• Brazil’s government has signed a 30-year contract to privatize a section of the BR-364 highway, a key part of its plan to create an overland corridor to Peru to streamline commodity exports to China.
• Critics warn that expanding the highway into well-preserved rainforest risks repeating its history by attracting illegal loggers and land grabbers, a pattern that previously cleared vast areas for agriculture.
• The road is key to a new infrastructure initiative aimed at streamlining South American trade routes to China by creating a direct link between Brazil’s agribusiness heartland and Pacific ports in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

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