DUBBED “Mad Maria”, the Madeira-Mamoré railway was said, with only some exaggeration, to have cost a life for every sleeper laid. Built for booming rubber exports, the 367km (228-mile) line from Porto Velho in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon to the Bolivian border was rendered obsolete by new Asian plantations almost before it opened in 1912.
A century later a plan for a much longer railway across the Amazon, from Brazil’s Atlantic coast to Peru, is among a sheaf of infrastructure projects that China is offering to finance in Latin America. Li Keqiang, China’s prime minister, signed an agreement for a feasibility study for the railway during an eight-day trip through South America that began on May 18th in Brazil and will take him to Colombia, Peru and Chile.
Mr Li came armed with proposed investments and loans that could total up to $103 billion in Brazil alone (see article). His destinations and the projects both point to a maturing of China’s relationship...
from The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1eieTt3
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