Bolsonaro's Goal: Straight-Up Military Occupation Of Brazil's Amazon, Followed By Full Exploitation
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Today, the Amazon is on fire, the result of moves attributed to Bolsonaro’s allies among the agribusiness interests trying to open up the forest for their economic gain. And the army, empowered by Bolsonaro’s presidency, is simultaneously beginning another push of its own: the largest-scale plan to occupy and settle the Amazon since the dictatorship.
Previously unpublished documents obtained exclusively by The Intercept flesh out the military’s plan for a push into the interior of the Amazon. Known as the Baron of Rio Branco Project, the plan envisions large-scale development projects, eventually raising the Amazon region’s contribution to the Brazilian economy. Amid today’s conflagration in the Amazon, Bolsonaro went on television to pledge to protect the delicate — and globally vital — ecosystem. Yet the Rio Branco Project would exploit resources; build large-scale bridges, dams, and highways; and attract non-Indigenous citizens to settle the northern region, the sparsely populated Brazilian hinterlands. Each project would inevitably create ripple waves of secondary deforestation and disrupt local communities.
The project takes up the old military dream to colonize the Amazon, under the stated goal of developing the region and protecting Brazil’s northern border. The document obtained by The Intercept shows that the government envisions sources of “riches” in potential mining, a hydroelectric dam, and farming projects in the Guiana Shield — a geographic region that covers the Brazilian states of Amapá, Roraima, and the northern segments of Pará and Amazonas, as well as the nations of French Guiana, Suriname, and Guyana, much of Venezuela, and a sliver of Colombia. “It’s all virtually unexplored,” the slides say of these portions of Brazil. “It’s right there alongside the riches of the North.”
The plan outlines three large-scale construction projects in the state of Pará: a hydroelectric dam, a bridge extending over the Amazon River, and an extension of the BR-163 highway all the way to the border with Suriname. The overall objective is to integrate the remote northern region of the state of Pará with the state’s more industrialized southern reaches and, from there, with the rest of Brazil. The impoverished and sparsely populated area is crisscrossed by rivers and difficult to access. It is also the most well-preserved area of tropical forest in Pará, a state that is otherwise a national leader in deforestation.
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https://theintercept.com/2019/09/20/amazon-brazil-army-bolsanaro/