Dam the Rivers, Damn the People

The Brazilian Amazon is the largest area of tropical rainforest in Latin America. Brazil is that continent's most rapidly developing country. The Amazon is at the heart of the conflict between conservation and development, between people and power, and between heritage and modernisation.

In the name of development, the powerful are colonizing the forest. The greatest new threat comes from the massive hydro-electric schemes which are being pushed ahead with little regard to efficacy, the rights of the people, or the survival of the forest. Dam the Rivers, Damn the People is about two of the most affected areas, Balbina in Amazonas and the Xingu River in Para. Barbara Cummings describes the plans which the state attempted to keep secret, the extent to which these projects will destroy the forest, the consequent dispossession of the people of the forest and, above all, their growing resistance. She shows how the outcome of their fight affects us all.

Originally published in 1990