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"In a parallel project further south, Brazil is building a road from Santos on the Atlantic coast to Chile's Pacific port of Iquique - a 5,800 kilometer (3,600 mile) highway that will cross through Bolivia." --from the OP
This leg of the road has an important recent history. The Bush Junta funded and supported a violent white separatist insurrection in Bolivia in September 2008 (while their induced economic meltdown was breaking here). Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out of the country. Very importantly, UNASUR convened--which had been formalized only months before--and, led by Chile's socialist president, Michele Batchelet, backed up Morales 100% and helped him to stop that coup. UNASUR is South America's incipient EU-type organization and common market. The white separatists were trying to split off eastern Bolivia, where Bolivia's main resource, gas, is located. In concert with UNASUR, Argentina and Brazil, Bolivia's chief gas customers, made it very clear to the white separatists that they would not trade with a separatist government. Then these leftist leaders provided further aid to Morales: Batchelet initiated settlement of Chile's 100 year old dispute with Bolivia over Bolivia's access to the sea. Chavez provided Morales assistance in re-negotiating Bolivia's gas contracts, which resulted in doubling Bolivia's gas revenues. And Brazil, Venezuela and others put up the money to connect Bolivia to the new transcontinental highway stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They also chose La Paz, Bolivia, for UNASUR's headquarters. Chile providing Bolivia with a port on the Pacific is obviously related to Bolivia's connection to the new highway, making Bolivia a big player in the trade that this highway will stimulate among Latin American countries, up and down both coasts and across the Global South (from Africa to Asia).
Two other important items: Morales is a hugely popular president, elected by big margins. He also got a new constitution passed, by a big margin. That Bolivian constitution enshrines Mother Nature's (Pachama's) right to exist and prosper apart from human needs and desires. Also, Bolivia has the biggest lithium deposit on earth--a key element in electronics and solar technology. Japan has already put up the R&D funds to develop it (but Morales made no commitment to Japanese companies, that they would get the contracts to develop it).
This recent history is one of the key evidences of the new and transformative South American policy of "raising all boats"--bigger, richer countries helping smaller, poorer countries--having each other's backs, cooperation, regional economic/political integration, and multilateral, as opposed to U.S. dominated, trade, which have been forged, for instance, in the Hugo Chavez/Lula da Silva friendship and alliance.
The particular importance of the above events to the super-highway may also include Evo Morales and Bolivia's Indigenous tribes having influence with regard to the super-highway's impacts on the environment and on Indigenous tribes. Development does not have to harm either, but the Brazil-Peru highway development seems to be doing so. Environmentalists say that deforestation is concentrated near paved roads, and that the super-highway will bring deforestation, and that the Indigenous are already being impacted by settlers--in a form of "gold rush"--displacing them and harming their traditional lifestyle of subsistence (and organic) farming, fishing and hunting. (It is literally a "gold rush," as to Peru, where legal and illegal gold mining have greatly increased.) Brazil's leftist leaders don't have a particularly good record on the environment. It's mixed. But Morales is personally devoted to protecting Mother Earth, and so are his many supporters.
Peru's corrupt, rightwing president, Alan Garcia--naturally, a big U.S. ally--has a miserable approval rating (in the 25% range). U.S. "free trade for the rich" has NOT improved life for Peru's poor majority. It has had a similar impact to U.S. "free trade for the rich" in Venezuela prior to Chavez: the creation of a privileged, rich, urban elite--a middle and upper class into U.S.-style consumerism--at the expense of the urban and rural poor. Poor peasant (organic) farmers are driven from their lands--by mining, by deforestation, by pollution (such as U.S. "war on drugs" toxic spraying of small coca & food farms, and U.S. Big Ag toxic farming) and by government policy (abetted by U.S. military aid), often brutal. The poor farmers end up in urban squalor, where they can't feed their families and communities, and become a very cheap, oppressed labor pool for multinational corporate sweatshops and other ravages. And if they don't successfully organize the barrios--as the poor did in Venezuela--they have no political power. The rich urban elite controls the government.
So we have, at the end of this road from Brazil, two very contrasting countries and national leaderships--Peru whose rightwing has sold Peru's soul--along with its resources and people--to the U.S., and Bolivia, a key member of the Bolivarian Revolution, committed to leftist values of social justice and independence, and Indigenous values including the protection of Mother Earth.
Brazil just elected a strong leftist--Dilma Rousseff--Lula da Silva's former chief of staff. Morales isn't going to be unseated, at least not democratically--and, with the failure of the 2008 U.S. coup attempt in Bolivia, the failure of the recent coup attempt in Ecuador (probably also U.S.-involved), and leftists in power in Brazil and Venezuela (also in Argentina, with additional leftist allies in Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua and other countries), democracy in Bolivia and in the region is probably secure, and there will be no more coups, or at least no more successful coups. So, whether or not Rouseff supports strong environmental policies, she will support Morales, who does. Which brings me to what will happen in Peru...
Peru's upcoming election is a free-for-all with right and center-right candidates currently in ascendance. But it is typically a free-for-all at the beginning. Last time out, a leftist and Bolivarian, Ollanta Humala (100% Indigenous, like Morales), almost beat Alan Garcia. He ousted the far rightwing candidate in the first round, and, with Morales' and Chavez's endorsement, gained significant ground in the final vote--most likely from Indigenous voters who decided to vote. Humala is currently polling small but gaining a bit. Another Indigenous candidate--an important tribal leader--just announced. Polls are probably skewed to the rich urban elite--the only beneficiaries of U.S. "free trade for the rich." The poor often don't have phones and live in neighborhoods or rural areas in which they are hard to find. They very likely do not get adequately polled--as the prior presidential election demonstrated. (Everybody was surprised by Humala almost beating Garcia.)
There are big stakes for the U.S. and its multinational corporate/war profiteer rulers, in Peru's election, so the USAID is probably quite busy pouring millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into rightwing groups and candidates in Peru, and the CIA and the corpo-fascist press are likely busy as well. In these circumstances--and with control of trade on the new super-highway at issue--we can probably expect a rightwing, but more likely center-right, president to succeed Garcia, hopefully someone who is less corrupt and more independent of the U.S. The model of Bolivia right next door--an Indigenous president, and an Indigenous, Mother Earth-friendly constitution--must certainly be inspiring to the poor and the Indigenous in Peru. Whether they can overcome U.S. interference and elect a president who actually represents the majority is an open question.
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