Redundancy and insistence in stating the obvious often represents an indication that somebody is not doing their homework.  The flashy manner in which President Lula has recently drawn attention to the fact that Amazonia belongs to Brazil and to its inhabitants is not only a harmless manifestation of political rhetoric.  He tries to deny, to the public, a process that is marching fast in the opposite direction, with massive government participation.  This participation takes two forms: through the conscious failure to perform constitutional or legal obligations and through heavy incentives given to certain economic activities.

If the government truly wished to ensure Brazilian possession of the area, it would, firstly, secure the land tenure situation of public lands and then, through a process of exclusion, secure tenure of private lands left once public lands were duly registered - and irreversibly incorporated - as assets of the federal government.  But this is not the case.  The agency that should do this (Federal Assets Department) has neither the funding, personnel nor guidance to address such an obligation.  Other agencies, such as INCRA, work contrary to this aim, contributing so that Brazil maintains the only large stock of unclaimed land (that is, land that is subject to appropriation and speculation/land-grabbing).  Lula knows this, and he knows this personally from the time that he went on the campaign trail throughout Amazonia.

Lula also knows that government investment priorities have never been so disconnected from local interests and regional development interests as they are now.  One needs but to look at the official PAC (government's poster-child) maps to see that there is not a single investment among those proposed for the region, that seeks to support the economy of the Amazonian people.

More than ever before, the economy of Amazonia is becoming internationalized.  Agribusiness traders are expanding their silos and ports in the region, Alcoa makes the largest investment in the region in years (with a good part of the money coming from BNDES) and a new fact emerges: even ranching in Amazonia - the economic activity responsible for most land use in the region - is today export-oriented.  Rondônia currently exports more beef than Rio Grande do Sul.

This is not about cheap nationalistic demagoguery: these phenomena reflect complex dynamics and have both positive and negative aspects.  It's not the destination of the product that is important, rather the manner in which it is produced, to what point value is added locally, to what extent it contributes to circulation in the local economy and its sustainable stability.  The fact is, though, that Amazonia is increasingly dependent on foreign decisions.

Instead of assuming this fact and discussing how to make lemonade from the lemon, to benefit the local population, or how to diminish problems by addressing crucial issues such as land tenure, people deny the obvious and make pompous speeches when they're unnecessary.  One day before appearing at the rainforest peoples' event to transmit generic messages regarding sovereignty without anything specific, Lula was in Madrid trying to raise money from Spanish banks for the Madeira River complex, a project that, according to the official introduction of its promoters, seeks 'an unprecedented transformation of eastern Amazonia".  He also minimized labor problems related to sugarcane production, using the excuse that the world accepted the brutal conditions of coal mines for centuries.

If Lula wanted to Brazilianize (or even Amazonianize) the Amazon a little more, he could work on two basic tasks: ensure tenure of public lands and verticalize its economy, breaking away from the dependency on commodities.  And save the nationalist rhetoric for more adequate audiences.

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