Brazil’s first private Amazon road paves new trade route to China

The BR-364 federal highway triggered one of the largest deforestation drives in the history of the Brazilian Amazon. Built in the early 1960s through the rainforest, it links Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso state, to Porto Velho, capital of Rondônia state, and was the first overland route to Brazil’s westernmost region, ending its long-standing geographic isolation. Since then, the landscape along the road has been reshaped by human settlement, with large swaths of forest cleared for commodity production. This process was driven by Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964-1985, which promoted the occupation of the Amazon Rainforest as a defense of national territory from “foreign invaders” — widely considered a conspiracy theory by historians — under the motto “integrate not to surrender.”