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Para, Brazil

Electronorte and Electrobras's Xingu Complex, in the undeveloped eastern Amazon, is to have six dams and the world's largest reservoir. The first dam, Kararao, is to supply electricity to Sao Paulo (which is 2600 km away) beginning in 1999. Kayapo, Arara, Kararao, Kotirero, Ipixuna, Bacaja, Porokene, Apetewa, and Cururua indigenous people will be affected. The second dam, Babaquara, was dropped from the first six year's projects due to its environmental and social impacts.

The World Bank is been involved. Lobbying the World Bank and the U.S. government against the project earned the Kayapo and anthropologist Dr. Darrell Posey criminal charges back in Brazil in 1988-1989.

The World Bank share in the Xingu project is to be $500 million; and private banks $4.7 billion.

See Barbara J. Cummings' Dam the Rivers, Damn the People: Development and Resistance in Amazonian Brazil (Earthscan, London, 1990); and the Pro-Indian Commission (CPI)'s Hydroelectrics of the Xingu: the State Against the Indigenous People (Sao Paulo).