Brazil wants to enlist two of its neighbours, Peru and Bolivia, in an ambitious US$5.5bn scheme devised to open up the uppermost reaches of the Amazon basin, and in the process help cope with Brazil's energy needs and expand its agricultural frontier. The appeal for Peru and Bolivia is that it would provide them with access by river to the Amazon, and hence the Atlantic, on lines similar to the successful `soya conduit' from Mato Grosso.
The Rondônia-centred `Madeira river complex', as the project has been dubbed, envisages the construction of hydroelectric plants designed to generate 7,500MW on the Brazilian side and 3,000MW on the binational stretch shared with Bolivia. Navigation will be ensured with a complex system of locks to bypass the dams of these hydro plants and 13 other `natural obstacles' that currently render the Madeira impassable.
The Brazilian government is well aware that this will attract the opposition of environmentalists both within and without Brazil. When he presented the scheme at a seminar in Rio on 8 August, Carlos Lessa, president of the development bank BNDES, chose to preempt them with the official argument: `A worse aggression against the environment is the pauperised man without a destiny who destroys nature because that is his only way of surviving.' He also unveiled the positive spin: `This [project] mirrors on a smaller scale the conquest of the West in North America.'
New army units for empty borders
The counterpart to this integration initiative is a move to strengthen Brazil's borders with those selfsame neighbours and others further north. In the wake of Operação Timbó, the recent exercise to test defensive responses along the Colombian border (WR-03-24), the commander of the army, General Francisco Albuquerque, has announced a plan to redeploy up to 20,000 troops from the south and southeast to the inland borders.
This will start with the establishment of a new brigade of jungle infantry at São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in Amazonas, and within reach of the Colombian and Venezuelan borders, to watch over the tributaries of the Rio Negro - a route favoured by drug traffickers and gunrunners, and the same general region where there have been, in recent years, crossborder incidents related to Colombia's internal war.
Another five new units are to be established in southwestern Amazonas and Acre, facing the currently `empty' stretch of Peruvian border running parallel to that country's coca-producing valleys where the Sendero Luminoso guerrillas have recently been so active. The new bases will be installed at Estirão do Equador and Palmeira do Javari in Amazonas, and three locations in Acre: Cruzeiro do Sul, Marechal Thaumaturgo and Santa Rosa do Purus.
A similar forward base is to be located at Santo Antônio do Içá, on the Içá river, a continuation of the Putumayo, which runs along Brazil's borders with Peru and Colombia.
Albuquerque says he could complete the redeployment by 2006 - if he gets the funds. This year he won a budget increase from R$14m to R$42m for this purpose, but fiscal constraints have meant that very little has been disbursed.
End of preview - This article contains approximately 544 words.
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