Brazil: Life and Death on the River | Deadliest Journeys

Amazonia, a huge territory where life can be uncompromisingly difficult. In its dense forests and intricate water systems, riberinhos, or river dwellers, cross paths with the garimpeiros, gold hunters. Riberinhos eke out a living from the boats that ply the rivers. Paddling out to meet the river traffic in small homemade canoes, they risk death by trying to fasten onto the often fast-moving boats. Remarkably, many are children, aged as young as five, who try and sell jungle delicacies for a few pennies to passengers and crew. Often, their families depend on them to make ends meet. Jesse’s family, for example. The 14-year-old youngster learned how to swim and handle a canoe almost before he could walk. Jesse turned to crime, in a desperate attempt to escape grinding poverty, and was shot and killed by a crewmember on board a barge he was trying to rob. A moving insight into the misery and frustration of those whom society has virtually abandoned. Elsewhere in the jungle, a woodsman recently found a small nugge