A romance in (and with) the Amazon: constructing nature and Indigenous masculinities in Napo, Ecuador

The Ecuadorian Amazon attracts thousands of Western tourists yearly with promises of access to pristine rainforests and traditional Indigenous cultures. Visiting the Amazon is also billed as an opportunity to achieve spiritual transcendence by shedding the burdens of modern life and (re)connecting with a timeless essence that Westerners are presumed to have lost. In contrast, this essence and the Edenic landscapes connected to it are often imagined as integral to Indigenous cultures. While scholars have convincingly argued that these ecoprimitivist ideas reflect Western anxieties regarding the alienating forces of modernity, insufficient attention has been paid to the diverse ways in which Western visitors convert these ideas into embodied practice. Specifically, I analyze how ecoprimitivist ideas about Amazonia shaped the experiences of Western women who established intimate relationships with Indigenous Kichwa men in Napo, Ecuador.