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Conquering El Dorado: Why Bolsonaro is Winning in the Wild Amazon Jungle (Spanish)

Soldiers pave some of the last miles of BR-163, a highway cutting through the Amazon basin which Bolsonaro had pledged to complete. For years, trucks carrying grain for export have lumbered along this slow, muddy road. Its completion significantly reduces transport time. Image by Heriberto Araújo. Brazil, 2019.

Soldiers pave some of the last miles of BR-163, a highway cutting through the Amazon basin which Bolsonaro had pledged to complete. For years, trucks carrying grain for export have lumbered along this slow, muddy road. Its completion significantly reduces transport time. Image by Heriberto Araújo. Brazil, 2019.

In order to understand the conflict between preservation and destruction in today's Brazilian Amazon, one must consider the basic principle of the frontier. Frontier is not understood as a boundary or limitation, but as an area of expansion and opportunity defined in the terms of the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner. A contemporary El Dorado that must be conquered by a pioneer whose calling is to bring wealth to himself and his nation using the rich resources that await his discovery.

The world's largest tropical forest and the extraordinary Amazon River—the largest river by volume of them all—has fascinated the West following the conquest of the Americas. Its majesty is spellbinding. But the massiveness of the jungle and its unruly territory made the region almost unfit for human development. And there were those who tried hard to develop it, like Henry Ford, who in 1928 built a factory city on the banks of the Tapajós River where he would be able to produce rubber for his cars. Two decades and tens of millions of dollars later, he had to close it, in a paradigmatic example of how the Amazon was capable of quashing plans—even those of the father of modern industrialism.

To read the full story in Spanish, click here.

Para comprender el pulso que se libra actualmente en la Amazonia brasileña entre preservación y destrucción no hay principio más elemental que el de frontera. Frontera entendida no como un confín o un límite, sino como un área de expansión y oportunidad en los términos definidos por el padre de este concepto, el historiador estadounidense Frederick Jackson Turner. Un El Dorado contemporáneo que debe ser conquistado por el pionero, quien está emplazado a generar bienestar para sí y para la nación con las exuberantes riquezas que allí aguardan.

La gran selva tropical del planeta y el extraordinario río Amazonas —el mayor y más caudaloso de todos— causaron fascinación en Occidente tras la conquista de América. Su majestuosidad hechizaba. Pero la inmensa selva y su entorno salvaje hacían de ella un territorio inasible, casi impropio al desarrollo humano. Y hubo quien lo intentó con ahínco, como Henry Ford, quien en 1928 erigió una ciudad-fábrica a orillas del río Tapajós donde producir caucho para sus automóviles. Dos décadas y decenas de millones de dólares después, tuvo que cerrar, en un ejemplo paradigmático de que la Amazonia era capaz de someter hasta al padre del industrialismo moderno.