THE PLANNED TRANS-SOUTH AMERICAN HIGHWAY WILL WREAK AND THE ANDES. WORSE YET, IT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE ECONOMIC
Brazil is an Atlantic na- tion in search of its Pa- cificdestiny. Although it has long nurtured the dream of becoming a two-ocean, continental power,
much as a young and expanding
America was drawn across the continent to the Pacific by the call of
Manifest Destiny, South America’s
largest country has for most of its
history faced eastward to European
and North American markets. But as
global markets shift toward China
and the emerging economies of
Asia, the dream of westward expansion has been revived by one of the
world’s biggest and most improbable
construction projects.
The Interoceanica, a highway
stretching a thousand kilometers
across the Amazon Basin, up the
15,000-foot-high face of the Andes
and down to the Pacific in Peru, is
as worrying as it is ambitious. With
additional branches already planned,
it has emerged as a serious threat to
the human and natural ecology of
the greatest expanse of rainforest
on the planet.
What makes it especially worrying is that construction of the highway, estimated to cost $4 billion, has
received almost no attention and
little debate. Its origins trace back to
September 2000, when a meeting of
South American presidents convened
by Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso endorsed a plan called
the Initiative of the Integration of
the Regional Infrastructure of South
America, known as IIRSA.
At the time, the topic of the day
was regional economic integration.
In the minds of many of its leaders
South America was falling behind
in the global economy as regional
trade blocs, such as NAFTA and the
expanding European Union (EU),
seemed to grab the economic initia-
tive. The U.S. proposal for a Free Trade
Area of the Americas was perceived
by Brazil as a threat to its claims of
leadership. The presidents endorsed
a sprawling plan, the centerpiece of
which was the Interoceanica highway,
reviving an earlier idea for a trans-
border corridor that would facilitate
Brazilian trade with China. Then
called Transoceanica, but quickly
dubbed the “Road to China,” the idea
languished for more than a decade
until it was reconceived as part of
the sprawling IIRSA project, which
pulled together national wish lists
of no less than 350 infrastructure
projects, including highways, bridges,
railways, ports, airports, and trans-
mission corridors.
Should the full plan be realized,
the greatest remaining expanse of
tropical forests on the planet will
