Proposed road from Brazil to Peru edges closer

By Juan Forero
The New York Times

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LABERINTO, Peru — Rumpled and weary, Flavio Reyes has been driving a truck for 38 years along the same route, a river of rock and mud winding from this Amazonian outpost up over craggy, 15,000-foot Andean passes.

On a modern highway, the 500-mile journey might take 10 hours. But on Route 026, as it is blandly known, the trip could easily take 10 days.

"It is just terrible," he said as he prepared to embark on the journey, his truck loaded with hardwoods.

But now, the road that stretches from the Brazilian border east of here and climbs into the heart of Peru could be widened and paved in what its proponents are calling South America's infrastructure project of the century.

Once completed, it will deliver a prize that Brazil has long sought: access to the Pacific Ocean.

If planners across South America have their way, it will be the cornerstone of a mammoth continentwide plan to link countries long isolated by rugged topography through a network of rivers and roadways.

Arrangements for a highway here are still not complete, but little by little, pacts are being signed, studies are being finished and the first of several long-promised steps are about to be taken that could signal its construction.

Optimistic projections are that paving could begin in 2005 and be completed three years later at a cost of nearly $600 million, thanks largely to Brazil's plan to finance a third of the project.

"This is the first step to forming a South American common market," said Miguel Vega, president of the Peru-Brazil Chamber of Commerce in Lima. "This is an irreversible process."
 
Here in the steamy and sparsely populated Madre de Dios province, a billboard in the state capital, Puerto Maldonado, declares: "Outlet to the Pacific: A Reality."

All along the road are signs outlining improvements planned this year.

The first major hurdle will be crossed this year when Brazil begins work on a $7 million bridge over the Acre River that will, at last, link Assis, in the Brazilian state of Acre, to Inapari in Peru.

Brazil recently completed paving of the highway all the way to Assis, making the possibility of access to the Pacific all the more tantalizing to Brazilian soybean farmers, loggers and ranchers who have long wanted a more direct trade route with Asia.

On the Peruvian side, along the 600 miles of rocks, dirt and mud that begins in Inapari and ends at Cuzco, 11,150 feet in the Andes, live loggers, gold miners, small-town merchants and nut farmers. All have long dreamed of a paved route out, a promise by successive Peruvian governments since the 1980s.

"It is always delayed and delayed, but now we have that hope again — that work will begin," said Rafael Valencia, 43, a storekeeper in the of Mavila, which expects truck traffic to increase substantially with road improvements.

Abraham Rojas, the mayor of Planchon, another town along the route, said that only the paving of the road would ease the hardscrabble lives of the town's residents. "Without it, we cannot improve our situation, improve our way of life," he said.

Brazil, which has been projecting its influence in South America by pursuing trade pacts with neighbors, has been the leading proponent of an integrated series of highways in South America.

Under the Regional Initiative for the Infrastructure Integration of South America, a nonbinding agreement signed in 2000 by several countries, roads from Brazil into Bolivia, Chile and Peru would be built or improved. River travel, along with road links, would connect Brazil with other countries, such as Ecuador.

But not everyone wants the road.

The rain forest spread across this region is one of the most diverse in the world, filled with toucans, parrots, jaguars and indigenous groups of people so isolated that they have never had contact with modern Peru.

Environmentalists warn that, like the paved highway on the Brazilian side of the border, a road here will bring secondary roads, new cattle ranches and increased logging.

"This is a big threat because it will lead to terrible deforestation," said Juan Carlos Flores, a biologist who administers a 330,000-acre reserve for the Peruvian partner of the Amazon Conservation Association, an environmental group based in Washington. "It means more farming, more logging. It goes against conservation efforts."

The road is also sure to bring vices like prostitution, drugs and more contraband, feeding off the Wild West atmosphere in this region.

But most people along this road, both in the jungle and in the high Andes, want to see it paved.

In Urcos, more than 15,000 feet up in the Andes, those looking to sell their potatoes and vegetables must board trucks and ride with fuel oil and chickens, never sure if they are going to make it. The ticket costs just $5, but the ride down is bone-jarring. Trucks wheeze along frigid mountain passes. Below, humidity and sun are relentless.

In the rainy season, flimsy wooded bridges and sometimes the road itself are washed away. Vehicles can be backed up for weeks.

Reyes, the truck driver in Laberinto, tried to put the potential hazards out of his mind as he prepared to carry logs up the Andes. He usually hauls fuel or gasoline down from Cuzco.

A bumper sticker on his aging Volvo truck seemed to capture the region's ambition: "Do not doubt that you can do it."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company