Brazil to help Bolivia with road

I mentioned the other day that Lula would be meeting Evo Morales on 18 July. I've been slow to keep you updated, mainly because I've been travelling, but here's an article from Reuters that brings out the main points of their get-together (at which Hugo Chavez was also present).

Don't miss the last paragraph of the article, which has the specifics - but don't forget that the road they're talking about, which will run through northern Bolivia as far as Riberalta, isn't the "Transoceanic" road on which we've concentrated so far, and which connects Brazil with Peru. Many of the same issues are involved, though, in the two roads, and in fact in January we may travel along the existing road up to Riberalta, just to see what it's like before the new road goes through. (I made this journey by bus in October 2006 and it was pretty rough; in January, which is in the rainy season, it may simply be impassable.)

By the way, I'm currently in Manaus, where the local paper today happened to mention this agreement between Lula, Evo and Chavez. This paper, at least - I won't give you the link, as it's in Portuguese which I don't think any of you know - regards the whole exercise with approval. They see the road to Riberalta going on to connect with Brazil at Porto Velho (which we'll visit), and then going on up to Manaus by reopening an old highway that's been unusable for many years. (It was open briefly in the late '60s, when I travelled along it. Yes, that's right - the late '60s.) The editors of this Manaus paper see such roads as allowing the city to export its manufactured goods more easily. (There's already a road from Manaus up to Caracas in Venezuela, which Luther students travelled on in January 2007.) We usually think of these roads as helping Brazil export its agricultural products to China, so it was interesting to think of this additional support from manufacturing interests in the major city of Manaus.

Of course, not everyone would share their view. That's what makes this important issue so interesting.

Getting back to Lula, we seem to be following each other around. He was in Bolivia shortly after my visit there earlier this summer, and a couple of days ago I was in Leticia, Colombia, just 24 hours after Lula left having had yet another meeting with regional presidents (this time, I believe, from Peru and perhaps Ecuador as well as Colombia).

There's a whole lot going on in this part of the world, though I doubt you've heard much about it in the press back home.