Brazil’s Deferred Highway: Mobility, Development, and Anticipating the State in Amazonia

Four decades ago, Brazilian officials plotted designs for colonization and resource extraction in Amazonia; subsequently the region has become a test-lab for successive development regimes. Along the Santarém-Cuiabá Highway (Br-163) in the state of Pará, residents have engaged in a range of licit and illicit activities as official development policy has shifted throughout the years. Despite assertions that living along the unpaved road is tantamount to “being stuck” in place and time, residents move widely throughout the region, using the road, trails, streams, and rivers as thoroughfares. I argue that “being stuck” functions as a discursive label for illegible mobilities and the speculative economies they support as agrarian reform clients, ranchers, and others compete for position in anticipation of the road’s paving. Novel forms of resource speculation result from the labor of moving and maintaining anticipatory structures along the road, a process that remains obscure from state development projects

Indigenous Peoples Boxed in by Brazil’s Political Crisis

Agribusiness has unprecedented leverage over highly unpopular Brazilian president Michel Temer, who is faced with several corruption charges and is struggling for political survival. In a little over one year, the agribusiness lobby and its allies have managed to erode thirty years of human rights and conservation laws. Indigenous peoples and their territorial rights are among the main targets of such policies, and there is no resolution to the situation in sight. With the insight of several scholars, the following forum assesses the consequences of losing the protection the Citizens’ Constitution of 1988 once afforded indigenous peoples in Brazil

Accommodating quality and service improvement research within existing ethical principles

Funds were provided by a Canadian Institute of Health Research grant (Nominated PI: Monica Taljaard, PJT – 153045). Funds were also generously provided by Charles Weijer, who is funded by a Tier 1 Canadian Research Chair.Peer reviewedPublisher PD