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Carajas, Para, Brazil

Plans to establish a million hectares of plantations in the eastern Amazon. Aracruz Cellulose may be one of the participants (The Greenpeace Book of Greenwash (1992), p. 27-28).

There is also a Companhia Vale do Rio Doce state-owned mining company (see entry for CVRD).

VAN HEUSEN seE Phillips-van Heusen

Manufacturer of Tris.

On April 26, 1993, VATICO became the first American company to officially open an office in Vietnam since the end of the war in 1975. Chrysler is a client. In December 1992, President Bush relaxed the U.S.-imposed trade embargo to allow Americans to open offices, hire employees, and sign (but not execute) commerical contracts; President Clinton has maintained that the embargo would continue until there is a satisfactory accounting of American missing-in-action casulaties (Seattle Times, Apr. 26, 1993, p. B7). VATICO's clients include Brown & Root (Wall Street Journal, Apr. 29, 1994, p. B6).

Vietnam

Soviet-Vietnamese joint petroleum venture off Vietnam's southern coast; there is current interest in obtaining oil concessions near the Vietsovpetro oil rig (Multinational Business, No. 5, Spring 1992, p. 26).

888 W. Big Beaver Rd.

Troy, MI 48084

313-362-6000

Auto manufacturing in Mexico (Mexico welcomes carmakers, Los Angeles Times/Seattle Times, Apr 22 1992).

Cattle ranches in Brazil (see Alex Shoumatoff's The World Is Burning: Murder in the Rain Forest, p. 55, 79, 340). Volkswagen told Susan Meeker-Lowry that it had sold its holdings there; see also The Fate of the Forest, by Hecht and Cockburn (Harper, 1990, p. 55).

Ghana

VALCO is a joint aluminum smelting operation formed between Kaiser and Reynolds Metals, powered by the Akosumbo dam on the Volta River in Ghana. Financed by the World Bank, which took the lead in the project in the 1950s and 1960s. VALCO receives energy below-cost. VALCO uses Jamaican bauxite smelted in Louisiana. The area inundated by the dam covers five percent of the country, and displaced 80,000 people (one percent of the population of Ghana) when the reservior was filin the 1960s. Seventy thousand of the 100,000 people who have contracted onchocerciasis (river blindness) have been blinded; 80,000 people have been premanently disabled by the parasite schistosomiasis (Hancock, pp. 140-141; and Earth Island Institute's International Dams Newsletter, v.2, n.1, 1987).

VALCO (Volta Aluminum Company Ltd.) is owned 78 percent by Maxxam, 10 percent by Reynolds, and 12 percent by private interests; 80,000 people were relocated from 740 villages; the dam flooded 8,500 square kilometers; Ghana gave Valco low electric rates and numerous tax breaks; (Yao Graham, Drought Dims Ghana's Hydroelectric Power, World Rivers Review, Nov. 1995, p. 6-7; contact African Agenda, PO Box 94154, Yeoville 2198, Johannesburg, South Africa, afagenda@iaccess.za).

Bibliography:

Hancock, Graham. Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the INternational Aid Business. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.

Hart, D. The Volta River Project. Edinburgh University Press, 1980.

7 Volvo Drive

Rockleigh, NJ 07647

201-768-7300

75 Bukit Timo Rd. # 04-01

Boon Siew Bldg - 4th story

Singapore 0922

Mitsubishi bought a third of Volvo in 1991 (Hoover's Handbook of American Business 1992, p. 238).

Loaders, forklifts, trucks, etc. "Volvo keeps the logs moving" according to their advertisements in Asian Timber.

1 Metroplex Dr.

Birmingham, AL 35209

205-877-3000

Witchita, KS

One of the five largest U.S. producers of CFC's (World Rainforest Report, March-May 1989).

Limestone quarries in Florida and Cancun, Yucatan, Mexico. The Yucatan project was financed by the International Finance Committee (related to the World Bank) (World Rainforest Report, March-May 1989).

In June 1992, the International Trade Commission voted to dismiss a lawsuit filed against Vulcan and its Mexican partner ICA (Ingenueros Civiles Associados) for predatory pricing. Two Texas companies had claimed Vulcan was dumping seven million tons of crushed limestone from its Yucatan operation per year on the U.S. market (Engineering News Record, July 6, 1992, p. 5).