Castro watches as Venezuela, Brazil open power link
Copyright 2001 Reuters
August 14, 2001
Story by Magdalena Morales
SANTA ELENA DE UAIREN, Venezuela - Watched by Cuba's Fidel Castro on his 75th birthday, the presidents of Venezuela and Brazil inaugurated a Venezuelan power line to the energy-starved Brazilian north Yesterday in a project criticized by local Indians and environmentalists.
Invited as a special guest, Castro joined his Venezuelan and Brazilian counterparts, Hugo Chavez and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, to witness the cross-border electricity link-up.
The $400 million high-voltage line carries hydroelectric power over nearly 440 miles (700 km) between Venezuela's ecologically-sensitive southeast corner, including a huge national park, and the city of Boa Vista in northern Brazil.
"These 676 kilometers of high-tension cable are 676 kilometers of South American integration and 676 kilometers of friendship between Brazil and Venezuela," Cardoso said in a brief speech at the Venezuelan frontier town of Santa Elena de Uairen.
Earlier, Chavez used a walkie-talkie to give engineers the order to close the switch that sent electricity humming out over the line, carried by hundreds of pylons, that snakes across a wild landscape of jagged mountains and jungle.
The Venezuelan president dedicated the event to Castro as a birthday present, saying the veteran Cuban leader had spent his life fighting to unite the peoples of Latin America.
"This electricity link-up is a happy day for all of us, it's a part of the real and concrete integration of Latin America and the Caribbean," said Chavez, whose oil-rich country is also supplying oil to communist-ruled Cuba.
ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE FEARED
Invited to speak, Castro, who had spent the weekend on a visit to Venezuela, launched into a lengthy digression about the nutritional merits of soybean food products before declaring "Long live a united Latin America and the Caribbean."
He was due to fly home later Yesterday.
The Venezuela-Brazil electricity link-up, which is two years overdue, will supply cheap Venezuelan hydroelectric power to Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, which has been suffering a severe energy crisis.
But the project, which was first launched by Chavez' predecessor as president, Rafael Caldera, had met opposition from both local Indian tribes and environmentalists who feared it would damage the region's natural ecosystem.
Work on the power line was halted last year by Venezuelan Pemon Indians, who knocked down several pylons to object to what they said was damage to their tribal territory.
The line runs through Canaima National Park, Venezuela's top tourist attraction and site of Angel Falls, the world's tallest waterfall which cascades 3,212 feet (979 meters).
Chavez said delays caused by the sabotage had increased the cost of the project by $100 million, but he said the authorities had made special efforts to ensure it did not damage the environment, and benefited Indian communities.
"This isn't a destructive project, it's a constructive one," Chavez said, adding that some 30 percent of the metal pylons carrying the line were put in place using helicopters so land vehicles did not disturb the virgin forest.
Cardoso praised Chavez as a "friend of Brazil" and said the project would do much to promote economic cooperation and development in the isolated border region.
"This cooperation is taking place, because we share mutual confidence and interests ... this is a frontier that brings us together much more than it divides us," he added.
In his speech, Chavez, citing arguments made by Castro, repeated criticism of U.S.-backed plans to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas across the hemisphere by the end of 2005.
The Venezuelan president argued that poor, underdeveloped nations of the continent would be unable to compete equally with giants like the United States and Canada if commercial barriers are lifted in the proposed Americas-wide trade zone.
"They can't impose economic models on us, we've been on the losing side of history enough times," Chavez said. He restated Venezuela's desire to become an associate member of the Mercosur southern trading bloc that includes Brazil.