Bishop Eugenio Coter, an Italian who has been a missionary in Bolivia’s Amazon region since 1991, has a great sense of hu-mour: You ask him for a picture of himself, and he sends one in which he is holding a sloth.
Coter has been leading the Apostolic Vicariate of Pando since 2011. It’s a 64,000 square mile region with 260,000 inhabitants, 60,000 of whom live in 450 communities deep within the Amazon rainforest. To go from one community to the other, clergy and religious use small planes, boats, jeeps and motor-cycles.
The bishop spends a month a year living on a boat, but he says that is “fortunate,” since during most pastoral visits, he ends up staying in a tent or someone’s shed.
The primary source of inco-me for the inhabitants of this region come from the jungle, with almonds, plantains, acai and other fruits being the main products.
However, Coter says there are other “industries” of a more criminal nature, including “the seasonal trafficking in human beings,” a criminal endeavour that spiked in 2020 when thousands of Haitians and Cubans entered the region — they trek from Guyana, walking through Brazil and Bolivia as they head to Chile. The “coyotes” the bishop said, take advantage of the migrant’s desperation. Some of these criminals double as drug traffickers, another illegal industry in the Pando region.