Along the Madeira river basin, in the Amazon, locals blame climate change and human greed for the wildfires

“All of that up there is Paradise,” said Maria Moraes de Souza, gesturing to the string of villages among which she lives along one of the Amazon’s most important waterways.

But lately life in this supposedly Arcadian community has taken a toxic turn, as the River Madeira’s waters have fallen to their lowest level since the 1960s and the skies overhead have filled with smoke from wildfires that are raging across Brazil.