Spotlight: Latin America's New Transportation Links

▪ 1999

by Ben Box

      By 1998 the common market concept within Latin America, as exemplified by Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with Chile and Bolivia joining as associate members), several bilateral trade agreements, and the rejuvenation of the Andean Community and the Central American Common Market, was contributing to a diminution of old geopolitical rivalries in favour of interdependence. These moves toward economic integration, however, highlighted the poor state of the region's infrastructure. The World Bank and Interamerican Development Bank estimated that if Latin America was to maintain and upgrade only modestly its transport sector alone, $14 billion would have to be spent annually. For such a sum government funding would be insufficient, and efforts were being made to involve the private sector and multilateral agencies. This was being achieved through privatization, new project financing, and innovative investment funds, but in 1998 it appeared that repercussions from the economic crises in Asia and Russia might force a reduction in spending by Latin-American governments and foreign investors.

      Historically the main intercontinental roadway has been the 48,000-km (1 km = 0.62 mi) Pan-American Highway, which extends from Alaska to Argentina and Chile. At only one place does it remain uncompleted, the 400-km Darién Gap in Panama and Colombia. Despite the difficulty of the terrain (jungle and swamp) and, more recently, environmental considerations, schemes to traverse the gap continue to be assessed. In 1995 Peru completed the rehabilitation of the 2,600-km highway in its territory, which has greatly reduced the driving time from Ecuador to Chile. The work was carried out by private firms. Ecuador has also looked to the private sector to help with the maintenance of its part of the highway, which costs about $45 million annually. Farther north, a new Caracas-Bogotá highway was under consideration, as well as a railway across the Venezuelan and Colombian plains to cope with growing cross-border trade.

      The increased emphasis on regional trade encouraged the paving of the Pan-American Highway north of Manaus, Braz., to join with its paved counterpart in Venezuela. A branch is planned to extend east into Guyana to form part of the planned trans-Guiana highway, envisaged as a continuous road from Georgetown, Guyana, through that nation and Suriname into French Guiana and from there via the Saint-Georges-Oiapoque border crossing into the Brazilian state of Amapá. The resulting network will join Caracas and the Orinoco River in Venezuela with two Amazonian cities (Macapá and Manaus) and the three Guianas.

      Two major projects are under way to meet the transport demand in the Mercosur region. The first is the expressway from São Paulo, Braz., to Buenos Aires, Arg., with a planned extension to Santiago, Chile. Estimated at $2.5 billion at its announcement in 1992, the 2,500-km superhighway was designed to improve and widen existing roads. It will also utilize a new 42-km toll bridge, to be built over the Río de la Plata from Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay, to Buenos Aires at a cost of $1 billion. The Super Highway is to be developed in conjunction with the Hidrovía (waterway), an ambitious project in which the Paraná-Paraguay river system will open a trade corridor from the interior of the continent to the Atlantic Ocean. The rivers flow through Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, and since 1992 the five countries have been studying the transport potential that would result from widening and dredging those parts that have been difficult to navigate. At its fullest extent, the Hidrovía was envisioned as a 3,400-km artery from Cáceres, Mato Grosso, Braz., to Nueva Palmira on the Uruguayan bank of the Río de la Plata. One major difficulty is the necessity to take barges around the Itaipú hydroelectric dam on the Paraná.

      In March 1998 Brazil withdrew from the Hidrovía but continued with other plans to make better use of its rivers for transportation; one example is the Tietê-Paraná river system. The Tietê River flows from São Paulo state to join the Paraná River at the state border with Mato Grosso do Sul. Argentina is also developing its river transport system. In May 1995 the Río de la Plata-Paraná corridor was transferred to the private sector, which then provided 24-hour navigation that will greatly reduce transport costs on the route. A major challenge that remains for Mercosur is that the rail networks of the two largest markets, Brazil and Argentina, use different gauges. Unless that can be resolved, trains will be unable to replace trucks in the expansion of traditional and nontraditional exports.

      Planners in Bolivia regard the country as an ideal hub for commerce in South America, even though its transport infrastructure suffers from a lack of resources. Work progressed on the Cochabamba-Santa Cruz road and its extension to the Brazilian border to complete a paved route from west to east. The Bolivian railway network, Enfe, was taken over in 1996 by Chile's Cruz Blanca, which hopes to create a railway through Bolivia connecting São Paulo with Antofagasta, Chile, and thus link the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Chile and Argentina are also facing the challenge of constructing a comprehensive road network between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Under preliminary study is a low-altitude tunnel across the Andes from Mendoza to Santiago.

      In Central America the Panama Canal, which is to come under Panamanian jurisdiction on Jan. 1, 2000, is being upgraded in a $1 billion program due for completion in 2002. Any further expansion would involve new locks and perhaps even a parallel sea-level canal. The railway that runs beside the canal is in desperate need of rebuilding, which has been undertaken in a $60 million joint venture between Kansas City Southern Industries and Mi-Jack Products. Panama is facing competition, however: a shallow-draft canal for barges through Nicaragua; a new canal through Colombia; "dry canals" (railways carrying container traffic from port to port) through Nicaragua, Costa Rica (with an associated new port north of Puerto Limón), or the isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico; and a rail/road "dry canal" through Honduras and El Salvador.

Ben Box has written extensively on Latin American subjects and is editor of Footprint Handbooks.

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