Store Review: GaleriAmazônica in Manaus, Brazil

Store Review: GaleriAmazônica in Manaus, Brazil

April 6, 2010
Foraging

By SETH KUGEL

It's one of those only-in-the-Amazon tourist dilemmas: you want to bring home a 12-foot blowgun, but don't know how to tell the genuine article from tourist schlock. And how do you know if a fair share of your money will get to the indigenous group that made it? Or if the tortoise shells used for adornment were responsibly obtained?
GaleriAmazônica, which opened in 2008 in Manaus, tries to relieve travelers and collectors of such worries. The organizations that teamed up to run the store - a respected Brazilian nonprofit organization called the Instituto Socioambiental and a community association of the Waimiri-Atroari indigenous group - promise the real thing, responsibly produced by properly remunerated artisans.
The whitewashed shop, across the plaza from the splendid Teatro Amazonas, looks more like a gallery or museum gift shop than a typical souvenir shop. Its items are displayed sparely and elegantly and labeled with information about which indigenous group or Amazonian community produced them from what materials, and even which gender did the work.
Expect surprises. Men weave the no-two-are-the-same patterned baskets used by the women of the Waimiri-Atroari tribe. (They start at around 50 reais, or $28 at 1.77 reais to the dollar.) Multicolored hammocks come from the Tikuna tribe and start at 142.90 reais; attractive colorful mats from the Baré people woven from stalks of arumã are around 165 reais; and an extravagant shell necklace from a Xingu tribe goes for 702.90.
There are also toys, instruments, colorful woven mats and metal-tipped arrows across a wide price range. Some of the less attractive items have more intriguing uses: pakysa, for example, look like clumps of woven tree bark until a store worker demonstrates how to transform them into indigenous Snugli baby carriers. What use could tipitis possibly have, besides storing gargantuan zucchini? As it turns out, they are strainers used to squeeze the acidic juice out of ground manioc root to make tucupi, a staple of Amazonian cuisine.
Nothing makes for a more intriguing souvenir, though, than a blowgun (starting at 500 reais). GaleriAmazônica even sells the accompanying darts, so you could theoretically use it to shoot monkeys and tropical birds in your backyard. But it's probably best employed in your living room, as a killer conversation piece.
GaleriAmazônica, Rua Costa Azevedo, 272, Manaus; (55-92) 3233-4521; galeriamazonica.org.br. Open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sundays, 4 to 8 p.m.

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