The Mayan Train, the flagship megaproject of leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, seeks to promote the socioeconomic development of the south and southeast of the country, with an emphasis on tourism and with the goal of transporting 50,000 passengers per day by 2023. The fear is that the mass influx of tourists will damage preserved coastal areas, such as Tulum beach in the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy

By Emilio Godoy
Mexico City, Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

Mayan anthropologist Ezer May fears that the tourism development and real estate construction boom that will be unleashed by the Mayan Train, the main infrastructure project of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will disrupt his community.

“What we think is that the east of the town could be affected,” May told IPS by phone from his hometown of Kimbilá.

“The most negative impact will come when they start building the development hub around the train station,” he said. “We know that the tourism industry and other businesses will receive a boost. There is uncertainty about what is to come; many ejidatarios [members of an ejido, public land held in common by the inhabitants of a village and farmed cooperatively or individually] don’t know what’s happening.”

This town of 4,000 people, whose name means “water by the tree”, is in the municipality of Izamal in the northern part of the state of Yucatan, about 1,350 km southeast of Mexico City. The district will have a Mayan Train station, although its size is not yet known, and the prospect awakens fears as well as hope among the communities involved.

In Kimbilá, 10 km from the city of Izamal, there are 560 ejidatarios who own some 5,000 hectares of land where they grow corn and vegetables, raise small livestock and produce honey.

“These ejido lands are going to be in the sights of tourism and real estate companies, real estate speculation and everything else that urban development implies. We will see the same old dispossession and asymmetrical agreements and contracts for buying up land at extremely low prices; we’ll see unequal treatment,” said May.

The government’s National Tourism Fund (Fonatur) is promoting the project, which is to cost between 6.2 and 7.8 billion dollars. Construction began in May.

The plan is for the Mayan Train to begin operating in 2022, with 19 stations and 12 other stops along some 1,400 km of track, which will be added to the nearly 27,000 km of railways in Mexico, Latin America’s second largest economy, population 129 million.

It will run through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of the country: Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Chiapas and Tabasco, the first three of which are in the Yucatan Peninsula, which has one of the most important and fragile ecosystems in Mexico and is home to 11.1 million people.

Its locomotives will run on diesel and the trains are projected to carry about 50,000 passengers daily by 2023, reaching 221,000 by 2053, in addition to cargo such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, which are major agricultural products in the region.

A map of the Mayan Train’s route through the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Construction began in May and it is expected to begin operating in 2023. CREDIT: Fonatur

Pros and cons

The Mexican government is promoting the megaproject as an engine for social development that will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and energise the regional economy.

But it has unleashed controversy between those who back the administration’s propaganda and those who question the railway because of its potential environmental, social and cultural impacts, as well as the risk of fuelling illegal activities, such as human trafficking and drug smuggling.

The megaproject involves the construction of development hubs in the stations, which include businesses, drinking water, drainage, electricity and urban infrastructure, and which, according to the ministry of the environment itself, represent the greatest environmental threat posed by the railway.

U.N. Habitat, which offers technical advice on the project’s land-use planning aspects, estimates that the Mayan Train will create one million jobs by 2030 and lift 1.1 million people out of poverty, in an area that includes 42 municipalities with high poverty rates.

The region has become the country’s new energy frontier, with the construction of wind and solar parks, and agribusiness production such as transgenic soy and large pig farms. At the same time, it suffers from high levels of deforestation, fuelled by lumber extraction and agro-industry.

The environmental impact assessment itself and several independent scientific studies warn of the ecological damage that would be caused by the railway, which experts say the Mexican government does not seem willing to address.

The crux: the development model

Violeta Núñez, an academic at the public Autonomous Metropolitan University, told IPS that there is an internal contradiction within the government between those seeking a change in the socioeconomic conditions in the region and supporters of the real estate business.

“You have to ask yourself what kind of development you are pursuing and whether it is the best option,” she said. “The Mayan Train is aimed at profits and these stakeholders are not interested in people’s well-being, but in making money. What some indigenous organisations have said is that they never asked for a railway, and they feel that the project has been imposed on them.”

The railroad will cross ejido lands in five states where there are 5,386 ejidos totalling 12.5 million hectares. The ejidos would contribute the land and would be the main investors. To finance the stations, Fonatur has proposed three types of trusts that can be quoted on the Mexican stock market and that entail financial risks, such as the loss of the investment.

The undertaking was not suspended by the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, as the government classified its construction as an “essential activity”.

In Calakmul, in the southeastern state of Campeche, the Mayan Train will make use of the right-of-way that the Federal Electricity Commission has for its power lines. But on other stretches construction of the new 1,400-km railway will lead to the eviction of families. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

To legitimise its construction, the leftwing López Obrador administration organised a consultation with indigenous communities through 30 regional assemblies, 15 informative and 15 consultative, held Nov. 29-30 and Dec. 14-15, 2019, respectively.

These assemblies were attended by 10,305 people from 1,078 indigenous communities in the five states, out of a potentially affected population of 1.5 million people, 150,000 of whom are indigenous.

But the consultation was carried out before the environmental impact assessment of the megaproject was even completed.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico questioned whether this process met international standards, such as the provisions of International Labour Organisation Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, to which the country is a party.

The railway will also displace an undetermined number of people, to make room for the tracks and stations, although U.N. Habitat insists that this will be “consensual”.

Fears of a new Cancún

The government argues that the project will not repeat the mistakes of mass tourism destinations, symbolised by Cancún, which wrought environmental havoc in that former Caribbean paradise in Quintana Roo. But its critics argue that the major beneficiaries appear to be the same big tourism, real estate and hotel chains, and that it will cause the same problems as a result of the heavy influx of visitors.

In Kimbilá, the local population already has firsthand experience of confrontations over megaprojects, such as a Spanish company’s attempt to build a wind farm, cancelled in 2016. But the difference is that now the opponent is much more powerful.

May said the railway “is an attempt to transform indigenous peoples and integrate them into the tourism-based economic model. They want us to imagine development from a global perspective, because it is a sign of socioeconomic progress. They believe that tourism is the source of progress, that cities bring development and that this is the best way to go.”

In Izamal, home to more than 26,800 people, construction of the development hub would require 853 hectares, 376 of which belong to ejidos.

Núñez warned of the disappearance of the campesino (peasant farmer) and indigenous way of life. “People have survived because of their relationship with the land and now this survival is being thrown into question and they are to become workers in the development hubs. This is not an option, if we are to defend the rural indigenous way of life,” she said.

The researcher suggested that an alternative would be the appropriation of the megaproject by the communities, in which “the ejidatarios themselves, in a joint association, present an alternative proposal other than the trusts on the stock market.”

The Mayan Train is a link in a plan that seeks to integrate the south and southeast of Mexico with Central America, starting with the government’s “Project for the territorial reordering of the south-southeast” and linked to the “Project for the integration and development of Mesoamerica”, which has been modified in appearance but not in substance since the beginning of the 21st century.

Its aim is to link that region to global markets and curb internal and external migration through the construction of megaprojects, the promotion of tourism and the services entailed.

In the 2000s, the government of the southern state of Chiapas fomented “Sustainable Rural Cities”, with aims similar to those of the Mayan Train, and experts argue that the failure of that project should be remembered.

Former Brazilian presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff take part in an Apr. 29 demonstration in defence of the shipbuilding industrial hub in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, one of the oil projects in Brazil on the verge of bankruptcy, due to the crisis plaguing the state-run oil company Petrobras due to the corruption scandal and the drop in oil prices. Credit: Stuckert/Lula Institute

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 6 2017 (IPS)

It cannot be categorically stated that corruption has increased in the country in recent years, because there is no objective information from earlier periods to compare with, according to Manoel Galdino, executive director of Transparency Brazil.

But recent revelations give the impression of a drastic increase in corruption, involving unprecedented amounts of money, nearly the entire political leadership of the country, and numerous state-run and private companies.

The Odebrecht conglomerate, led by Brazil’s biggest construction company, admitted to having paid 3.39 billion dollars in bribes to politicians between 2006 and 2014.

And that is only part of the scandal. More than 30 companies, including other large construction firms, are allegedly involved in the embezzlement of funds from the state oil company Petrobras, the initial focus of the “Lava Jato” (Carwash) investigation launched by the Public Prosecutor’s office, which has been exposing Brazil’s systemic corruption over the last three years.

The proliferation of mega-projects in the energy and transport sectors since 2005 coincides with the apparent rise in illegal dealings, with the collusion of politicians and business executives to maintain shared monopolies of power and excessive profits.

The 2006 discovery of huge oil deposits under a thick layer of salt in the Atlantic Ocean, known as the “pre-salt” reserves, sparked a surge of mega-projects, such as two big refineries and dozens of shipyards to produce drillships, oil platforms and other oil industry equipment.

Those projects came on top of petrochemical complexes that had already been projected.

In the following years, two big hydropower plants began being built on the Madeira River, and in 2011 the construction of another huge plant, Belo Monte, got underway on the Xingu River. This turned the Amazon region into a major supplier of energy for the rest of the country.

Three railroads, over 1,500-km-long each, ports all along the coast and others on the riverbanks were added to highways in the process of being paved or expanded to reduce the country’s deficit of transport infrastructure.

“Mega-projects always have a big potential for corruption. In Brazil we have always had a lot of corruption, which has now become more visible, thanks to the activity of oversight bodies and the media,” Roberto Livanu, president of the independent I Do Not Accept Corruption Institute, told IPS.

“But we cannot say that there is more corruption now than before, there is no way of measuring the magnitude, amounts and people involved,” said Livanu, who also works with the prosecution in the judicial proceedings.

Because of the very nature of the crime, “we only have subjective perceptions created by the visibility of the cases, which is now increased by the involvement of people in power, attracting much more interest from the press,” he said.

Besides, due to their complexity, mega-projects tend to fail – 65 per cent of them fail in at least one of four main aspects: cost, deadlines, objective and quality – says Edward Merrow, head of the U.S. consultancy Independent Project Analysis (IPA), in his book “Industrial MegaProjects”.

This complexity, he says, also contributes to corruption, at least in countries such as Brazil, with multiple opportunities for fraud presented by the thousands of contracts signed with suppliers of goods, services and financing, and regulatory and tax authorities.

On Apr. 24 the Senate passed a law penalising abuse of authority, with the aim of avoiding the need for further probes like “Lava Jato”, which is investigating one-third of the members of the Senate on corruption charges. Credit: Lula Marques/AGPT

“It is likely that with the greater circulation of money, in a growing economy, with major investments, corruption may have increased in Brazil, but it is not possible to confirm it,” said Galdino, from Transparency Brazil.

This is because we don’t know the proportion that corruption represented in the past with respect to GDP, because there was no research that made it possible to obtain the results available today, he explained.

“Supervisory bodies have made a lot of progress in the past 15 to 20 years and this is what led to the Lava Jato operation,” also underpinned by a mobilised civil society, Galdino said.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office was strengthened and its investigations began to be carried out together with specialised judicial bodies, the Federal Police, tax authorities and financial oversight bodies, since corruption flourishes along with money laundering, he said.

The plea bargains that encourage cooperation with the justice system in exchange for reduced sentences were a key instrument for the success of Lava Jato, with 155 such agreements reached with people under investigation.

The law allowing for plea bargains was passed in 2013, in response to popular protests that shook cities across Brazil in June that year, said Galdino, the head of Transparency Brazil, a non-governmental organisation whose aim is to improve institutions through monitoring and public debate.

“Until the 1990s the focus was on combatting administrative irregularities, but this approach did not lead to jail sentences for anyone,” he compared, citing as an example the case of lawmaker Paulo Maluf, a symbol of corruption ever since he was elected governor of the southern state of São Paulo (1979-1982), but who was convicted abroad, not in Brazil.

However, there are studies that show an increase in corruption when there is an abundance of public resources, as well as greater tolerance of those engaging in corruption during times of prosperity.

A ten per cent rise in transfers of resources from the central government to small municipalities increased by 16 per cent the serious cases of corruption in the city governments in questions, according to a study by Brazilian economist Fernanda Brollo, a professor at the British University of Warwick, together with four Italian colleagues.

The study was based on figures from 1,202 municipalities with a population of less than 5,940, during two periods of government between 2001 and 2008. The mayors who benefitted from the increased funds were re-elected in a greater proportion than the rest, despite the corruption.

“He steals but he gets things done” was the informal slogan of a former São Paulo politician, Adhemar de Barros, who governed that state during several periods between 1938 and 1966. In 1950 he was so popular that he was seen as a strong candidate to the presidency of Brazil, but he did not run.

Building large works, such as highways, hospitals and power plants has always been a source of popularity, as well as, according to popular suspicion, illicit wealth.

The proliferation of mega-projects during the governments of leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), with dozens of works involving investments of over one billion dollars, in some cases over 10 billion dollars, with huge cost overruns, appears to confirm their direct relation with an increase in diverted resources.

Lava Jato initially investigated the oil business. But the corruption affected other projects in varied sectors, such as hydroelectric plants, the Angra-3 nuclear plant (under construction), railways and stadiums built or upgraded for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, according to that and other investigations carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is fighting the construction of an oil pipeline across their land in North Dakota. The movement has gained international solidarity and has many things in common with indigenous struggles against megaprojects in Latin America. Credit: Downwindersatrisk.org

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Nov 11 2016 (IPS)

Canadian activist Clayton Thomas-Muller crossed the border between his country and the United States to join the Native American movement against the construction of an oil pipeline, which has become a model to follow in struggles by indigenous people against megaprojects, that share many common elements.

“It’s an amazing movement. Its number one factor is the spiritual founding of cosmology. There are indigenous people all around the world that share the cosmology of water. There is a feeling on sacred land. This is the biggest indigenous movement since pre-colonial times,” the delegate for the Indigenous Environmental Network told IPS.

Thomas-Muller, of the Cree people, stressed that the oil pipeline “is one of the major cases of environmental risk in the United States” fought by indigenous people.

“We see many parallels in the local indigenous struggles. When indigenous people arise and call upon the power of their cosmology and their world view and add them up to social movements, they light people up as we’ve never seen,” he told IPS by phone from the Sioux encampment that he joined on Nov. 6.

“This struggle is everywhere, the whole world is with Standing Rock,” he said.
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Standing Rock Sioux is the tribe that heads the opposition to the 1,890-km Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in the state of North Dakota, along the Canadian border.

The 3.7 billion dollar pipeline, which is being built by the US company Dakota Access, is to transport 470,000 barrels of crude oil daily from the Bakken shale formation.

The opposition to the pipeline by the Sioux, or Dakota, Indians has brought construction to a halt since September, in a battle that has gained thousands of supporters since April, including people from different Native American tribes, environmental activists and celebrity advocates, not only from the U.S. but from around the world.

Their opposition is based on the damages that they say the pipeline would cause to sacred sites, indigenous land and water bodies. They complain that the government did not negotiate with them access to a territory over which they have complete jurisdiction.

Some 600 flags of indigenous peoples from around the world wave over the camp on the banks of the Missouri River where the movement has been resisting the crackdown that has intensified since October. Of the U.S. population of 325 million, about 2.63 million are indigenous people, belonging to 150 different tribes.

The movement has served as an example for similar battles in Latin America, according to indigenous leaders.

Map of the Sioux territory affected by the oil pipeline in the U.S. state of North Dakota. Credit: Northlandia.com

In the northern Mexican state of Sonora, the Yaqui people are also fighting a private pipeline threatening their lands.

“We were not asked or informed. We want to be consulted, we want our rights to be respected. We are defending our territory, our environment,” Yaqui activist Plutarco Flores told IPS.

In a consultation held in accordance with their uses and customs in May 2015, the Yaqui people – one of Mexico’s 54 native groups – voted against the gas pipeline that would run across their land. But the government failed to recognise their decision. In response, the Yaqui filed an appeal for legal protection in April, which halted construction.

Of the 850-km pipeline, 90 km run through Yaqui territory – and through people’s backyards. In October, a violent clash between opponents and supporters of the pipeline left one indigenous person dead and 14 injured.

For Flores, the indigenous struggle against megaprojects has become “a paradigm” and protests like the one at Standing Rock “inspire and reassure us because of our shared cultural patterns.”

Also in Mexico, in the northern state of Sinaloa, the Rarámuri native people have since January 2015 halted the construction of a gas pipeline across their lands and the bordering U.S. state of Texas, demanding free prior and informed consultation, as required by law.

Unlike the U.S., Latin American countries are signatories to International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which protects their rights and makes this kind of consultation obligatory in the case of projects that affect their territories.

But in many cases, according to indigenous leaders consulted by IPS, this right has not been incorporated in national laws, or is simply not complied with, when projects involving oil, mining, hydroelectric or infrastructure activities affect their ancestral lands.

United Nations Special Rapporteur for Indigenous People’s Rights, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, during her visit to Mexico City for an international conference on indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consultation on projects that affect their lands. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Both the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous People’s Rights, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, requested in September that the U.S. government consult the communities affected by the oil pipeline.

“The fact that they’re not being consulted means a violation to their rights. The arrests that have taken place are too a violation of the right of free assembly,” Tauli-Corpuz told IPS Nov. 9, at the end of a visit to Mexico.

During her three days in the country, the special rapporteur participated in a conference on indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consultation, promoted by the the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights and the Inter American Commission on Human Rights.

Tauli-Corpuz also met with representatives of 20 indigenous Mexican communities affected by gas pipelines, hydropower plants, highways and mines. The Mexican government announced that in 2017 it would officially invite the special rapporteur to assess the situation of indigenous people in Mexico.

The U.N. official said a recurring complaint she has heard on her trips to Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Panama and Peru is the lack of free, prior consultation that is obligatory under Convention 169.

In Costa Rica, the Maleku people, one of the Central American country’s eight indigenous groups, who total 104,000 people, are worried about the expansion of the San Rafael de Guatuso aqueduct, in the north of the country.

“A fake consultation was carried out. Also, the people do not want water meters, because they would have to pay more for water,” Tatiana Mojica, the Maleku people’s legal representative, who is thinking about filing an appeal for legal protection against the project, told IPS during the colloquium.

Since September, Sarayaku indigenous people from Ecuador, Emberá-Wounaan from Panamá, and Tacana from Bolivia have visited the Sioux camp to protest the oil pipeline.

Thomas-Muller said “We have the opportunity to stop it. I’m optimistic that we will be victorious here. These movements are the hammer that will fall over oil infrastructure owned by the banks and big corporations. We want political will to make an appearance,” he said.

A major Nov. 15 protest is being organised to demand that the government refuse a permit for the North Dakota pipeline.

“This struggle will go through all the steps that it has to. We will make sure that the Sonora pipeline is not built,” said Flores.

Meanwhile, Mojica said “we are uniting to fight against megaprojects that affect us. We are making ourselves heard.”

Tauli-Corpuz said “Opposition to pipelines is a common feature of indigenous people. It’s a magnet that attracts solidarity from all over the world.”

Modern office buildings and stores, all empty, are among the “white elephants” in the city of Itaboraí, near Rio de Janeiro, left by an aborted petrochemical and oil refinery complex in southeast Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO , Aug 3 2016 (IPS)

An era of mega-events and mega-projects is coming to a close in Brazil with the Olympic Games to be hosted Aug. 5-21 by Rio de Janeiro. But the country’s taste for massive construction undertakings helped fuel the economic and political crisis that has it in its grip.

It is no mere coincidence that President Dilma Rousseff, suspended during her ongoing impeachment trial over charges of breaking budgetary regulations, will face the final vote in the Senate this same month.

Over the past decade, large-scale investment projects and public works, some not yet finished, others even abandoned, have driven the economy, triggered controversies, and fed the dreams and frustrations of Brazilians, mirroring and accelerating the rise and fall from power of the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT).

The country’s economic growth and the international prestige of then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) played a decisive role in the 2007 choice of Brazil as host of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Two years later, Rio de Janeiro was selected as the venue for the 2016 Olympic Games.

In 2007 Rio hosted the Pan American Games, which kicked off the string of sports mega-events in Brazil, including the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2013.

The wave of mega-infrastructure projects also began at the same time, in response to the needs of the energy and transportation industries, mainly for the export of mining and agricultural commodities.

Large hydropower dams, railways, ports, the paving of roads and the diversion of the São Francisco River to ease drought in the arid Northeast, as well as numerous public works in cities, formed part of the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC), which included tax breaks and credit facilities.

Rousseff, who also belongs to the PT, succeeded Lula in the presidency after an election campaign in which she was referred to as “the mother of PAC” – an allusion to her skill in implementing and managing the programme that involved thousands of construction projects around the country, as Lula’s chief of staff.

In the oil industry, the 2006 discovery of enormous offshore petroleum deposits below a two-kilometre thick salt layer under rock, sand and deep water in the Atlantic prompted the launch of another major wave of construction, including four large refineries, two petrochemical complexes, and dozens of shipyards to produce oil drilling rigs, offshore platforms and tankers.

The two biggest refineries, in the Northeast, were cancelled in 2015, resulting in some 800 million dollars in losses. Another is partially operating.

Work on the last one – and on the petrochemical complex of which it forms part, near Rio de Janeiro – was interrupted, leaving empty a number of office buildings and hotels that were built in surrounding towns and cities to service an industrial boom and prosperity that never arrived.

The Belo Monte hydroelectric plant’s turbine room in the northern Brazilian state of Pará, under construction in 2015. The mega-project is to be finished in 2019. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Most of the shipyards went under or shrunk to a minimum. In Niterói, Rio de Janeiro’s sister city, half of the 10 shipyards closed and over 80 percent of their 15,000 workers were laid off.

Possibly the house of cards of this fast-track development would have come tumbling down regardless, but several destructive factors compounded the problem and accelerated the approach of the disaster.

Oil prices plunged in 2014, simultaneously with the outbreak of the Petrobras bribery scandal that has ensnared hundreds of legislators and business executives.

In addition, the governments of Lula and Rousseff attempted to curb inflation by blocking domestic fuel price increases – another blow to the finances of Petrobras, the state oil company, which almost collapsed under the weight of so many difficulties.

The railways did not fare any better. Construction of two railroads – one private and another public – designed to cross the impoverished but fast-growing Northeast at different latitudes ground to a halt and are candidates to become white elephants due to the suspension of mining industry projects, whose output they were to transport.

As a result, the construction of a new seaport and the expansion of two others were also suspended. 

At least the hydroelectric plants are in the process of being completed. But they are suffering the ups and downs of the power industry. There are delays in the installation of power lines and electricity consumption has slumped as a result of the economic recession that broke out in 2014, expanding spare capacity and driving up losses in power generation and distribution plants.

The four largest hydropower plants, built on fragile rivers in the Amazon rainforest, are facing accusations of causing environmental damage and violating the rights of local populations: indigenous people, riverbank dwellers and fishing communities.

Belo Monte, the world’s third-largest hydroelectric dam, with a capacity to generate 11,233 MW, was accused of “ethnocidal actions” against indigenous people by the public prosecutor’s office and is facing 23 lawsuits on charges of failing to live up to legal requirements.

At the same time, it is also criticised by proponents of hydropower, because it will generate, on average, only 40 percent of its potential. With a relatively small reservoir, an alternative that was chosen to reduce the environmental impact, it will be at the mercy of the marked seasonal variations in water flow in the Xingú River, where the flow is 20 times lower in the dry season than the rainy season.

Roads have not formed part of the recent wave of mega-projects. Although they are being paved and widened, they were originally built in earlier waves of construction projects, in the 1950s and 1970s.

Brazil’s addiction to massive construction projects was probably born with the emergence of Brasilia, built in a remote, inhospitable location over 1,500 km from the biggest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in just five years, during the administration of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-1961).

This bold feat was completed with the construction of roads running from the new capital in all directions.

But these long roads that cut across the country didn’t become paved highways, with proper bridges, until decades later.

Seen as a success story, Brasilia has prompted politicians to seek to make their mark with major construction projects, although the city was only part of the broader plan of Kubitschek, who pushed forward the development of Brazil’s steel industry by spurring the growth of the automotive industry.

The widespread belief that Brasilia was the big driver of settlement and development of the west and north of the country ignores the role played by the expansion of agriculture.

The 1964-1985 military dictatorship later fed the ambition of turning Brazil into a great power, with a nuclear programme that took three decades to build two power plants, the construction of two of the world’s five biggest hydroelectric plants, and roads to settle the Amazon.

The Trans-Amazonian highway, which was designed to cut across northern Brazil to the Colombian border but is incomplete and impassable for large stretches during the rainy season, is a symbol of failed lavish projects that helped bring down the dictatorship.

The origins of the megalomania can also be traced to the 1950 FIFA World Cup, for which the Maracana Stadium was built in Rio de Janeiro – for decades the largest in the world – holding held up to 180,000 spectators back then, more than double its current capacity.

The historic defeat that Brazil suffered at the hands of Uruguay in the final match in 1950, a devastating blow never forgotten by Brazilians, did not keep this country from hosting the 2014 World Cup, building new stadiums to suffer yet another shattering defeat, this time to Germany, which beat them 7-1 in the semi-finals.

Now, in the grip of an economic crisis expected to last for years, Brazil is unlikely to embark on new megaprojects. And the hope that they can drive development will have been dampened after so many failed projects and the heavy environmental, social and economic criticism and resistance.

Model of one of the two dams under construction to harness the Santa Cruz river in the southern Argentine province of that name. The project is to cost five billion dollars, and 85 percent will be financed by China. It was granted to a consortium of Argentine and Chinese companies. Credit: Represas Patagonia

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 22 2016 (IPS)

Argentina’s new government is reviewing several major projects to be carried out jointly with China. But aside from a few changes in priorities, the administration is not expected to put the brakes on an alliance that Beijing classifies as strategic.

One of the campaign pledges of the conservative Mauricio Macri, who was sworn in as president on Dec. 10, was to revise or cancel agreements with China that he considered “lacking in transparency” or “secret”.

His centre-left predecessor, Cristina Fernández (2007-2015), signed a set of laws in March 2015 that gave rise to a framework agreement with China on economic cooperation and investment, strengthening relations between the two countries.

In his campaign, Macri and his associates lashed out harshly at the agreements with China. But after the excitement of the elections was over, the new government changed its tune.

“We can’t deny China’s weight in the world. It is not in Argentina’s interest to break with China,” said the new foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, describing their ties as part of “a balanced relationship with the world.”

In December, in fact, Macri used a currency swap deal (the exchange of principal and interest in one currency for the same in another) in effect with China since 2014, in the first measure he took to shore up Argentina’s foreign reserves.

And as his ambassador to Beijing he chose Diego Guelar, a diplomat who is considered one of the promoters of the alliance between China and Argentina.

“International pacts must be respected…Some believe that if we fail to honour our agreements with China, it will be well looked upon, quote unquote, by the United States and Europe,” Guelar said in an interview with the newspaper Perfil.

“But it’s quite the opposite: he who fails to honour some, does the same with others; that is, a reliable Argentina, which lives up to its international commitments and is loyal to its foreign partners, is a key factor in the credibility that we have to develop to the utmost,” he stressed.

China’s ambassador in Buenos Aires, Yang Wanming, pointed out that his country is the third-largest investor in Argentina, and that in the last five years, investments and merger and acquisition operations in Argentina have totaled 8.3 billion dollars.

Allowing these projects to go ahead “will set a good example for substantial China-Argentina cooperation in the future,” he said.

Apparently, pragmatism appears to have once more taken precedence over political rhetoric.

An inter-urban railway car in Buenos Aires on a line that connects the Retiro neighbourhood with Tigre, in the north of Greater Buenos Aires. These Chinese-made cars are part of trade and investment accords reached by the two countries in the railway industry. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“Relations with China largely explain the years of economic growth after the 2001 crisis. Chinese investment in Latin America has grown significantly since around 2009,” Argentine academic Gonzalo Paz told IPS.

“The announcement that the accords would be reviewed was both a consequence of the election campaign and of the need for a thorough study of all of the issues in the relationship, and in particular of the megaprojects that were agreed in the final stage of the previous government,” he said.

Paz, an expert in relations between East Asia and Latin America at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., believes Macri will try to expand ties with long-time partners like Italy and France, and get relations with the United States back on track.

“But a top global power like China must continue to be a key partner of Argentina,” he added.

In an interview with the Argentine-Chinese cultural magazine Dang Dai, Guelar announced that, in any case, he would review things that “were done badly or carelessly.”

“I believe the criticism of those projects will lead to changes, but not to a break in relations with China,” the director of Dang Dai, Néstor Restivo, co-author of the book “Everything you need to know about China” published by the Paidós publishing house, told IPS.

“In the future it will be essential to see what new areas of cooperation open up or what projects are developed. In other words it would be a serious mistake to only focus on the management of the projects that emerged in the previous stage, and to not have a proactive policy,” said Paz.

One of the most emblematic projects to be reviewed is the construction of the Néstor Kirchner-Jorge Cepernic Hydroelectric Complex in the province of Santa Cruz in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region, for a total investment of five billion dollars, 85 percent of which is to be financed by China.

In 2013, the contract for the project was granted to the Patagonia Dams consortium headed by the Argentine companies Hidrocuyo and Electroingeniería and the Chinese firm Gezhboua Group.

The complex, which includes the construction of two dams on the Santa Cruz river, will generate 1,740 MW of electricity, which is to cover eight percent of demand in this energy-strapped country once it has been completed in 2020.

Another megaproject, agreed in November, involves the construction of two nuclear plants – the fourth and fifth in the country – with a total investment of some 15 billion dollars. More than half of the parts in the plants are to be produced domestically, and 85 percent of the financing will come from China.

The agreement includes technology transfer from China and the joint exploration of third country markets.

“I don’t think there will be any backtracking in relations with China,” and the same is true with the hydropower plant, which has already begun to be built and whose contract was assigned in an international tender, Restivo said.

“It’s the biggest construction project that China is currently involved in outside of China…if the new government believes some irregularity was committed, it will continue forward on another track, but it is virtually impossible to think of stopping the project,” he said.

With respect to the nuclear plants, Restivo thinks there may be changes, based on the new government’s strategic energy plan.

“But letters of intent have been signed, and it wouldn’t look good to backpedal in relations with China, although everything is negotiable,” said the economist.

“The Chinese would protest if they were left out of what has already been signed, but they are flexible or pragmatic enough to see how to eventually compensate for a lost business deal,” he said.

The project whose future Restivo has the greatest doubts about is the one signed in August 2015 by the two governments for the upgrade of the freight rail network that links 17 of Argentina’s 23 provinces and belongs to the public railroad company Belgrano Cargas y Logística.

The agreement involves a first tranche of financing from China of 2.4 billion dollars, and a second of 2.47 billion, and foresees the transport of Argentine and Brazil agricultural products to Chilean ports on the Pacific ocean.

One of the casualties of the new government’s wave of dismissals of public employees was the payroll of the company Fabricaciones Militares, which had been commissioned to build some 1,000 rail cars, with more than 80 percent nationally-made parts – a key component in the reconstruction of the local railway industry.

“It’s quite possible that now we won’t be able to count any more on the part that interests me the most – for agreements with China to industrialise Argentina and not only serve Chinese interests,” Restivo said.

Above and beyond these uncertainties, ambassador Yang Wanming hopes for more: “To promote a higher level in the strategic integral alliance” between Beijing and Buenos Aires.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes