Many in Brazil See Their Amazon as a Jungle of Foreign
Intrigue
Suspicions run wild that 'hegemonic' powers like the
U.S. have
designs on the vast, rich region.
By Henry Chu
Times Staff Writer
June 23, 2005
BELEM, Brazil — Afghanistan was the first to fall. Iraq, with all that
oil, was next. And Socorro Leite says she has a fair idea of what else
lies in the sights of the American imperialists.
"Soon," she warns, "their target will be the Amazon."
Insidious plots are already afoot to snatch the rain forest from Brazil
and declare it an international protectorate, the 45-year-old political
aide believes. Foreign scientists and environmental activists are
really secret fronts for nations bent on laying claim to the region's
abundant riches. American schoolkids are being prepped on their right
to control the Amazon.
"A lot of things are happening that we don't know about," Leite says
darkly.
It would be tempting to dismiss Leite, a lifelong resident of this
Amazonian city, as a crackpot if a large number of her fellow
Brazilians didn't share her theories in one form or another.
Many are convinced that foreign powers, in particular the United
States, are making plans for a takeover of the world's biggest tropical
forest to secure the rights to its seemingly limitless natural
resources, from wood to gems to medicinal herbs. In a national survey
released last month, 75% of Brazilians polled feared a foreign invasion
provoked by their country's natural riches.
Opposition to
international "meddling" in the Amazon is one of the rare issues that
Brazil's political right and left can agree on — from nationalistic
groups convinced of a foreign plot to keep Brazil down to Marxists long
hostile to U.S. influence in Latin America, which included support for
the repressive military dictatorship that once ruled Brazil.
As
evidence of malign intentions, they cite the large-scale foreign
business ventures that have tried, and largely failed, to exploit the
jungle, stretching back to a doomed rubber plantation created by Henry
Ford in the 1920s.
Or they cast a suspicious eye at the Amazon
Surveillance Network, a sophisticated tracking system installed by
Brazil to monitor smuggling, deforestation and other illegal
activities. Some consider it a covert American spy operation because
much of its technology was developed by the U.S. defense giant Raytheon
Co.
Even innocuous or complimentary references by outsiders to
the Amazon as a global wonder or international treasure are often
construed as coded calls to take the region away from Brazil and have
it administered by a world body such as the United Nations — led, of
course, by the Americans.
"They've already laid claim to it
morally," said Flavio Lacerda, a 31-year-old street vendor. "They say
the Amazon 'belongs to the world,' of which they're the best
representative. They say they have a real interest in the world and the
Amazon, but in actual fact they care only about themselves."
The high level of paranoia about foreign designs on the Amazon
contrasts with the low level of knowledge most Brazilians have of the
region. Northern Brazil is home to more than half the rain forest —
which is larger than the continental U.S. and spreads across eight
countries — but the vast majority of Brazilians have never set foot in
it.
In some ways, the situation is similar to the way in which
many Americans view Alaska: huge and sparsely populated, rich in oil
and other resources, indisputably part of U.S. territory, but otherwise
a mystery.
Brazilians take umbrage at any suggestion that
their governance of the Amazon is lacking, even though many officials
acknowledge that the rain forest is a lawless place where the state has
had a minimal presence. Rampant deforestation continues despite strict
laws, and land conflicts pitting ranchers and loggers against
environmentalists and squatters claim dozens of lives annually.
Widespread ignorance about the rich territory in their own backyard may
contribute to many Brazilians' ready belief in hoaxes such as the one
centering on a textbook that was supposedly used to teach geography in
American classrooms.
An obscure Brazilian nationalist group
posted a page from the alleged book online featuring a map of South
America with the Amazon marked as the "Former International Reserve of
Amazon Forest." The illustration was accompanied by text describing
how, "since the middle '80s," the U.S. took control of the region from
"eight different and strange countries" and internationalized the area
as a "gift" to the world.
The whole thing is littered with
laughable grammatical and spelling mistakes that would never have
slipped by even the most lackadaisical of American publishers. Entire
passages seem to have been run through a bad automated translator.
Example: "The value of this area is unable to calcule, but the planet
can be cert that The United States won't let these Latin American
countries explorate and destroy this real ownership of all humanity."
But the mangled English didn't stop many Brazilians, even educated
ones, from accepting the "textbook's" authenticity. "They're already
teaching their children that the Amazon belongs to them," Lacerda
complained.
Fanning the conspiracy-theory flames is Brazil's own federal
intelligence agency.
Last month, the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper published an account of
what it said was an agency report describing home-grown and foreign
organizations with a presence in the Amazon as pawns of "hegemonic
countries" trying to "maintain and broaden their domination."
"Everything indicates that environmental problems and problems with
indigenous peoples are only pretexts" for these groups to operate in
the jungle, the paper quoted the report as saying. Among the front
organizations it listed was the World Wildlife Fund.
Daniel C.
Nepstad, an ecologist with the Woods Hole Research Center in
Massachusetts, has felt the effect of such accusations firsthand.
Nepstad, who has been studying the Amazon for two decades, helped found
the Amazon Institute of Environmental Studies here in Belem. Staffed
primarily by Brazilian scientists, the institute still is criticized
"as a front for gringos," he said.
Nepstad has also received
veiled threats from ranchers who were angered by environmentalists'
efforts to have vast swaths of forest turned into national parks and
reserves.
"There are huge sensitivities about international
[nongovernmental organizations] as behind those efforts," he said.
"Some of the billboards that get put up whenever Greenpeace has a
campaign are hilarious: 'Greenpeace Wants Misery,' 'Greenpeace Wants
Unemployment.' "
But Brazilians aren't laughing.
Leandro Schilipake, a sociology professor who attended a recent
Communist Party rally in Belem's central park, worries about the
encroachment of "big North American interests" and global capitalists
on the rain forest. "We don't have a xenophobic attitude regarding the
Amazon. We don't think the riches are here only to benefit Brazilians,"
he said. But "we defend the principle of the sovereignty of nations."
The Amazon, he added, "is a part of our national identity. It's a
symbol of Brazil."
