NEWS FROM BRAZIL supplied by SEJUP (Servico Brasileiro de Justica e Paz).
Number 519, October 22, 2004

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This week´s issue of News from Brazil focuses on the Militarization of the Amazon Region.

Militarization Advances in the Amazon Region

Aloizio Lins Leal is a professor at the Federal University of Pará and specializes in the militarization of the Amazon area.  Leal has written various articles about the Columbia Plan and the strategy of the U.S. in the region.  In this article, he analyzes the strategy of the U.S. to guarantee access to the natural resources of the Amazon area.

The Brazilian military still understands the Amazon Region in terms of the Doctrine of National Security, according to Aloizio Lins Leal, a professor of Politics and Economics of the Federal University of Pará.   Leal states that the principal preoccupation of the armed forces is to restrain the action of possible internal enemies, such as organized political movements, and not to protect the region from an external aggression.  Leal explains that this type of thinking, born in the Pentagon, orients the occupation of the frontier regions with Columbia in order to obstruct the actions of the Columbian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARCs) and to strengthen the U.S. presence in the region.

The following is an interview  with Professor Leal published in Brasil de Fato

Brasil de Fato: In 2004, according to the official chronogram, the final phase of the Vigilance System of the Amazon (SIVAM)  is being implanted.  Raytheon, a U.S. company, won the contract bidding but suffered from a series of accusations of trading/trafficking influence and illegal favors.  Why is SIVAM so important?

Aloizio Lins Leal:  SIVAM is, in principle, a system of radar with military objectives to guarantee the vigilance of the Amazon region.  We know, however, that the project exists much more to monitor the possibility of the refueling of supplies and provisions of the FARCs.  It is alleged that SIVAM will serve also to control the trafficking of drugs, but in truth, we are looking at a preventive action to restrain the guerrillas.

Brasil de Fato: The Brazilian Government says that it has control over the information collected by SIVAM.  Do they?

Leal: The SIVAM project today is only formally controlled by the Brazilian government.  We can´t escape the naïve premise that the figures collected by the vigilance equipment are exclusively known by Brazil.  One proof of this is that the competition for the contract of the project was a perverted process. The proposal of the French company, Thompson, was more interesting for Brazil, but  the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in an example of canine subservience, accepted a false promise of the United States, who in exchange offered to buy Brazilian airplanes, manufactured by Embraer.  Fernando Henrique pressured his government for the U.S. company to win the contract, but afterward no one bought the Brazilian airplanes.  We lost in a double sense.   SIVAM, today is a project associated with Calha Norte, a military project created with the argument to protect the extensive frontier of the Amazon against narco-traffickers and guerrillas.  Local populations, such as river-dwellers and indigenous communities, complain about the abuses committed by the soldiers sent to the region.    SIVAM and Calha Norte are both oriented by the doctrine of national security.  Unfortunately the Brazilian military still follows this doctrine.

Brasil de Fato:  How is the doctrine applied today?

Leal:  This military doctrine was born in the center of the command of the armed forces of the United States, substituting for a large part of the geopolitical policies after the Second World War.  It was a type of military bible for countries in the south, especially Latin America.   All of the coup d´état´s ---Brazilian, Argentinian, and Chilean, used the national security doctrine as a reference to understand the political reality of the world.  This doctrine focuses on the internal enemy and minimizes the fact that the greater enemy is an external one.  Of course, this serves only for Latin America, because the United States itself does not follow these principles.    Instead of the armed forces of countries in the south worrying about external aggression, the military focuses on impeding a timid internal aggression.  Thus, the focus and the participation of Argentinian, Brazilian and Chilean military to combat what they call an internal subversion.  This continues until today.  Three years ago, it was discovered that some buildings in Marabá, Pará (Amazon area) were being used by the secret service.  The region has many land conflicts and the documents founds in these buildings showed that the military considered the people in that region as a major threat and enemy.

BF: Has this always guided the military thinking in the Amazon?

Leal-  Without a doubt!  The Brazilian military imagined that the Amazon area had all of the conditions to transform itself into a Vietnam, South America.  Thus, they designed a strategy to occupy the region.

BF: What is the impact of this doctrine today, in the daily life of the Amazon population?

Leal:  It is important to underscore that, in some cases, the military have taken actions to soften the lack of state services.  For example, a marine vessel sails the channels of the Amazon River bringing medical assistance to the river population.  The Air Force also brings health services to areas that are not reach by river or land.  The big problem is that the military is not really interested in these issues, but rather with monitoring internal security. They have organized preventive actions in order to obstruct the development of a subversive movement or order.  Today, the military is very worried about the  intensification of land problems and the strengthening of popular organizations with a political character in the region.

BF:  Is the militarization of the Amazon a part of this?
 Leal: I see this process in three levels.  The first is the omnipresence of the United States in the region.  The Manta base in Equador is controlled by the Dyn Corporation, a transnational formed by persons who formerly belonged to the four branches of the U.S. military.  The people of Equador have only a symbolic role in this base.  In Columbia, the Dyn Corporation has equipped a gigantic military base with high-technology equipment.  The same thing is occurring in Peru and Bolivia.  Only in Venezuela, the United States is not present.  A few years ago, the U.S. military staged training operations in the forest of Guiana.  On that occasion, Brazil protested, but it was only a formal protest, because the Brazilian military does not know how to confront an external enemy that is a threat to national sovereignty.

BF:  What are other aspects of this militarization?

Leal: Militarization is also being expressed by means of the national armed forces.
The U.S. has infiltrated  all of the Columbian armed force sectors.  The president of Equador, Lúcio Gutierrez, transported 10,000 soldiers to the frontier region with Columbia.  This was in response to great pressure from the U.S.  There are also military policies that call for a militarization of the police.  In Brazil, the military police is controlled and supervised by army policy.  Along with inheriting the worst traditions of the Brazilian armed forces, the military police is a segment of action against the people.  Corumbiara and Eldorado dos Carajás are example of this type of repression.  The necessity to have repressive actions to maintain institutional order grows with the worsening of social problems and the advance of political organizations of the popular masses.

BF:  Is the interest of the United States  restricted to counter actions of the Columbia Plan?

Leal: The intervention regarding Columbia began because of the importance that the FARCs gained among the Columbian farmers and the potential of this to spread throughout the region.  However, the policy of the U.S. for the Amazon region is to guarantee access to the national and strategic resources, principally energy.  This was officially declared in 2001 by General Peter Pace, responsible for the South Command arm of the Pentagon for Latin America, in his congressional testimony in the U.S.  This means that the U.S. will not allow a country like Venezuela, its second largest supplier of oil, to have the delirium of national sovereignty, as expressed by President Hugo Chavez.

BF:  Is the government of President Lula giving special treatment to the Amazon region?

Leal: I don´t believe that the vision of this government is very different from the military.  Brazil is a country with an enormous external debt that can demand an unconditional alliance with the interests of the lending countries.  President Lula has not done anything to restrain the terrible devastation of the Amazon resulting from the invasion of soy plantations and the renewed and intensified timber exploitation.  There is a complete dismantling of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA) and the National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INCRA), organs responsible for the supervision of the region.  In Santarém, the staff of INCRA do not even have gas to visit the farms or rural area.  There is no control of the government over the devastation.
BF:  Why are soy plantations in the Amazon advancing so rapidly?

Leal: The third world is specializing in the work of providing the supply of food for the production of chicken, beef and pork, in the regime of confinement.  Soy is an emblematic example of this.  Its cultivation began in Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná, advanced to Maranhão, and today is well into the Amazon area.  Great devastation has been caused to the native trees in the area.  In the city of Monte Alegre, all of the candidates for mayor, as a major part of their political platform, had the combat of the advance of soy planting.  We do not see any action on the part of the government to combat this destruction.

Source: Brasil de Fato
October 20, 2004


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