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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the political ecology of infrastructure expansion, especially highways, in twentieth-century Brazil. Current environmental degradation and conflict are a direct result of the road building project that originated in the middle of the century.

Paper long abstract:

Brazil’s population and economic centers have historically been concentrated near the coast. In the twentieth century, efforts to exploit the economic potential of the vast interior lands increased. Road building was central to that project. During the Great Acceleration, a developmentalist perspective took hold in global south, including Brazil. From that viewpoint, natural spaces held the key to economic and sociopolitical advancement. Eschewing the colonial logic that cast the people of the so-called “third world” as inferior, developmentalists understood underdevelopment as a practical problem that could be solved if approached systematically.

In Brazil, attention turned increasingly toward the economic potential of the sparsely populated and underdeveloped north and west of the country—which included, but was not limited to, Amazonia. For politicians of various stripes, developing nature held the key to national progress. Building a new national capital in the interior provided an impetus to that effort, as it provided a destination for a new network of highways. Brasília epitomized the automotive age. Motor vehicles were foundational to the urban plan and the relationship between the city and the rest of the country. It required and therefore spurred a dramatic expansion of highways throughout the nation, improving connections between existing population centers, and extending roads into previously isolated spaces. New roads made subsequent settlement and economic activity, both authorized and illegal, possible.