Several centuries ago, Spaniards and Portuguese came to the Amazon River area to

The Amazon River is one of the largest rivers in South America. It flows through several countries, including Brazil. Several centuries ago, when the colonizing Spaniard and Portuguese first arrived in that area, they found a well-developed local civilization which gradually died out under the influence of the invaders. Nowadays the area is inhabited by local Indians, some of them primitive peoples, and peasant farmers, the mixed descendants of the Indians, the Europeans and the Africans once brought to the continent as slaves. The area around the Amazon-known as the Amazon Basin-is famous for its dense tropical rain forest covering millions of hectares of land. Many of the local Indians live in the forest itself, depending on it for their food, clothes and shelter. The farmers on the fringes of the forest increase their farmland by cutting down the trees and burning the undergrowth-a method known as "slash and burn" farming. As the country strives to develop, large monoculture plantations growing crops such as sugar and coffee for export occupy an increasing amount of land.