Political Report # 1425
Operation Amazon Redux. Brazil's Army Wanted to "Occupy" the Amazon Before. Leaked Audio Reveals Their Plan to Try Again.
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BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT JAIR Bolsonaro is planning to push
industrialization and development in the interior of the country’s Amazon
basin. It is far from a new project. For more than a century, a series of
Brazilian governments have sought to move into the country’s interior,
developing — or, to be more precise, colonizing — the Amazon. From the populist
president-turned-dictator who made one of the early industrial pushes into the
forest in the 1930s to the military dictatorship that ruled the country for two
decades from 1964 until 1985, the justifications have largely been the same —
economic gain and geopolitical paranoia — as were the often poor results.
Take the dictatorship’s push. Known as Operation Amazon, the
colonization plan hatched during the military government envisioned integrating
the territory into Brazil through building roads and developing agricultural
and corporate enterprises — all accomplished by settling people from the south,
southeast, and northeast of the country and the coasts in the forest.
As for the aim, the dictatorship’s motto for the project
spoke volumes: “Occupy to avoid surrender.” The military government argued that
a thinly populated Amazon might create avenues for foreign powers to invade
Brazilian territory. “One aspect of the doctrine said that Brazil could not
leave any empty space, because it could threaten national security,” said João
Roberto Martins Filho, a professor at the Federal University of São Carlos who
has spent decades researching the dictatorship. “The idea was that it was
necessary to channel activity into regions with smaller population density, and
this became a state policy.”
Like all the other so-called development pushes into the
Amazon, the results were catastrophic — for the forest itself, but especially
for the communities who already lived amid it. One highway, for instance, was
designed to travel from the city of Manaus, on the Amazon River, to nearly the
northern edge of the basin. “The highway is irreversible, for the integration
of the Amazon into the country,” the army’s Col. João Tarcísio Cartaxo Arruda,
who led the construction battalion, said in 1975, according to a document made
available by the National Truth Commission. “This road is important and must be
constructed, whatever the cost. We will not change its layout, and the only
burden for our battalions will be to pacify the Indians.”
That pacification came through so-called demonstrations of
force — using machine guns, grenades, and dynamite — against the
Waimiri-Atroari tribe. In these moves and others like it, thousands of
Indigenous people were massacred. In 1972, the Waimiri-Atroari had a population
of 3,000; by 1983, their number was reduced to 350. The National Truth
Commission estimates that at least 8,350 Indigenous people were killed by the
military government.
Operation Amazon came at a tremendous environmental cost.
Nearly 10,000 miles of roads were built in seven years. Extractive and
agricultural industrialists moved into the region, polluting and depleting
resources. Over the nearly two decades of dictatorship, deforestation rates in
the Amazon tripled.
Eventually, in the mid-2000s, the deforestation rate was
reduced. But it’s already back on the rise. And a new military industrial push
into the forest could prove to be a death blow to the Amazon.
Reviving an Old Military Dream
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.
While the purported economic benefits are offered as
justifications for the Rio Branco Project, what is not mentioned — but
referenced in the materials obtained by The Intercept — is another reason for
the Amazon push: a revived version of the military dictatorship’s paranoid
fears of an invasion of Brazil through the sparsely populated northern border.
The Rio Branco Project plan was first put forth this
February by the Special Secretariat for Strategic Affairs, an entity overseen
by the secretary-general of the presidency and charged with focusing on
Brazil’s long-term social and economic growth. The special secretariat is led
by retired Gen. Maynard Marques de Santa Rosa, and the plan is being
coordinated by retired Col. Raimundo César Calderaro.
The project began enmeshed in the sort of chaos that
typically reigns over politics in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. In February, the
then-Secretary-General Gustavo Bebbiano was on his way to Tiriós, in the state
of Pará, with two ministers, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles and Human
Rights Minister Damares Alves, as part of a committee to meet with local
notables. Bolsonaro, however, was unaware of the plan and vetoed the trip as
soon as he found out. That decision helped trigger the crisis that eventually
culminated in Bebbiano’s resignation later that month. The same plan was then
presented by the Special Secretariat without fanfare later in closed meetings
with local leaders and businesspeople in Pará.
The U.K.-based political website Open Democracy published
parts of the presentation late last month. The Intercept has since obtained
exclusive access to audio recordings and a full slide presentation from one of
the meetings, in late April, which details the project and the private
justifications given by officials for carrying it out. The meeting was
organized by the Special Secretariat and was held at the headquarters of
Federação da Agricultura e Pecuária do Pará, an agroindustry association in the
state of Pará.
Whether or not the Rio Branco Project is successful in
accomplishing its aims of bringing economic growth and national security to the
northern region, the attempt to develop, industrialize, and securitize the
region are likely to have a similar effect as previous Brazilian governments’
forays into the Amazon: catastrophic environmental degradation and calamity for
the communities who have long since called the Amazon home.
“We’re quite concerned about the way things are being done,”
said Caetano Scannavino, who runs the NGO Saúde e Alegria, or Health and
Happiness, and lives in Santarém, Pará. “It’s not a question of being against
infrastructure. It’s important to look at how it has been implemented, with no
regard for the proper procedures or consultations.”
The “Globalist” Threat
The presentations in Tiriós framed the plan as a response to
a dark threat: an unnamed foreign invasion. In an audio recording taken during
the meeting and sent to The Intercept by a source who requested anonymity,
Marques de Santa Rosa, the secretary of strategic affairs, claims that Brazil
must act to guarantee its sovereignty at the borders with Suriname. The impetus
is Chinese investment in and immigration to Suriname, on Brazil’s northern
border. The speaker cites China’s purported record abroad: “On the eastern
border of Siberia today, there are more Chinese than Cossacks,” the voice says
on the recording. “Russia is now facing a very serious national security
problem. We need to wake up before the same problem happens here.”
Suriname, a small country with a population of half a
million, has indeed seen a wave of Chinese immigration accompanying investments
from the Eastern superpower, but there is no Chinese policy of mass emigration
to Suriname, said Mauricio Santoro, a professor of international relations at
the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
“The military tends to view the presence of foreigners in
the Amazon, above all those from countries outside of South America, as a
problem and a national security threat,” Santoro said. “But this says more
about the world vision of the Brazilian armed forces than it does about the
goals of other nations in the region.”
The purported Chinese threat is only one aspect of what
government presenters called a “globalist campaign” to undermine Brazil’s
sovereignty. The presenters identified NGOs, environmentalists, and,
ironically, local populations — both quilombos, the sometimes centuries-old
Amazon communities descended from escaped slaves, as well as Indigenous people
— as the main agents of the globalist plot. According to the presentations,
this diverse group is working to restrict the government’s “freedom of action”
in the region.
Echoing Bolsonaro’s campaign slogan, the presentation slides
proclaim, “Brazil above all else” — implying that Indigenous, quilombo, and
environmental movements are not part of Brazil. Instead, the presenters framed
them as hindrances of the past — obstacles that, today, are on the cusp of
being overcome.
In the past, these groups had indeed presented obstacles.
One of the new projects outlined in the presentations obtained by The Intercept
is the Oriximiná hydroelectric dam, on the Trombetas River, a large tributary
of the Amazon, in the state of Pará. Past projects along the same river have
been canceled because of the socio-environmental impact on Indigenous and
quilombo communities. Among the area’s inhabitants are uncontacted tribes.
The government’s new initiative would steamroll through the
region by shutting Indigenous, quilombo, and environmental movements out of the
process. Indigenous organizations only learned of the Rio Branco Project
through media reports. And yet the project will impact 27 Indigenous
territories and protected areas within the northern region — including the
Wajpi territory in the state of Amapá, where an indigenous leader was
reportedly murdered by mining prospectors last July.
In an official statement, four Indigenous organizations said
that the project “will have destructive and irreversible impacts for us, as
Indigenous peoples, and our ways of life, based on the sustainable use of
natural resources, which has in fact helped us to preserve one of the largest
areas of environmental protection on the planet.” The statement, published in
May, says that the plan will “tear in half” the Indigenous territories
currently recognized by the Brazilian state — and thereby infringe on the
tribes’ constitutional protections.
The Conspiracy Theory
Just as the purported threat of Chinese invasion harkens
back to the fears of the bygone dictatorship, so too does the modern Brazilian
right’s fears of environmental activism — another potential source of foreign
meddling in Brazil’s sovereignty over the Amazon.
With the end of the Cold War, and the geopolitical situation
changed, the military dictatorship’s main concern became the U.S. The 1980s had
seen dramatic growth in environmental concern over the Amazon and in certain
corners of the international community, a discussion began over whether Brazil
was failing to protect the forest. The military, at one point, actually feared
that the U.S. might invade the rainforest under the pretense that it was
necessary to protect the environment for the benefit of the whole planet. In
the wake of the dictatorship, these fears waned as the Brazilian government
took forest stewardship more seriously. In 1989, it created the Brazilian
Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, known as IBAMA,
which operates as the nation’s principal enforcement arm for environmental
protections.
The post-military presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso
and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva saw fears over an international push into the
Amazon recede further, but amid an economic downturn, the military began to
oppose the presidency of Dilma Rousseff and talk of national sovereignty in the
region bubbled up again.
Today, these sentiments are rapidly on the rise, with two
army generals claiming in August that there was a “great indirect plot” to
nullify the Brazilian state in the Amazon. This conspiracy theory posits that
the dissolution of the Brazilian state in the region would progress as
international aid bolstered the rise of Indigenous states. There is a
longstanding fear, for example, that the Yanomami tribes on the Brazilian side
of the border will unite with those on the Venezuelan side to create an
independent Yanomami nation.
For the army and its right-wing allies in government, the
conspiracy theory extends all the way to the Catholic Church. In particular,
the military establishment is worried about the Synod of Bishops for the
Pan-Amazon Region, a conference scheduled to take place in October. Organized
by the Vatican, 250 leading bishops of the Catholic Church will meet for 21
days to discuss the topic “Amazonia: new paths for the Church and for an
integral ecology.” Brazilian Gen. Eduardo Villas Bôas claimed that the confab
is tainted by “political bias.” In a presentation in August, Villas Bôas and
Gen. Alberto Cardoso said that the synod, the media, foreign governments, the
United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, and the Council of Missionaries
to the Indigenous are all agents of the “grand indirect plot.”
Bolsonaro’s Playbook
The same fears of a “grand indirect plot” can be seen in
Bolsonaro and his allies’ response to the recent fires in the Amazon. While
wildfires are common at this time of year, data provided by the National
Institute for Space Research indicate that this year, fires increased 84
percent compared to the period between January and August 2018. Moreover, there
is evidence that many of them were lit on purpose by loggers and land-grabbers
in response to Bolsonaro’s policies, which have loosened environmental
monitoring and enforcement.
Bolsonaro, though, initially responded to the crisis by
accusing NGOs of having started the wildfires to “attract attention.” Then, in
a meeting with the governors of the nine states in the Amazon basin, he claimed
that Indigenous reservations “impair the nation” and that the policies and laws
that protect them are effectively using Indigenous people as “pawns in a
maneuver” to block the riches of the region from being used “for the common
good.” He also stated that NGOs form part of a plot to leave the Amazon intact
for “future exploitation by other countries.”
Martins Filho, the professor who has extensively studied the
dictatorship, said he sees the army’s influence in many of Bolsonaro’s policies
and reactions. “The military’s objective, thinking strategically, is this: to
get in close again with the government,” he said.
Indeed, current and former top military officials echo the
president’s belligerent tone. After French President Emmanuel Macron called the
Amazon fires an “international crisis,” Villas Bôas said that Macron’s
statements were “direct attacks on Brazilian sovereignty.” Augusto Heleno, a
retired general and top Bolsonaro security adviser, said that those advocating
for international action on the fires “just want to put the brakes on our
inevitable economic growth.” And Vice President Hamilton Mourão, another
retired general, said those who are referring to the fires as a crisis were
“dishonest, as if they don’t know that the lungs of the planet are the oceans,
and not the Amazon.”
Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has ramped up deregulation ever since
taking office. Salles, the environment minister, has been spearheading the
effort to dismantle IBAMA, the environmental protection agency, and other
monitoring agencies. During his campaign, Bolsonaro warned that he would not
demarcate “even a centimeter” of new land for Indigenous territories, and when
he assumed power, he appointed Nabhan Garcia — a member of the agribusiness
lobby known for wielding rifles to warn off supposed trespassers on his land —
in charge of agrarian reform and land demarcations.
For the Amazon, the results have already been disastrous.
Research indicates that the rate of deforestation in 2019 is 50 percent greater
than in the previous year — an estimate which may be conservative, given that
figures calculated at the end of the year tend to be much higher. According to
the latest statistics, July was the worst month yet, with an increase of 278 percent
in deforestation compared to July 2018.
The Fate of the Rio Branco Project
For Amazon defenders, the crises of wildfires and
deforestation will only worsen if the Baron of Rio Branco Project is fully
implemented, with the rainforest further opened up to the destruction wrought
by Bolsonaro’s allies in agribusiness.
Because of secrecy and obfuscation, the project’s fate is
unclear. In January, the government wanted to pass a resolution that would
mandate a 100-day implementation deadline for the project, although that did
not come to pass. The plan, nonetheless, was discussed in closed meetings
coordinated by Calderaro, who went to Santarém in February to discuss the
project with the mayor, Nélio Aguiar, and to Rio de Janeiro to meet with the
staff of the Institute of Military Engineers to get strategic maps of the
region. In March, Calderaro discussed the Baron of Rio Branco plan with Marques
de Santa Rosa, who was previously removed from a high-ranking military post in
2010 for criticizing the National Truth Commission that investigated crimes
committed by the military dictatorship.
In April, agribusiness leaders were appraised of the Rio
Branco Project at a meeting at the headquarters of the Federation of
Agriculture and Livestock in Pará. And, in the capital Brasília, numerous
meetings were held to discuss the plan. The most recent, on June 19, featured
the participation of Marques de Santa Rosa, the Strategic Planning Secretary
Wilson Trezza, and Director of International Strategic Affairs Paulo Érico
Santos de Oliveira. In the official records, there is no mention of the participation
of the authorities of the Ministry of the Environment in these discussions.
The Rio Branco Project “is still in the discussion and
consideration phases,” said a spokesperson for the Secretariat of Strategic
Affairs in a statement. “We are planning to form a group integrating various
ministries, through an official resolution, to refine the Rio Branco Project.
However, there is no set date for its launch.” The spokesperson added that
Bolsonaro would soon issue an order to form the working group, and the
government expected the project to benefit local communities who live in
poverty.
In response to an inquiry, the army said that the military
has nothing to say on the subject.
If the project is fully implemented, it’s unlikely to ever
accomplish the goals laid out in the presentations obtained by The Intercept.
“We must raise income and the contribution of the Amazon to the Brazilian GDP,
which at present is no more than 5.4 percent in such a rich area,” the
presenter says on the recording. “We must reach a value of at least 50 percent
to achieve equality with the rest of the country.”
In fact, the gross domestic product yielded by legal
activity in the Amazon corresponds to 8.6 percent of the Brazilian total — a
proportion that has grown in recent years. To reach 50 percent of the country’s
GDP would be a herculean task: The Amazon region would have to generate twice
as much income as São Paulo, the richest state in Brazil, which currently
accounts for 31 percent of the GDP.
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