Paving the way: Brazil needs export corridors so badly that it's financing them in other countries.

A big bridge is on the rise in Venezuela. Hammers pound and the cranes lean high over the Orinoco River, breaking the silence deep in the country's hinterlands. But the people who are following--and financing--this new, three-kilometer-long span over brown waters are thousands of kilometers away. They are not in Caracas, but in Brazil.

Across the continent, Brazil is also backing construction of other routes to the sea, including railroads in Chile and Ecuador, and highways in Colombia and Peru. Brazil wants the bridge to go up so it can expand its trade corridors. A bridge--even a bridge in another country--will help it export commodities like soybeans and metals to hungry Asian economies. Brazil now exports US$9.6 billion to Asia's top three economies, 10% of its total exports. Asian economies are consuming so much Brazilian soy, metals and other products that they helped push exports to $96 billion in 2004.

Venezuela plans to build a rail line from the bridge to a planned deepwater port on the Caribbean. Brazil will likely help finance that project as well. The idea is to provide farms and industries in eastern Venezuela and northern Brazil with easier and faster access to markets in the United States and Asia, via the Panama Canal. It will also facilitate trade between the South American neighbors. "The natural market for Venezuela is the center and south of Brazil," says Jose Alberto da Costa Machado, economic research coordinator for Manaus, a Brazilian Free Trade Zone.

One of the headliner infrastructure projects of the government of President Hugo Chavez, the suspension bridge will cross the Orinoco River between the industrial cities of Ciudad Guayana and Ciudad Bolivar in Venezuela. The idea is not new. In an August 2001 speech, Chavez boasted that the bridge would be finished in 2005. "[Brazil] gave us extraordinary conditions," on the loan, Chavez said, promising that the bridge would aid development of eastern Venezuela.

Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Economico e Social (BNDES), Brazil's state development bank, is putting up most of the cash for the 140-meter-high project. Brazilian construction company Odebrecht is building it. It will cost US$480 million and will include 166 kilometers of highway. The Venezuelan government Hill put in $96 million and BNDES will lend them the difference at attractive rates.

Already, the eastern Venezuelan states of Sucre and Anzoategui are vying for the new port where the railroad Hill end. Sucre wants to build near the city of Cumana, on the deep and calm waters of the Gulf of Cariaco. There are some obstacles: The gulf is an important reproduction area for Caribbean fish stocks.

Deputy Luis Augusto Acuna Cedeno, who represents Sucre in the Venezuela's Congress, says the port Hill bring jobs to his constituents' impoverished coastal home, but he also worries about the region's biological wealth. "Nearly all the Caribbean's fish lay their eggs there," he says. While not all fish lay their eggs off Venezuela, of course, local fishermen are worried nonetheless and are protesting the port plan. Researchers from the Universidad del Oriente in Venezuela point out that the gulf's slow rate of water circulation means that potential pollution from boat traffic Hill take a long time to wash out. "A study of the gulf's dynamics is needed," says oceanographer Julian Castaneda, coordinator of the university's marine science department. "There is very little information."

Albis Ferrer, chief lobbyist in favor of putting the port in Sucre, agrees that the gulf is a valuable fish habitat, but he says such habitats have coexisted with ports in other regions in the past. He also says the gulf provides the best port location on South America's northern coast, and that the sailing time to the United States is just seven days--10 days shorter than from Recife, in northeastern Brazil. Without the port, he says, "Venezuela will get left out of the world's great [shipping] routes."

The planned railroad will carry minerals, steel, glass and aluminum manufactured in Venezuela's Guayana region to the coast and load calcium carbonate for the trip back, making it, Ferrer says, "the only profitable railroad in Venezuela" Calcium carbonate is used to make iron, which Venezuela produces. Ferrer pegs the whole project's cost at a $1 billion dollars--half for the bridge, $400 million for the railroad and $100 million for the port--all of which he says, Brazil is willing to help finance because of its need for export corridors.

The BNDES recognizes the need to improve Brazil's access to global markets. "Since Brazil is in the center of the continent, it needs to have open doors to both oceans and the Caribbean," says Paulo Totti, a BNDES spokesman. A railroad Hill also be cheaper to operate and cause less environmental impact, Totti says, since unlike a road it does not give access to slash-and-burn farmers who clear virgin forests, a common problem in Brazil.

Cheaper. Officials in Sucre's competition for the port, Anzoategui, argue for expanding the existing facility at Guanta, an industrial area already busy with oil tankers and cement barges. They say expanding an existing port is cheaper than building a new one. Mario Espitaleri, president of the Anzoategui State Association of Industries, says that the port already has 16 kilometers of railroad tracks that once carried coal shipments. "The investment would be very expensive when a port already exists," he says.

Brazil is even tapping new routes through the tiny nation of Guyana, in northeastern South America. On Guyana's border, Brazil has begun building a bridge and port facility across the Takutu River to a dirt road that leads to Georgetown, Guyana's capital on the Atlantic coast. Guyana's population and industry are concentrated along the coast; the interior remains close to pristine, so some argue that the project Hill bring Guyana only headaches.

Likely to increase, too, are raids by wildcat Brazilian farmers and miners into the biodiversity-rich interior reaches of the nation, once road conditions improve, say critics of the plan. Graham Watkins, until recently the director general of Guyana's largest protected area, Iwokrama, worries that trucks Hill bring alcoholism and AIDS into an otherwise untouched landscape. The reserve has built gates at its borders, but it cannot control the impacts on the ecosystem outside, he says.

Guyana's forest industry is worried, too. A paved highway Hill provide Brazilian forest products access to compete with Guyana's domestic markets, says Mona Bynoe, executive director of Guyana's Forest Products Association.

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MIKE CEASER * CARACAS