By Simon Romero
Brazil’s army is deploying
troops this month to the far reaches of the Amazon in a military exercise
simulating a foreign invasion of the rain forest, focusing attention on
sensitivity over sovereignty in a region rising in importance as a strategic
pillar of Latin America’s largest economy.
The troop mobilization,
starting on Monday and called Operation Machifaro, points to a deepening of a
central element of military doctrine in Brazil, which holds the defense of the
Amazon as a top priority. The Amazon’s mineral wealth and vast reserves of
fresh water place the region “in the context of potential threats,” military
officials here said in a statement.
“The operation will provide
ways for optimizing a strategy of resistance in the region,” said Gen.
Guilherme Cals Theophilo Gaspar de Oliveira, chief of Brazil’s Amazon Military
Command. He also emphasized that the exercise was aiming to “consolidate a
doctrine of jungle combat.”
The drill aims to prepare
soldiers to respond to a foreign military force larger than Brazil’s armed
forces, officials said. While Brazil has long been at peace with its smaller
neighbors in the Amazon and no country was specified by name in the
preparations for the exercise, some military strategists in Brazil have long
focused on the United States as a potential threat.
Officials in Brazil and the United
States have rejected the possibility of any military clash between the two
countries, the most populous in the Americas, over the Amazon, and ties between
Brasília and Washington remain cordial though somewhat strained after
revelations in 2013 that the National Security Agency had spied on President
Dilma Rousseff and her inner circle.
In fact, a chance for improving
relations may be emerging after Ms. Rousseff’s office noted positively that
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had called her this month to congratulate
her on her re-election and renew an invitation for her to visit Washington. Ms.
Rousseff postponed a state visit in 2013 after the reports of N.S.A. spying.
Still, the army’s drill
reflects thinking in Brazil that foreign powers covet the Amazon, about 60
percent of which is in the country. Fifty percent of Brazilians believe that
their country will be invaded in an effort to grab the Amazon’s resources, according
to 2011 opinion survey by a government statistics agency. The poll, which
interviewed 3,796 people, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5
percentage points.
Brazil expanded its military
presence in the Amazon during the dictatorship that held power from 1964 to
1985, when generals offered incentives to settlers to occupy the frontier.
While some political analysts contend that potential invasions belong in the
realm of conspiracy theories, others delve into history to show that foreign designs
on the Amazon are not so far-fetched.
History books like “The Deepest
South,” which describes an antebellum plan by southerners in the United States
to develop the Amazon with American slaves, have been translated into
Portuguese and discussed in the Brazilian news media.
Brazil’s army also drew
inspiration from history in naming its latest military exercise, which involves
550 troops here in Manaus, the Amazon’s largest city, and outposts like Santa
Isabela do Rio Negro and Caracaraí. Machifaro is a region of the Amazon where
in the 16th century resistance coalesced against Spain’s attempts to gain
control of large portions of the rain forest held then by the Portuguese
empire.
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