From Ecological Disaster to Constitutional Crisis
The Long Struggle Over the Xingú Dams Comes to a Climax at Belo Monte

http://www.counterpunch.org/turner05182010.html
Date Written:  2010-05-18
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2010
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX11883

The master plan for damming the Amazon river system, which includes Belo Monte and the Xingú dams, was originally created in the 1970s by the military dictatorship then in power. It essentially treats the Amazon as a reservoir of natural resources to be extracted without regard for the destruction of its riverine and forest environment or the displacement and pauperization of its indigenous and local Brazilian inhabitants.

Subject Headings

• Aboriginal Rights/Resource Development
• Brazil
• Dams
• Indigenous Peoples
• Indigenous Rights