Dam the Rivers, Damn the People: Development and Resistance in Amazonian Brazil

by Barbara J . Cummings (Author), Barbara J . Cummings (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.23

  Enormous coverage has been given to the destruction of the rainforests in Brazil, and there is worldwide concern over the loss of species and the consequences for the greenhouse effect . Most of the coverage, however, has focussed on the slash and burn policies of land-hungry farmers, whereas perhaps the greatest threat to the forest, and to the people indigenous to it, comes from the enormous hydro-electric schemes under construction there. Not only do they destroy much forest themselves, they encourage further industrial and agricultural colonization, and they dispossess tens of thousands of Indians. This book looks at two massive projects, in Amazonas and Altamira, embarked on secretly by the Brazilian government and with finance and encouragement from the World Bank and Western interests. It examines the consequences for the forest and its people (35,000 in Altamira alone), and describes their growing resistance to development , a fight on the outcome of which the future of the forests depends.