The one piece of
information that particularly caught my interest in this chapter is that Latin America’s
neoliberalist government was the driving force behind the deforestation of the
Amazonian rain forest. Chasteen explains that the rain forest was basically
untouched until the 1960s. The neoliberalists saw deforestation as a way to
attract larger corporations to Latin America. They did not seem to understand, or care, that not only were they destroying the most biodiverse environment on the planet, but also that the land they were getting would not
stay fertile for long. They argued that the deforestation of the United States boosted their agricultural economy. One problem. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME
ENVIRONMENT! The soil found in the United States is completely different than
that of the Amazonian rain forest in South America. The soil of the rain forest is thin and
washes away quickly. This means that the land was basically useless after
just a few years. Is it worth destroying an ecologically fragile and diverse
environment permanently for a few short years of farming?
The saddest part to me, however, is that the deforestation still has not stopped. Neoliberalism set
the stage for decades of struggle for environmentalists. An article from the
National Geographic puts the situation into perspective by explaining that “during
the past 40 years, close to 20 percent of the Amazon rain forest has been cut
down – more than in all the previous 450 years since European colonization”. This
is astounding. It is frustrating to watch people destroy such an important part
of the world’s ecosystem and not care. It is about land, economic progress, and
exploitation. It reminds me of how in Blood
and Fire, Chasteen continuously says that Latin America looks to Europe and the United States as
models for their own government and economy. In this case, Latin America
follows their example by encouraging ranching. This is another piece of the puzzle
that makes no sense to me, because ranching requires the use of a lot of land
but does not require very many employees. Plus, most of the time the landowners
live in cities and leave their ranches to someone else to run. The
deforestation of the rain forest is purely a moneymaking venture for the elite.
Cattle ranching has been a cause for deforestation for many years, but has gone
from contributing to 38 percent of the deforestation in the 1960s and 70s to
closer to 60 percent today.
However, in past year
or so Brazil has released that their deforestation levels are at an all time
low. An article from mongabay.com explains that “[s]ince 2004 the rate of
deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen nearly 80 percent to the
lowest levels recorded since … the late 1980s”. This is very encouraging, and
makes you wonder how this could be. It seems that, at least in the case of
Brazil, the economy has begun to disentangle itself from the rain forest. Their
stability no longer seems to rely on deforestation due to the enforcement of
environmental laws, satellite forest monitoring, the expansion of reserves and
protected areas, and other efforts made by the Brazilian government to educate
the people on the importance of the ecosystem of the Amazonian rain forest. Let's hope this trend continues in the years to come.
Sources:
Born in Blood and Fire - John Charles Chasteen
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