of cocaleros, coca growers clinging to the mountain slopes. To carry their loads to the road, they stretched makeshift cables made of simple iron wires across the valley. A hellish zip line, almost 400 meters long, 200 meters above the ground. We also share the daily life of a vachero, a truck driver who transports cows from the Amazon basin to La Paz, the highest metropolis in the world. 25 hours of journey on the road of death, made without stopping. Because you have to go very quickly: if a cow dies, the driver pays.