Troubled Amazon corner - Interoceanica Highway and Complejo Madeira

Marcos Chambilla Copari recalls arriving in the of village of San Lorenzo, in the southwestern Peruvian rainforest, in 1986, a refugee from flooding around Lake Titicaca in Peru’s southern highlands.

“There was no road to get our products to market,” he said. “Everything rotted in the field.”

Two decades later, he is happy to see the Interoceanic Highway being paved from the Peruvian-Brazilian border in the southwestern Amazon over the Andes to the Pacific coast.

He and the farmers’ association of which he is president want to take advantage of the highway to get their rice crops to new markets. Chambilla hopes the highway will bring a new wave of migrants who will settle in San Lorenzo and neighboring communities and give them a boost, just as his family and others did 21 years ago.

For full article please go to Trouble Amazon Corner