Amazon Basin - Peru - page 917

26 Madre de Dios Ferry Crossing Dock D2

Obelisco
(cnr Fitzcarrald & Madre de Dios; admission S2; 10am-4pm) Although this strangley
cosmic blue building was designed as a modern mirador (lookout tower), its 30m height
unfortunately does not rise high enough above the city for viewers to glimpse the rivers.
The view is still fantastic: a distant glimmer of jungle and plenty of corrugated-metal
roofs can be admired! Photos displayed on the way up document such historic moments as
when the first mototaxi arrived in town.

TOWER

TRANSOCEANIC HIGHWAY: ROAD TO RICHES &
RUIN

Few events in history have had such an immediate effect on the Amazon rainforest as the construction of the
Transoceanic Highway (Carretera Interocéanica) seems likely to have: following its completion in July 2011, it
now links the Pacific coast of Peru with the Atlantic coast of Brazil via paved road. At a cost of more than
US$2800 million, the road is now a massive export opportunity for both countries (former Peruvian president
Alejandro Toledo estimated the road would signify a 1.5% annual increase in Peru's GDP). The 2500km-plus of
newly constructed road breaches the dual hazards of the Andes and the rainforest to link the Peruvian coast at San
Juan de Marcona near Nazca via Cuzco to the southern Amazon, through Puerto Maldonado, to the Brazilian bor-
der at Iñapari. From there the road runs to Rio Branco in Brazil and feeds into the Brazilian road system.

The effects of the road, good and bad, are already being felt. Thousands of new jobs have been created and
Puerto Maldonado, the main city on the route not previously connected by asphalted highway, is thriving from the
increased tourism (Cuzco is now only 10 hours away by road) and commerce.

But for the estimated 15 uncontacted tribes that inhabit the once-isolated southeastern corner of Peru, the road
now cutting through their territory brings risk of disease, and of loss of hunting grounds. According to one NGO,
Survival International, the possibility of migration a road creates without the facilities to back up such a migration
would, along with the destruction of natural habitat, have a disastrous effect on such peoples. And if there are 15
human groups at risk, there are infinitely more species of plants and animals. The total area of destroyed rainforest
as a result of the Transoceanic's construction equates to a third of the size of the UK and, according to various
studies on roads in the Brazilian Amazon, is likely to have a significant effect on rainforest deforestation for 40km
to 60km on either side.

Yet the devastation the building of the road has caused is less significant than the devastation that people who
now have improved access to the remote rainforest could bring. Newspapers from the Peruvian Times to the
Guardian have reported on the 'prosibars' (bars with often underage prostitutes) springing up along routes which
can now be traversed with greater ease by the prospecting miners and loggers that already posed an ecological