December 6, 2006

Manaus is Brazil’s great Amazonian metropolis, a 1.5 million-person industrial city isolated in the middle of the rainforest, readily accessible only by airplane or riverboat. Rapid development over recent decades has nearly erased the presence of the rainforest itself: Once within the city, one is hard-pressed to locate a single tree. Now, with a $200 million infrastructural makeover, local authorities are attempting to recover some of Manaus's natural past.

The targeted areas are the stagnant, sewage-strewn igarapés, waterways that lace through the century-old port facilities, shopping centers, and densely packed residential neighborhoods of Manaus and feed directly into the Rio Negro. Thousands of hand-built wood and brick barracos have encrusted the swampy areas, sharing space with small alligators, legions of rats, and piles of waste. Whole elevated shantytowns, housing some 7,500 families all told, perch precariously on stilts and link to solid land by a network of planks. During the months-long flooding season, polluted water inundates the shacks.

Financed largely by the Inter-American Development Bank, the local government is relocating the igarapés’ inhabitants to newly built housing developments on the outskirts of the city and demolishing the water-bound villages. The waterways are to be fitted with drainage and sewage treatment systems, filtered for pollutants, and then reshaped into landscaped parks or seeded with native tree species. Some of the streams will be culverted and some will become canals. Those in charge of the project say the project will have a wide-ranging impact on sanitation, social welfare, and the environment.

Whatever the project’s promised benefits, igarapé dwellers are reacting with some ambivalence. Terezinha Souza, a 62-year-old hairdresser, has lived along the Igarapé of Manaus, near downtown, for 40 years. When she first moved there, people simply lived on floating shacks. “It’s a tradition of the people to live here,” she says. The principal option for those forced to leave: a 580-square-foot government tract home located far from downtown.

Work on the igarapés began last year. As of late August, about 3,700 families had relocated, according to the local housing agency. The project is expected to take approximately 12 years.

David S. Morton

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