Brazil: Power and the Xingu

A huge Amazon hydropower project shows how hard it is to balance the demands of the environment and of a growing and prospering country

Protesters in paint and headdresses in Brasília, warring tribes of lawyers and a mountain of pig dung: yet another giant Brazilian public-works contract was up for grabs, and the lobbies were restless. After the courts struck down an avalanche of eleventh-hour injunctions, late on April 20th a consortium of contractors won the right to build Belo Monte, a huge hydroelectric power station to be raised on the Xingu river in the eastern Amazon basin.
Amazon: Power and the Xingu

A huge Amazon hydropower project shows how hard it is to balance the demands of the environment and of a growing and prospering country

The victors—led by Chesf, a state-owned hydropower generator, and several construction firms—celebrated quietly and quickly. Their discretion was understandable. Waiting outside the auction room at Brazil’s power regulator was an angry mob, kitted out in overalls and warpaint, and three tonnes of fresh manure, courtesy of a local pig farm. “Belo Monte de Merda” read the banner in the ripening heap.

But Brazil’s rapidly growing economy needs more energy, preferably renewable. The scale of the dam—it will be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric station after China’s Three Gorges and Brazil’s own Itaipu—is epic. So is the investment, of at least 19 billion reais (nearly $11 billion). But ever since the engineers in Brasília rolled out the blueprints for damming the Xingu two decades ago, the project has attracted powerful opposition.

Environmental groups and river dwellers say Belo Monte will flood vast patches of rainforest while desiccating others. “The forest is our butcher shop, the river is our market,” Indian leaders wrote in a newspaper. They were aided by greens from Europe and the United States, including the tribes of Hollywood. James Cameron, a film director, flew in to daub his face in red paint, hug an Indian and join the protest.

In his past as a labour leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president since 2003, might have joined them. Now he has a legacy to mind. Belo Monte is the centrepiece of the government’s ambitious public-investment programme—the flagship initiative of Dilma Rousseff, his former chief of staff and would-be successor, who faces a tough fight in October’s presidential election against José Serra, the main opposition candidate. As president, Lula has shown little patience for tree-huggers (see article), never mind grandstanding gringos. “They don’t need to come here and give us advice,” he snapped.

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