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Brazil's building spree in Amazon draws protests
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-23 00:14 Tensions are climbing. Some 1,000 Indians gathered in nearby Altamira this week to fight the proposed $6.7 billion dam, planned as the world's third-largest power producer behind China's Three Gorges and Itaipu on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. On Tuesday, painted and feathered protesters attacked a national electric company official with machetes and clubs after he spoke to the group; he left shirtless and bloody from a gash in his shoulder. On Friday, they plan to parade to the banks of the Xingu, performing chants and dances to close five days of debate over the project. Indians and environmentalists thought they had beaten the dam in 1989, when a similar protest drew the rock star Sting and international condemnation. But now Brazil has the money for such projects without needing outside help, and the dam is scheduled to go out to bid next year. The country's boom-and-bust cycles are long gone. It paid off its foreign debt last year and this month was declared a safe place for foreign investors to park money, with a debt upgrade from the Standard & Poor's ratings agency. Critics say the pro-development forces in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government have taken control, the reason cited for famed Amazon preservationist Marina Silva's resignation as Brazil's environment minister last week. The Brazilian leader already is battling a spike in rain forest destruction and has sent federal police and environmental workers to crack down on illegal logging. He argues the mega-projects are needed to create jobs in desperately poor regions and to share the country's new wealth. Half of all Brazilians get by on $500 a month or less. "We shouldn't think of the Amazon as a sanctuary," Silva said in a speech earlier this month. Foreign investors are eager to get in on the action. On Monday, a consortium led by France's Suez utility company outbid another that included Spain's Banco Santander to build the $5.2 billion Jirau dam — the second of two on the Madeira River near Bolivia's border. |
