Riverside life – Murutucu Island – photo: Jefferson Cavalcante for Gua Arquitetura
Master Edson Monteiro shares his life as a carpenter living on the Bijogó River whose folklore creatures inspire care for nature.
“There are so many stories, so many stories about our region.”
I was born and raised here on the banks of the Bijogó River, and I used to walk in the middle of the forest and work. I survive on this, on nature, I have never worked as an employee, with a formal contract, I have always survived on the forest. The forest has sustained me until now. I really like what we do. I like my work. We learn to do a lot of things. We learn a bit of everything. We learn to make our canoes. We learn to build our little houses, to pilot our boats, to work with our engines. We are everything. We are the mechanics of our boats. We hardly ever pay anything. We learn to do things.
I like the riverside life, a peaceful life. We live well, sleep well, wake up feeling good, leave in the morning to work, return in the afternoon, and get caught in the rain in the woods. We hear the Curupira moving in the woods when we are working, usually when we are alone. When we are with a group of people, he doesn’t make contact. He may come closer, but he doesn’t give any sign. But if there is only one person, the person hears all the movement. What he does is he whistles, he shouts, he makes movements. If you don’t have the courage, you will run, but since I was born and a native of the region, I don’t run. I can even run from a jaguar or something like that, from what I can see, but from what I can’t see, I won’t run.
Master Edson – photo: Jefferson Cavalcante for Gua Arquitetura
I’ve been very far away in the forest, just me and God in the forest, really deep. There, I could scream, I could make any movement, and no one would hear anything. That day, the Curupira almost made me run away. I think he got angry. I think it was her area. It was a big tree. Wherever he lives, he cleans. When you see the foot of a big tree in the forest, all clean and swept, it has an owner. There’s no point in staying there because she takes care of it. It doesn’t take long. If you don’t pay attention, you get lost and don’t know where you’re going. He gets into your mind, and you can’t recognise it, even if you’re a woodsman. It’s happened to me about four times that she made me get lost in the forest.
What do you do when you feel that the Curupira is tormenting you? You take a vine and make a circle. Pull a vine from the bush, make a thin circle, roll it up tightly, hide the end, throw it back and as you throw it, your mind clears. That’s what I did, and at that moment, while he was trying to unroll the vine, I was able to locate myself.”
Master Edson Monteiro
Master Edson in his house on Murutucu Island – photo: Jefferson Cavalcante for Gua Arquitetura
Master Edson is from Pará, from the island of Murucutum, one of the islands in the Amazon region located in the riverside area of Belém, in the state of Pará, Brazil. He is a carpenter, but as he himself says, he is much more than that. He builds houses, boats and furniture, fishes with nets and hooks, repairs boat engines, and a lot more. What he doesn’t know yet, he wants to learn, letting himself be guided by curiosity, and thus, combining tradition and creativity, he turns dreams into reality.
As a riverside dweller, his house is built on stilts, a construction system that allows houses to stand on marshy areas, without being swept away by the river current or flooded during the rainy season. It is there, surrounded by the Amazon rainforest, that Master Edson grew up listening to his father’s stories. Grandson of quilombolas, he knew Murucutum Island at a time when there was no electricity and the houses were lit by oil lamps. They were far apart from each other, and travel between them and through the forest was done by canoe or on horseback. Food had to be stored salted so it wouldn’t spoil, hanging in paneiros (a type of basket made of straw) in the kitchen. At night, there was endless darkness with the sound of life in the forest, making it possible to see many things in nature.
Master Edson on Murutucu Island – photo: Jefferson Cavalcante for Gua Arquitetura
That was how one night, when he was about 15 years old and was at home with his father and his cousin Ednaldo, who was 17 at the time, he noticed the presence of the Big Snake. A giant snake that lives dormant at the bottom of rivers. Capable of sinking boats, the big snake is so strong that it can even change the course of water. It was already dawn, and nature was following its rhythm until they noticed a strange noise in the waters of the Bijogó river, which had been calm until then. They ran to the balcony to try to see what it was in the darkness. Without a flashlight or other source of light, they could only feel the movement of the Big Snake as it passed by, a gigantic, black figure, very dark, bellowing like a calf, rising against the tide and leaving as proof of its passage strong waves that came crashing against the wooden structure of the houses on the riverbank.
Benedito Hole River – photo: Jefferson Cavalcante for Gua Arquitetura
Telling it this way, it seems like something from a distant past, but the truth is that even today, Master Edson, the riverside people of Murucutum Island and several other regions of the Amazon, notice the presence of these enchanted beings, who inhabit the forest.
The episode in which he describes his encounter with the Curupira was recent, about a year and a half ago. It happened on a piece of land he owns, right in the middle of Murucutum Island. Access to his land is difficult; you must go by boat, enter a creek and go deeper into the vast green space. The deeper you go into the forest, the more silence takes over. Not just anyone can be alone in a forest like this; it takes courage and knowledge. But Master Edson is not afraid, he is only afraid of snakes, due to the memory of the unbearable pain of a jararaca snake bite he suffered as a child.
He says that his uncle, who is now quite old, once saw the Curupira when he was cutting down a field. After cutting down a large tree, he sat down at the edge of the field to eat something, around noon. Suddenly, he saw it climbing up the tree that had just cut down. It was like a little boy, a very small black boy who was coming towards him, jumping through the branches of the tree. When he got very close to him, it disappeared without ever entering his mind.
Master Edson working on Murutucu Island – photo: Jefferson Cavalcante for Gua Arquitetura
“We are never alone in the forest. There is always something watching you. You can’t see it, but there is someone there by your side, all the time.” Master Edson.
The Curupira and the Cobra Grande, as well as the Mãe D’Água (Mother of Water), the Boto (a man who turns into a kind of Dolphin fish typical of the rivers of the Amazon rainforest) and the Matinta Pereira (a kind of old witch who haunts the houses in the area at night, at which point she becomes a bird), to name just a few, are entities, “enchanted” beings, guardians of the forest. Formerly treated as folklore, they are much more than legends. Recorded orally by Amazonian communities, their stories have much to teach us about caring for nature. They demand respect and reverence and make us understand that it is necessary to ask permission to enter the forest.
“It’s incredible, a truly incredible thing, a forest thing.” Master Edson.
Master Edson on the Bijogó River, on Murutucu Island – photo: Jefferson Cavalcante for Gua Arquitetura
Master Edson is one of the carpenters who are part of the Pallas Project, an initiative by Luís Guedes and Pablo do Vale, founding partners of Guá Arquitetura, an architecture and design company based in Belém-PA, which since 2021 has been dedicated to cataloguing and documenting the rich tradition of Amazonian carpentry. I was introduced to the project in May 2024, and in October of the same year, I had the honor of accompanying Pablo and Master Edson on a visit to the city of São Paulo. During this day together, I heard Master Edson tell stories about the “Enchanted”. Since 2018, when I visited Pará for the first time, the Enchanted” have crossed my life from time to time, but that is a subject for another story.
Detail of a house on stilts built by Mestre Edson on Murutucu Island – photo: photo: Jefferson Cavalcante for Gua Arquitetura
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