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Brazil's building spree in Amazon draws protests

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-23 00:14

ALONG THE XINGU RIVER, Brazil -- Indians fish from canoes along the curves of this Amazon tributary and tend manioc crops near the site of a proposed dam talked about for decades — but now pushing forward under Brazil's multi-billion-dollar construction spree.

A boy plays with a capybara on the banks of the Xingu River near Altamira, Brazil, Tuesday, May 20, 2008. A proposed hydroelectric Belo Monte dam, to be built in the Xingu River, would be the world's third largest for power production but claims are growing that it could kill the Indians' fish, displace 15,000 people and help destroy the rain forest. [Agencies]

The Belo Monte dam will swallow thick rain forest and harm rare fish, as well as the livelihoods and homes of roughly 15,000 people who live in this remote area of northeastern Para state, critics say.

Flush with cash from its roaring economy, Brazil is spending $296 billion in the next two years alone on huge hydroelectric dams, transcontinental roads and other infrastructure to expand industry, boost exports, create jobs and help speed the emergence of Latin America's largest country as a world economic power.

But at a time when the world is focused on climate change and Amazon rain forest destruction, Brazil's boom means paving, flooding and stringing power lines through thousands of miles of pristine jungle.

Edivaldo Juruna, a subsistence farmer and fisherman who lives in a ramshackle wooden house on a sandbar, worries when he hears the dam will flood 170 square miles of Amazon basin and turn a 90-mile stretch of the river into stagnant puddles.

"Up there near the city it's going to flood, but down here it's going to dry up," said Juruna, an Indian whose last name is the same as his tribe. "Everyone's talking about the jobs that will come and that there will be energy for Brazil. But no one's talking about the bad side."

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