Peru appears to back out of continental railway project.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
Since August 2000, when the idea for the ambitious Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) was floated at a summit of South American presidents in Brasilia, regional diplomacy has included discussions of a multi-national railroad to link Atlantic ports with a maritime terminal on the Pacific. However, there has been controversy about the possible routes for the train, and in all the proposals, the only agreement has been that tracks should start in a Brazilian port--either Acu, in Rio de Janeiro state, or Santos, in San Paulo state (NotiSur, May 28, 2004, Jan. 14, 2005, Jan. 23, 2015).
The expectation that intra-regional trade would grow, and that shipping costs for goods from, or commodities to China, would drop, made the idea of the railroad attractive. While Brazil, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, and to a lesser degree, Argentina have expressed interest in the project, Bolivia has been one of the strongest backers and the only one to conduct feasibility studies. There is a good reason for that: President Evo Morales' administration views the continental railroad as the right and possibly quickest way of breaking the isolation that Bolivia has suffered since the end of the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific, when it lost the Antofagasta region and its territory on the Pacific coast to Chile. As a result of the war, Bolivia's ally, Peru, lost the province of Tarapaca.
"China is the only power in a position to finance a project that would cross jungles and go over the Andes mountains, and it is also the most interested, for economic and geo-strategic reasons," the late Uruguayan diplomat Geronimo Cardozo once said.
"We should turn to that country in order to build this railroad."
China offers financial support
Cardozo was not wrong. In all the related proposals for the railroad, the Chinese government and Chinese businessmen have appeared among the financial backers: The Asian giant needs South America's minerals and grains. So in December, when construction began in Nicaragua on temporary access rails to carry the materials and machinery needed to carve a second canal that would link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, many thought that the continental railroad project would be dropped. A new canal would allow Brazilian iron and soybeans to be shipped inexpensively without the need for a continental train. But China continues to maintain that it will finance the railway, even though the current cost estimates of...
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