"But the flashpoint came when the Brazilian government announced its
most ambitious, and potentially its most devastating, proposal to date:
a highway through the state of Acre to Lima, Peru, which would bisect
the Amazon and connect its nascent industries to the Pacific coast and
the economic engine of Japan."
"Even now, Brazil continues to encourage landless peasants to flock to the Amazon, and it has yet to give up on the dream of a transoceanic highway."
The finger wagging dripping from these statements is disgusting - as if the Brazilians should not engage in economic development, which it seems would undoubtedly be good in some way for them, because some people from the developed world have decided that they really prefer that rural Brazil stay just the way it is. Imagine an alternate universe where Germany, for instance, came over in 1845 and told us that they really liked the American West, so why wouldn't we just give up the idea of a transcontinental railroad. It's easy to sit back and make moral judgements when you have no stake in the effects on people other than you.
