MASSIVE DAMAGE ON THE FRAGILE ECOSYSTEMS OF THE AMAZON SENSE. SO WHY IS IT BEING BUILT? BY BRUCE BABBITT
be transformed into the industrial
heartland of South America. Highway
corridors converging inward from the
Atlantic coast and from the Andean
countries will meet and cross in the
Amazon, drawing and concentrating
settlement and development into the
green heart of the continent.
Yet in the nine years since the
South American presidents met, the
IIRSA blueprints for transforming the
Amazon have attracted surprisingly
little attention. That may have been
because the presidential directives
setting the plan in motion bypassed
normal procedures of public hearings
and legislative debate in each of the
affected countries. It may also be that
IIRSA was dismissed by many as yet
another dreamy Bolivarian scheme
for continental unity, destined to fade
away like so many other continental
visions extending back in time to the
Great Liberator himself.
For better or worse, the dream is
coming to life. Construction of the
main road is expected to be completed as early as 2010, ensuring that
the Interoceanica will play a key role
in the ultimate goal of regional economic integration.
The architects of the project are
proud of their achievement, which
may be one reason I was invited by
Constructora Norberto Odebrecht,
the Brazilian construction company,
to see how far they have come. That’s
how I came to find myself last fall in
Puerto Maldonado, a once-languid Peruvian frontier town on the Amazon,
the jumping-off point for a trip deep
into the heart of the continent to witness the final phase of construction.
The trip proved a jarring contrast with
a visit I made to the area in 1991, when
I first became acquainted with the
trans-Amazon corridor project.
Puerto Maldonado itself was an
introduction to the conflicting im-
ages of the future embodied by the
new highway. Roadside billboards
advertise the town as a gateway to
an ecotourism paradise. One boasts:
“Puerto Maldonado, Capital of Bio-
diversity;” another, more grandly,
claims the town as the “Biological
Capital of the World and Ecological
Patrimony of Humanity.” But signs
of another, darker vision are every-
where as the surrounding forests
come under siege from forest clear-
ing and burning, illegal logging and
land speculation.
On the first morning, accompanied
by the two guides assigned to me by
the company, Gabriel and Devey, we
left Puerto Maldonado heading west.
A passing logging truck made clear
that commerce was already flourishing . The pavement soon gave way to
a narrow red-dirt track baked hard
by the intense tropical sun. African
Zebu cattle grazed among blackened
stumps in pastures where the forest
has been cleared and burned back
