BR-319: The Tipping-Point Road, and Brazil’s 2025 Fight Over Paving the Heart of the Amazon

by | Sep 11, 2026 | Brazil, Deforestation, Geopolitics, Illegal Roads and Infrastructure, Indigenous Territories and Rights, Investigation

If BR-230 is the road that opened the Amazon, BR-319 is the road that could finish the job. Scientists call it the “tipping-point road”: the one stretch of highway that would connect Brazil’s southern arc of deforestation to the still-largely-intact...
The Mercury Goes In Chinese, the Gold Comes Out Chinese: How Much China Really Helps Amazon Illegal Mining

The Mercury Goes In Chinese, the Gold Comes Out Chinese: How Much China Really Helps Amazon Illegal Mining

by | Sep 11, 2026 | China, Chancay & Amazon Corridors, Geopolitics, Gold Mining & Garimpo, Investigation, Mercury Contamination, Mining and Mineral Extraction, Pan-Amazon

Ask “how much do the Chinese help illegal mining in the Amazon,” and the honest answer is not a single number. Chinese actors almost never run the mines and almost never carry the guns. What they do, across the Guianas, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela, is...

BR-230: The Trans-Amazonian Highway, the Deforestation It Opened, and the Munduruku Blocking It

by | Sep 11, 2026 | Brazil, Deforestation, Geopolitics, Illegal Roads and Infrastructure, Indigenous Territories and Rights, Investigation, Trade, Infrastructure & Commodity Signals

Before the Chinese-backed railways and the Chancay megaport, there was a road. The Trans-Amazonian Highway, BR-230, was the original attempt to open the Brazilian Amazon to the outside economy, and more than half a century later it remains the clearest case study of...

Chancay, the Corridors, and the Mercury: How Peru’s Amazon Is Wired Into a Trade System Built for Speed

by | Sep 11, 2026 | China, Chancay & Amazon Corridors, Gold Mining & Garimpo, Illegal Roads and Infrastructure, Investigation, Mercury Contamination, Mining and Mineral Extraction, Peru

The Chinese-funded Chancay megaport is not a mine, and it does not cut a road into the rainforest. Its relevance to the Amazon is subtler and, in its way, larger: it changes the speed, volume and opacity with which commodities move between remote extraction zones and...

China’s Amazonian Railway: The Bioceanic Corridor, Its Route, and What Remains Unsettled

by | Sep 11, 2026 | Analysis, Brazil, China, Chancay & Amazon Corridors, Geopolitics, Indigenous Territories and Rights, Peru, Trade, Infrastructure & Commodity Signals

“China’s Amazonian Railway” is not an official project name. It is the label English-language coverage attaches to a recurring idea: a bi-oceanic railway linking Brazil’s Atlantic-facing rail network to a Pacific port in Peru, across parts of...
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