Caracas – A Latin American development bank on Tuesday granted a $55 million loan to build a controversial power line linking Venezuelan and Brazil through the Amazon jungle which is fiercely opposed by indigenous and environmental groups.
The Caracas-based Andean Development Corporation (CAF) signed the loan with Brazilian federal power holding Electrobras (ELET6.SA) to fund the 132-mile (211 km) Brazilian stretch of the line expected to completed in December.
CAF President Enrique Garca lauded the project as “a starting point for future energy integrations between Latin American countries.”
The 430-mile (690 km) cable, criticized last year by the United Nations, cuts through the Amazon jungle and Venezuela’s Canaima National Park, home of the world’s tallest waterfall, the Angel Falls.
Several hundred members of Indian communities in Southeastern Venezuela blocked the main highway to Brazil last week using large tree trunks to call attention to the impact construction of the line was having on their livelihoods.
Builders were chopping down huge swathes of forest and damaging their crops, they said.
Border Affairs Minister Pompeyo Marquez insisted the project would be completed. “It is a decision of state with important investments which cannot be held up any longer,” he said.
UNESCO warned last year that Venezuela had not carried out significant studies on the environmental impact of the power line on Canaima which was declared a World Heritage site in 1994.
But Marquez said that the U.N. body had subsequently congratulated Venezuela, “for the care taken over all the environmental impact studies.”
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