Sacrificing Guaíra Falls

Introduction

On October 26, 1982, the town of Guaíra awoke to some very strange sights and sounds.* The first was the bats—thousands upon thousands of bats. They began invading the town a few nights prior and made homes anywhere they could.¹ Stranger still was the silence. For as long as most residents could remember, they fell asleep and awoke to the sound of one of the world’s largest waterfalls thundering in the background.²

The falls were a complex of more than twenty gigantic waterfalls and hundreds of small ones that together formed seven prominent clusters in one spot along the stretch of the Paraná River that served as the Brazilian-Paraguayan border.³ Guaíra abutted the falls, which served as the town’s cultural and economic core. In May 1961, the Brazilian government had designated the falls as a national park, which supported a burgeoning tourist economy thereafter.⁴ Residents themselves also frequented the falls to bathe in the pools that dotted the islands between them and admire the rich flora and fauna. The constant sound of thundering water was the town’s heartbeat and the silence that residents awoke to that October morning was its flatline.

Though many residents surely wished they were dreaming, the nightmare they awoke to was real: Guaíra Falls was gone. Itaipu, a large dam built downstream, had submerged it. On April 26, 1973, Brazil and Paraguay—both then under military dictatorship—had signed an accord to build the dam. From the beginning, its blueprints entailed flooding the falls, but they were far enough upstream that many held out hope that the reservoir would not reach them.⁵ It took about two weeks for the reservoir to fill, and some residents went to the river to watch and were saddened to see an ecological disaster unfold. The cries of birds searching for their nests brought one group to tears and they left shortly thereafter because they could not bear the sight any longer.⁶ Guaíra Falls was a natural wonder and those who knew it best watched in horror and disbelief as Itaipu’s reservoir flooded it (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Guaíra Falls before and during flooding. Photos by Jorge Somensi, in Elio J. Brunetto and Jonas D. Muraski, eds., Memórias das Sete Quedas (Concórdia: Equiplan Serviços Gráficos Ltda., 1983).

Since the decision to build Itaipu in April 1973, the Brazilian government has promoted the narrative that the loss of Guaíra Falls was a necessary sacrifice for economic growth.⁷ In 1982, Itaipu’s legal director Paulo Cunha claimed to journalists that only two possibilities existed: “Itaipu ou Sete Quedas … se fosse possível preservar Sete Quedas, é absurdo alguém pensar que Itaipu deliberadamente iria afogá-los.”⁸ This narrative has passed largely unchallenged into official histories and public discourse. For example, Itaipu’s official history, which says little about the falls to begin with, implies their disappearance was a necessary sacrifice for energy production.⁹ Similarly, most Brazilians mourn the loss of the falls but celebrate the material benefits that Itaipu has brought. Guaíra historian Ana Menél recounted with immense sadness the story of the flooding of Guaíra Falls, but shortly thereafter celebrated the material progress in the region as a result of Itaipu. She concluded that the dam was a net benefit.¹⁰

When completed in 1984, Itaipu was the most powerful hydroelectric dam in the world—only China’s Three Gorges Dam has since outstripped it—with the capacity to produce 14,000 MW of energy, enough to power New York City or Portugal. It alone provides around 10 percent of the energy consumed in Brazil and around 90 percent of Paraguay’s. It remains the world’s single most productive power plant and has produced 2.7 billion MWh of energy over its lifetime.¹¹ These benefits have made it easy for Itaipu’s supporters to write off any undesired environmental impacts as a necessary sacrifice in the name of progress.

But this agreeable narrative is incorrect. The Brazilian military government could have pursued other options to produce energy while sparing Guaíra Falls, such as the scheme that Brazilian engineering legend Octávio Marcondes Ferraz outlined in the project’s original blueprints. In 1962, he carried out a detailed study of potential dam sites near the falls, and in his final report proposed a dam upstream of Guaíra that would have had the capacity to produce around 10,000 MW of energy and spared the falls. Unlike Itaipu, the dam would have created only a small reservoir designed to divert water into a canal along the Brazilian side of the border that led to underground powerhouses downstream.

This plan, however, was politically problematic. Marcondes Ferraz’s report reignited a border dispute and raised the specter of the traumatic Paraguayan War, or the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), as it is known outside of Brazil, which had both determined the boundaries of the land in question and become a symbol of Brazilian aggression towards Paraguay. Brazil’s military government—which inherited the crisis after seizing power illegally in March 1964—grew increasingly anxious about the bad press the border conflict was generating. The country’s military had long sought justification for its interventions, and the generals who overthrew the government in 1964 cared deeply about public opinion and approval.¹² For the military regime, maintaining an air of political legitimacy also helped ensure continued access to loans from international lending agencies such as the World Bank.

The military government decided that the best solution to the conflict was to build Itaipu, a large dam that would flood the disputed area and generate such immense benefits for both countries that they would forget about their dispute. The Brazilian military regime became even further enamored with Itaipu because it provided massive amounts of energy, lucrative contracts for Brazilian construction companies, and was a symbol of grandiosity, which could shore up additional political legitimacy for the military regime.

Marcondes Ferraz’s fame—he had designed Brazil’s first large dam, Paulo Afonso—earned him enough clout among the Brazilian political elite that he could protest Itaipu without repercussion during a period of immense political repression. He protested in Congress, but his fight to save the falls did nothing to change the minds of the generals, who did not value environmental protection and proceeded with Itaipu despite its large environmental footprint.

This article argues that the Brazilian military government chose to pursue Itaipu rather than Marcondes Ferraz’s original proposal that would have spared Guaíra Falls because Itaipu presented an immediate solution to a border conflict that threatened to undermine the military regime’s legitimacy. To avoid bad publicity surrounding the dam’s militaristic and authoritarian origins, the Brazilian government has promoted the narrative that Itaipu was chosen because it was the best technical solution and necessary for economic growth. The narrative of necessary environmental sacrifice is both incorrect and dangerous because it encourages complacency towards environmental destruction.¹³

This article builds on and adds to the literature on big dams and other mega projects.¹⁴ In the 1950s–1980s, governments of all stripes throughout the world built massive dams, and many touted such engineering accomplishments as justification for their rule. For countries in the so-called Global South—many of which were newly independent—building such projects had the additional allure of refuting racist imperial stereotypes that their countries were inferior to Europeans and North Americans in science and engineering.¹⁵

Itaipu is an iconic engineering project of this era that has inspired a flood of publications from scholars across disciplines. The most recent batch of scholarship has started to shed light on the project’s geopolitical origins and environmental impact, thereby revising official narratives.¹⁶ For example, historian Jacob Blanc published pioneering work on the border crisis that inspired the dam, and environmental historians Nathalia Capellini and Carlos Florentin have discussed the connection between Itaipu and the burgeoning worldwide environmental movement in the 1960s–1980s, highlighting the mitigation measures that the former pursued in response to the latter.¹⁷

For all the merits of this new literature, scholars writing about Itaipu have continued to assume the dam’s location was a fait accompli and have not accounted for the role of contingency. None of them discuss Marcondes Ferraz’s project at length or explore the reasons why the Brazilian and Paraguayan military regimes chose Itaipu over competing proposals. This article thus presents a more complete account of Itaipu’s geopolitical origins with attention to the dam’s most glaring environmental impact and the efforts of those who fought to forestall it.

Including Marcondes Ferraz’s scheme adds at least two important insights to this literature. First, Itaipu should be seen as a moment of Paraguayan strength, which modifies the standard narrative that Brazil strong-armed Paraguay into building a dam on its terms. The Brazilian military regime worried that it could not build Marcondes Ferraz’s dam without earning a reputation as a bully, which would have undermined the military regime’s credibility and jeopardized its access to international loans. Brazil used its might to ensure that inequalities persisted in subsequent negotiations, but Paraguayan defiance compelled Brazil to pursue Itaipu over Marcondes Ferraz’s original proposal.

Second, Itaipu’s environmental footprint should be seen as the result of two intransigent military regimes’ geopolitical priorities rather than the inevitable outcome of economic growth, as standard narratives assume. Challenging the idea that environmental damage is a lamentable but necessary sacrifice for the gains of material progress is important because such thinking implies that environmental protection and preservation will erase such gains, and thus discourages action on these fronts. Telling stories in which there was a middle ground between either sacrificing nature in the name of material progress or sacrificing material progress in the name of nature preservation offers important insights for balancing the exigencies of economic growth and environmental protection, an urgent need in the age of climate crisis.

São Paulo Cannot Stop

In the 1950s, São Paulo was growing fast. So fast, in fact, that the city’s electric utility company could not keep up and had to ration electricity consumption. Industrialists were pouring into the city, and their factories attracted workers and families who settled in the surrounding metropolitan area. By 1958, the city had grown to roughly 3 million people and had become Latin America’s largest industrial center.¹⁸ Urban and industrial consumers were using all the city’s electricity, which at the time was supplied by small hydroelectric and thermal plants managed by a Canadian-owned company called São Paulo Light. The city was simply growing too fast. True to the popular saying of the time: São Paulo could not stop.¹⁹

São Paulo Light looked towards Guaíra Falls as the solution to the city’s energy crisis. The falls had wonderful potential to produce electricity. They were formed when the mighty Paraná River cut its way through the Maracaju Mountains. Upstream from the falls, the Paraná River spread five kilometers wide, but then dropped 115 meters and funneled into a narrow canyon that ran roughly 170 kilometers to where the Iguaçu River meets the Paraná.²⁰ This powerful set of waterfalls was reportedly the largest in the world measured by volume and a propitious site for a hydroelectric dam.²¹ In the 1950s, Light had exhausted all the best dam sites near São Paulo and transmission line technology was improving greatly, making it possible to transport electricity efficiently over greater distances.²²

It was the government, however, that took the lead on planning the Guaíra Falls Dam. Nationalism had been influential in Brazilian politics since the 1930s, and as federal and state governments became more capable energy producers in the 1950s, they became increasingly antagonistic to foreign-based power companies such as São Paulo Light. The government itself had become interested in the Guaíra Falls project, though it decided that a closer dam would be more practical in the short term. Between 1958 and 1964, the federal government built the Furnas Dam on the Grande River, which supplied enough electricity to resolve the shortages.²³

The success of Furnas inspired subsequent administrations to build bigger dams. In March 1962, energy minister Gabriel Passos contracted famed Brazilian engineer Octávio Marcondes Ferraz to carry out a viability study for a dam at Guaíra Falls.²⁴ This study stood out from previous surveys because it was carried out by the federal government and in the hands of one of Brazil’s most respected dam builders.

Marcondes Ferraz had designed the country’s first large, government-directed dam. In 1945, President Getúlio Vargas created the São Francisco Hydroelectric Company (CHESF), to build a large dam at the famous Paulo Afonso Falls in northeastern Brazil. Building the dam was an incredible engineering feat that involved excavating large caverns for underground powerhouses and diverting the giant and tempestuous São Francisco River. Marcondes Ferraz famously protested the original plans that North American engineers had laid out and built the dam according to his own design, which offered greater generating capacity. Paulo Afonso put the Brazilian government on the map as a major force that could reengineer rivers and build large dams, and it brought Marcondes Ferraz into the annals of Brazil’s national heroes.²⁵

The famous engineer’s final report on the Guaíra Falls dam, published in 1962, did more than simply outline the technical parameters for the dam—it set off a border dispute that evoked the specter of Brazil and Paraguay’s bellicose past and created a tense standoff that both countries thought best resolved with a dam that would flood Guaíra Falls.²⁶

Specter of a Bellicose Past

The Brazilian government was determined to build a large dam near Guaíra Falls but did not wish to stir up trouble with Paraguay, then under the dictatorial rule of military officer Alfredo Stroessner (ruled 1954–89). The history of relations between the two countries had been dominated by the trauma of a bitter war. Between 1864 and 1870, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, fought against Paraguay in a notably bloody conflict. Historians estimate that as a result of the war, Paraguay lost 50 percent of its total population and as much as 90 percent of its male population.²⁷

Brazil’s international reputation suffered heavily as a result of the war. Since Brazil had provided most of the troops on the side of the alliance, it bore the brunt of the criticism for the war and its destruction. International opprobrium accumulated after the conflict and has since been reaffirmed by foreign historians. Renowned North American historian Thomas Skidmore writes, “victory over such a small, poor, and desolate country hardly qualified Brazil for the annals of glorious warfare, despite the triumphalist rhetoric of some patriots in Rio. On the contrary, it raised fundamental questions about whether their own ill-integrated society was ready to join the race to modernity.”²⁸ Brazil had emerged from the war with its reputation in tatters and diplomatic cooperation between the two countries ground to a halt.

In the 1950s, more than 80 years after the war, both countries began the process of rapprochement in an effort to further shared economic goals. The global Cold War was raging, and the United States and its allies were lending money to centrist and right-leaning governments throughout Latin America as a means of discouraging communism. Brazil used the money to accelerate its industrial growth (both in manufacturing and industrial agriculture), helping to make it the economic powerhouse of the region. Paraguay, which was also receiving foreign loans, sought to align itself with its increasingly wealthy neighbor.

Brazil was eager to pull Paraguay into its economic orbit and use cooperation as a means of overcoming past grievances and improving its diplomatic reputation.²⁹ In the late 1950s, Brazil and the United States funded a highway from Asunción to the Paraná River (National Route 2) and a bridge crossing the river to neighboring Foz de Iguaçu, which Brazilians called the Friendship Bridge.³⁰ Nevertheless, the rapprochement was inchoate, and as the Brazilian government went about planning its Guaíra Falls dam, it wanted to avoid reopening old wounds that would set back its diplomatic efforts with Paraguay and sully its international standing.

But trouble erupted almost immediately. On February 13, 1962, O Jornal do Brasil published a short article announcing the Brazilian government’s decision to contract Marcondes Ferraz to carry out a viability study for a dam at Guaíra Falls.³¹ One month later, on March 12, the Paraguayan foreign minister wrote Brazil’s foreign minister asking if what O Jornal do Brasil had reported was true. The Paraguayan foreign minister said this was a problem because the land on the western bank of the Paraná River above Guaíra Falls was Paraguay’s, so Asunción would need to be consulted before surveyors could go about their work.³² The Brazilian foreign minister replied that Brazil was happy to consult with Paraguay about its dam-building plans, but that he was mistaken, the land in question on the Paraná’s western bank belonged to Brazil.

This exchange—triggered by the news of Marcondes Ferraz’s dam proposal—set off a tense border dispute.³³ The conflict worsened in December 1962, when Marcondes Ferraz published his report on the Guaíra Falls Dam, which proposed building a short dam above the falls that would divert water into a canal along the Brazilian side of the river that led to a powerhouse downstream (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Octávio Marcondes Ferraz’s Sete Quedas Dam proposal. From his Relatório preliminar sobre o aproveitamento do Salto de Sete Quedas (Guaíra) Rio Paraná (São Paulo: Escritório Técnico O.M.F., December 1962). Source: Folder Seven, Series 61.11.23. FOMF, CPDOC-FGV.

Tensions heightened in 1964. That year marked the hundred-year anniversary of the outbreak of the devastating Paraguayan War, and a coup in March brought the military to power in Brazil. Marcondes Ferraz had not anticipated that his report would cause such an uproar over the proper location of the border, and the government was surprised that its dam building ambitions had sparked such a heated geopolitical dispute. Diplomats in both countries tried to resolve the matter through telegrams, but failed.

The conflict threatened to turn violent in 1965. That March, the Paraguayan government sent troops to occupy the disputed border region and held a flag-raising ceremony.³⁴ In June, the Brazilian government responded by sending its military to occupy the same area and build roads, airstrips, buildings, and other infrastructure there. To make matters worse, in October Brazilian officers detained a group of Paraguayan government officials who had been sent to explore the Brazilian outpost. The incident caused an uproar in Asunción. The Paraguayan press published a stream of articles denouncing Brazilian imperialism, and in November the youth sectors of two opposition parties organized a demonstration that turned riotous when participants began vandalizing the Brazilian embassy and various Brazilian-owned businesses.³⁵

The border conflict revolved around differing interpretations of the 1872 Treaty of Loizaga-Cotegipe, which was signed in the aftermath of the Paraguayan War and established the border between the two countries. The treaty used ambiguous language in two key clauses to describe the border near Guaíra Falls. Its first clause, in the Portuguese-language text, stated that the border would run north along the Paraná River until it reached the “Salto Grande das Sete Quedas” and from there it would follow the “mais alto da Serra de Maracaju.”³⁶ The summit of the Maracaju Mountains splits just west of the Paraná River, creating a northern and southern peak. Paraguay contended that the treaty referred to the northern range, which terminated just above Guaíra Falls. This reading corresponded with its interpretation of the first clause, in which the term “Salto Grande das Sete Quedas” referred to the entire set of waterfalls. Under this reading, Paraguay owned the land north of the falls where Marcondes Ferraz planned to build his dam (Figure 3).³⁷

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Figure 3.

Maps showing different interpretations of the Brazilian-Paraguayan border. Paraguayan historian Efraim Cardozo produced the first map in Los derechos del Paraguay sobre los Saltos del Guairá (Asunción, 1965). A mixed Paraguayan-Brazilian commission produced the second map sometime during the border crisis. On this second map, the upper line shows Paraguay’s interpretation of the border and the lower line, Brazil’s. Comisión Mixta Demarcadora de Límites Paraguayo-Brasileña, “El límite entre Paraguay y Brasil en el Salto del Guairá,” Folder Six, FMT, ACME.

The Brazilian government interpreted this language differently. The Maracaju Mountains’ highest peak, it asserted, was its southern range, which led to the fifth and largest fall of the Guaíra Falls.³⁸ According to this reading, the “Salto Grande das Sete Quedas” did not refer to the entire set of waterfalls, but rather the largest of them, which was widely regarded as the fifth fall. Such an interpretation would give Brazil complete jurisdiction over the land immediately north of Guaíra Falls and permit building a dam there without Paraguayan approval.

Though building on disputed land was the immediate point of contention, the dispute also concerned water diversion. Building a dam immediately upstream of the falls would give Brazil complete control of the water along the shared stretch of the Paraná. The legal institutions structuring water rights in the region were feeble and open to interpretation, and at the time Brazil argued it had no obligation to share water with downstream neighbors.³⁹ Thus, Paraguay was defending not just its claim to the disputed land, but its rights to Paraná River water as well.

The situation almost became intractable. In June 1966, the foreign ministers of both countries met to try and come to an agreement, but neither would concede. Former Paraguayan Itaipu Director Enzo Debernardi writes that during these tense negotiations, Brazilian foreign minister Juracy Magalhães exclaimed that “un tratado de límites solo puede ser alterado por otro tratado o por una guerra en la que fuéramos derrotados.” Paraguay’s foreign minister Raul Sapena Pastor responded, “¿es eso una amenaza?”⁴⁰

The two countries avoided hostilities on June 22, 1966, by signing the Ata de Iguaçu, an agreement that both sides would work together on any dam planned in the disputed area, or elsewhere along their mutual border. The agreement was an important step towards easing tensions, but it did not erase the problem. The Ata de Iguaçu had not outlined plans for a specific project, and Paraguay remained suspicious of Brazil’s engineering plans near the disputed area.

Desperate to find a solution before tensions turned to hostilities, President Castelo Branco transferred diplomat Mário Gibson Barboza from Europe to Paraguay in November 1966. According to Gibson Barboza, immense tumult greeted him in Asunción. Paraguayans were burning Brazilian flags in the streets, and on his first night, blaring car horns outside his window kept him from sleeping. When morning came, he found that someone had vandalized the Brazilian embassy with a phrase that he translated to “fora o invasor brasileiro.” When he went out to a restaurant or a store and spoke with a Brazilian accent, people refused to serve him. The degree of public resentment towards Brazil that he claims to have witnessed convinced him that Paraguay’s authoritarian President Stroessner would not capitulate. He understood that Paraguay’s military government could not retreat from its stance without serious political repercussions. He was convinced, however, that Brazil’s interpretation was correct, and, following his superiors, he refused to concede.⁴¹

What was at stake for the Brazilian military regime was not just the Guaíra border, but the precedent that capitulation would set. The generals feared that if they conceded on this dispute, they would open all their borders up to further negotiation. The fledgling military regime was also growing anxious about being seen as an international bully, which would discredit its rule and might jeopardize its access to loans from multinational banks. Gibson Barboza—echoing the position that energy ministers and senators later took to defend Itaipu—reflected,

O impasse era total e intransponível. De proporçoes ainda pequenas, porém já com publicidade extremamente desfavorável ao Brasil. Na Europa, o que se dizia nos meios governamentais e diplomáticos era que um grande país como o Brasil, com uma área territorial gigantesca, estava querendo, mais uma vez, oprimir o Paraguai, um pobre país sem qualquer riqueza e nem ao menos uma saída para o mar, tirando-lhe um pedaço do seu território … Estávamos no papel de opressores, de imperialistas que queriam, mais uma vez, oprimir o Paraguai.⁴²

The Brazilian military government was determined not to concede, but wanted desperately to find a solution to a problem that threatened to undermine its political legitimacy.

With Brazil’s international reputation on the line, Gibson Barboza began promoting a novel solution: a big dam downstream that would flood the disputed area. Gibson Barboza’s memoirs present the idea as his own, but it is just as likely that the idea originated among Brazilian engineers. He was in touch with Brazilian dam builders around that time, and during the buildup to and aftermath of the Ata de Iguaçu, engineers floated various possibilities for dams along the shared stretch of the river. No specific studies had been made, but the idea of a dam further downstream than Marcondes Ferraz’s original scheme was already in circulation around the time that Gibson Barboza arrived in Asunción.⁴³

He soon conferred with Eletrobras officials and then met with Sapena Pastor and presented the idea. Gibson Barboza suggested that a large dam downstream would provide such immense benefits that they would forget about their dispute. Moreover, this dam could flood the contested area and make the problem disappear altogether. He reflects in his memoirs: “o que tínhamos que fazer era procurar tecer uma teia de interesses entre Brasil e Paraguai de tal porte que gerasse efetivos benefícios aos dois países e transformasse o diferendo territorial em algo de importância secundária—ou, mesmo, o anulasse.” He continued, “pensei: e se construíssemos uma hidrelétrica na fronteira … o território em litígio seria forçosamente coberto pelas águas da represa, eliminando-se, assim, o objeto mesmo da discussão.”⁴⁴ Sapena Pastor also liked the idea and both diplomats presented it to their superiors.

Both Presidents liked the idea too and, in February 1967, established a joint technical commission—composed of Italian and North American engineers—to study the possibility of building a big dam. That year, Brazil’s foreign ministry reflected in a confidential report that a dam “should flood the entire disputed zone, and as such, would finally resolve this problem.”⁴⁵

Between February 1971 and October 1972, the Mixed Technical Commission studied over fifty schemes across ten dam sites. Among these schemes were a handful of variations on the original Marcondes Ferraz proposal, all of which the engineers deemed viable but economically inferior to other schemes with big reservoirs.⁴⁶

The Commission’s report presented detailed studies of the two schemes they thought were economically superior to all others. One option was to build two small dams, one near Foz de Iguaçu, at a site known as Itaipu, and another upstream near Porto Mendes, at a site called Santa Maria. Or they could build one gigantic dam at Itaipu.

The engineers favored the latter option because it was the most cost effective. Moreover, one giant reservoir, rather than two small ones, would make it easier to regulate the river. The commissioners deemed the Itaipu High Dam the best choice among the options they studied and concluded that “qualquer esquema com duas barragens será somente de interesse caso outros fatores requeiram sua consideração.”⁴⁷

There were no other factors that encouraged the dictatorships to consider alternatives. In fact, choosing Itaipu seemed to solve a handful of the Brazilian dictatorship’s political problems. The Brazilian generals were chasing political legitimacy, and the Itaipu High Dam promised to submerge a tense border dispute that had threatened to undermine their credibility abroad, which was essential to maintaining access to loans from multinational banks.⁴⁸ In 1973, then energy minister Antônio Dias Leite—one of the architects of the 1973 Itaipu treaty—celebrated the happy coincidence that the most acceptable choice politically was also the most advantageous in terms of energy production.⁴⁹ The dam’s colossal size also meant it would generate lots of work for Brazilian construction companies that would benefit from the contracts. Corruption was rampant in both the Brazilian and Paraguayan military governments, and kickbacks surely factored into the decision to choose Itaipu.⁵⁰

Furthermore, both governments could tout the economic benefits and the grandness of Itaipu as evidence of their effectiveness. Dams have symbolic value in demonstrating that governments can both control the natural environment and improve the lives of their people. Itaipu offered more powerful symbolism than most dams: when finished, it would be the largest hydroelectric plant in the world with tremendous capacity to power economic growth. Itaipu became a symbol of Brazilian engineering prowess and international standing that the dictatorship used to bolster its legitimacy.⁵¹ Itaipu was created to solve a geopolitical problem, but the Brazilian dictatorship was happy that it delivered other benefits that dovetailed with several of its political ambitions.

The only factor that might have required the government to consider alternatives was Itaipu’s environmental footprint. Far more than Marcondes Ferraz’s proposal or the two-dam scheme, building Itaipu meant creating a reservoir that would flood large amounts of land and unleash a series of ecological changes in the region. Such environmental consequences hardly troubled the military regime in the late 1960s since there was then no popular environmental or anti-dam movement. But the buildup to the United Nation’s Conference on the Environment in Stockholm in 1972 had convinced the military government that it would need to make some environmental concessions to stay in the favor of international lending agencies such as the World Bank, which was then trying to green its image in response to the rising tide of environmentalism.⁵²

The Brazilian military regime understood that in order to maintain its access to World Bank funding, its projects would have to pass new environmental assessments.⁵³ Though the World Bank was not funding Itaipu, the Brazilian military dictatorship was borrowing heavily from the Bank and was in the middle of an unprecedented economic boom that was later dubbed the Brazilian economic miracle. After March 1964, World Bank lending to Brazil rose from zero to US$73 million a year and reached roughly US$500 million a year by the mid-1970s.⁵⁴ Brazil was borrowing so much that it became one of the Bank’s biggest clients, responsible for nearly 10 percent of the bank’s accumulated lending worldwide through 1991.⁵⁵ With the economy growing, and underpinning what legitimacy they enjoyed, the generals wanted desperately to keep the spigot of international lending open.

But geopolitical pressures outweighed those of the environmental movement. Since neither Brazil nor Paraguay yet had strong environmental lobbies, Itaipu’s architects thought it sufficient to contract an ecologist to carry out a hasty ecological impact assessment that sidestepped the question of site selection and outlined some mitigation measures.⁵⁶ Choosing Itaipu meant flooding Guaíra Falls, but both governments considered the loss an acceptable sacrifice given all the benefits that the large dam would bring.⁵⁷ On April 26, 1973, the Brazilian and Paraguayan military governments signed a treaty that created Itaipu Binacional and committed them to building the Itaipu High Dam.

Marcondes Ferraz Protests

Marcondes Ferraz had been following the project’s evolution through stories in local newspapers. What he was reading in April 1973 worried him: the government, it seemed, was about to choose Itaipu over his proposal, and had yet to consult him. He was desperate for more information because the articles offered very little.⁵⁸

The Mixed Technical Commission had carried out its studies in secret because both governments were worried that open debate about dam sites would give life to Marcondes Ferraz’s proposal and reopen the geopolitical wound they were struggling to suture. In May 1973, Brazil’s Chief of the Military responded to criticism about the manner in which the studies and negotiations were carried out. He wrote, “As vantagens que poderiam advir de uma ampla divulgação dos estudos realizados para o aproveitamento hidroelétrico do Rio Paraná … parecem não compensar os riscos dos debates, onde poderiam surgir argumentos contrários à posição brasileira no contexto da Bacia do Prata, problema extremamente delicado de nossa política internacional.”⁵⁹ The military government had calculated the costs and benefits of publicity and chose secrecy. The Mixed Technical Commission had hired North American and Italian engineers to carry out the studies, and they had not even bothered to consult Brazil’s own engineering experts, like Marcondes Ferraz, who was left to follow the project’s developments through the press.

There was a second factor that had been keeping Marcondes Ferraz from promoting his alternative. In 1970, two Eletrobras directors—Amir Borges Fortes and Léo Amaral Penna—approached him and asked for his silence so as not to upset the delicate geopolitical situation. Not wanting to cause trouble, he complied and remained silent.

However, when he learned that the government was about to make a decision without consulting him or the rest of Brazil’s engineers, he changed his mind. There were multiple characteristics of his project that he believed made it superior to Itaipu, foremost among which was that it would preserve Guaíra Falls. In April 1976, he announced to an audience at the Club of Engineers in Rio de Janeiro: “nessa época, os jornais anunciaram que fora adotada uma solução Itaipu, que, entre outros inconvenientes, faria desaparecer o magnífico salto de Sete Quedas.” He continued, “admitir a destruição do salto de Sete Quedas é fato que reduz grandemente a força moral das autoridades para defender a ecologia e a natureza … confesso que o fato me apanhou de surpresa, pois nunca imaginei que um projeto desse porte fosse adotado em segredo de estudo e de Estado.”⁶⁰ The environmental impact of Itaipu alarmed Marcondes Ferraz, and as the government revealed more information about the project in the months preceding the April 26, 1973 Treaty, he decided he had to speak up.

Marcondes Ferraz first went to the President. In April 1973, a week before the treaty was signed, he met with President Emílio Médici, who heard him out but was unconvinced that his proposal was superior to Itaipu.⁶¹ Over the following years, he wrote hundreds of letters to important politicians and engineers protesting Itaipu, including soon-to-be president Ernesto Geisel and then secretary of the environment Paulo Nogueira Neto.⁶² When construction began, he felt he was running out of time and decided he had to spread his argument to wider audiences. In April 1976, he went to the Club of Engineers in Rio de Janeiro to present his proposal and criticize the government for not having consulted him, other Brazilian engineers, or the public, before making its decision to build Itaipu and flood Guaíra Falls. His speech impressed Democratic Movement Party (MDB) Senator and opposition leader Paulo Brossard so much that he brought it to the attention of the National Congress.⁶³ After some debate, the Senate agreed to invite Marcondes Ferraz to share his argument.

Marcondes Ferraz argued that his scheme was superior to Itaipu in three respects. First, his dam would produce more energy for Brazil. At the time, Itaipu was projected to produce roughly 12,000 megawatts, which would be split evenly between Brazil and Paraguay. His Guaíra Falls proposal, he contended, would produce nearly as much as Itaipu, but Brazil would not have to divide this energy with Paraguay because the entire dam would be on Brazilian soil. Building its own dam also meant that Brazil had more administrative control than in a binational scheme. Second, his plan was cheaper. Itaipu entailed building a giant concrete dam over 150 meters tall that required lots of labor and materials. His project, in contrast, entailed a short 10-meter dam above the falls, a 60-kilometer canal, and an underground powerhouse, all of which he claimed would be much cheaper to build than Itaipu. He also accounted for construction time in this calculation. He believed that the rate of inflation—which was then about 34 percent—would continue to rise over the next decade and make any large infrastructure project increasingly expensive as the years progressed. He argued that his dam could be built faster and thus avoid the long-term costs of inflation that Itaipu would incur, as it would take nearly a decade to build. Lastly, his project would have a comparatively benign environmental footprint. The dam he proposed had a much smaller reservoir. Its main purpose was to divert water into a canal, and it would flood neither indigenous land nor large areas of farmland. Most importantly for Marcondes Ferraz, it would spare Guaíra Falls.⁶⁴

The senators who supported Itaipu paid their respects to Marcondes Ferraz but were not persuaded by his arguments.⁶⁵ Some touted the technical benefits that Itaipu would bring. They argued that Brazil was desperate for affordable energy—even more so after the 1973 oil crisis—and that if geopolitical exigencies required Brazil to split either dam’s output evenly, Itaipu would promise more electricity for Brazil than Marcondes Ferraz’s scheme.⁶⁶ These opponents also highlighted that the group of Italian and North American engineers had studied Marcondes Ferraz’s scheme as part of their survey and favored Itaipu.⁶⁷

More important than technical considerations was the fact that Marcondes Ferraz’s project was unacceptable politically. In the debate about whether to invite Marcondes Ferraz to speak, Senator Alexandre Costa referenced earlier testimony from energy minister Dias Leite, one of the three Brazilian architects of the 1973 Itaipu treaty. In this speech, Dias Leite had commented on Marcondes Ferraz’s proposal and its political shortcomings: “existe, de fato, uma alternativa, em que toda a obra ficaria em território nacional. Isto, no entanto, seria politicamente inviável, pela sua total inaceitação pela República do Paraguai. Então a alternativa nem entra em cogitação.”⁶⁸ Most senators agreed with Dias Leite and stated bluntly that the disappearance of Guaíra Falls was lamentable, but that the political benefits of Itaipu were simply more important.⁶⁹

Marcondes Ferraz and his supporters defended their position. He clarified that he never intended for his project to prevent Paraguay from tapping the river’s energetic potential, and argued that there were other ways in which Brazil and Paraguay could cooperate to produce hydroelectricity without flooding Guaíra Falls. He pointed to examples from other parts of the world where two countries built dams along a shared border without resorting to warfare or giant reservoirs. The Canadian and United States governments both built their own hydropower plants along the Niagara River, as did Spain and Portugal along the Douro River. He argued that the Paraguayan and Brazilian governments could cooperate in similar projects along their shared border that would spare Guaíra Falls.⁷⁰

These arguments resonated with a handful of sympathetic congressmembers who argued that no other country in the world would flood a natural wonder as grand as Guaíra Falls.⁷¹ Paulo Brossard pleaded with his colleagues to take up Marcondes Ferraz’s proposal: “queira Deus, Sr. Presidente, que a geração atual não venha a passar à História como a que, à custa de muito ouro, conseguiu apagar do universo a maravilha das Sete Quedas e criar um grave problema para outras gerações.”⁷² Itaipu would indeed flood the famous waterfalls and cause grave environmental problems for future generations, but these considerations were not priorities for most of the senators who considered, and discounted, Marcondes Ferraz’s scheme.

That Marcondes Ferraz made it as far as he did was due to the fact that he was an engineering legend within Brazil. From the beginning, the Brazilian dictatorship harshly censored any criticism of Itaipu. Skeptical senators like Leite Chaves were openly ridiculed in the Senate and encouraged to keep quiet. Those who had no political or engineering clout suffered graver consequences. In 1982, Brazilian journalist Juvêncio Mazzarollo was arrested for criticizing Itaipu in his newspaper Nosso Tempo and spent nearly two years in prison where he suffered from mistreatment and malnutrition.⁷³

Marcondes Ferraz’s engineering prowess may have earned him an audience with Congress, but his reputation alone was not enough to convince the government to abandon Itaipu. The 1966 Ata de Iguaçu had required both countries to develop their shared stretch of the Paraná River together, and there were few in the Ministry of Foreign Relations or Ministry of Mines and Energy who shared Marcondes Ferraz’s optimism that his scheme could be developed in cooperation with Paraguay without making unacceptable geopolitical concessions. Ambassador Gibson Barboza, one of the 1973 treaty’s architects recounted: “Eu a julgava [Marcondes Ferraz’s project], antes de tudo, suicídio. Não haveria corte de justiça internacional que não desse a vitória ao Paraguai, num caso como esse … se um pequeno problema de fronteira já estava quase nos levando à guerra, imagine-se o que ocorreria se desviássemos o rio Paraná para construir uma hidrelétrica em nosso território.”⁷⁴ Dias Leite, energy minister and fellow treaty architect, agreed with Gibson Barboza. He reflected, “acredito, com toda a franqueza, que nosso campo de opção não era muito grande, uma vez que todas as hipóteses que envolviam o canal não eram admitidas pela República do Paraguai. Assim, não havia discussão.”⁷⁵ Marcondes Ferraz’s proposal had some merits, but it was geopolitically unacceptable.

This conclusion was the principal refrain among all in congress who supported Itaipu. Senator Arnon de Mello admitted that he judged Marcondes Ferraz’s scheme to be superior in technical terms, but clarified that his choice to build Itaipu was primarily political.⁷⁶ Senator Luiz Viana remarked,

politicamente não havia condições para o Brasil realizar a barragem preconizada pelo eminente engenheiro, ao qual todos prestamos as nossas homenagens … pois o Brasil, se quisesse forçar a construção da barragem somente no seu território, naturalmente encontraria extrema dificuldade e não podemos avaliar até onde isso nos conduziria.⁷⁷

The treaty architects had discarded Marcondes Ferraz’s proposal because of its geopolitical shortcomings and the Senate was doing the same.⁷⁸

Furthermore, Itaipu’s supporters argued, the country already had a large waterfall in the region that they could showcase as a natural wonder. About 30 kilometers southeast of Itaipu, the binational stretch of the Iguaçu River (on the Brazil-Argentina border) creates a giant waterfall before reaching the Paraná. In the 1930s, both Brazil and Argentina created national parks at their respective sides of the iconic Iguaçu Falls and encouraged tourism there.⁷⁹ Further promoting tourism at Iguaçu Falls was an excellent strategy for softening the opportunity cost of flooding Guaíra Falls. Dias Leite pointed this out: “nós temos, ao lado de Sete Quedas, o Salto do Iguaçu, que, ao contrário de Sete Quedas, tem talvez mais valor turístico e de preservação de um parque natural, do que valor energético.”⁸⁰ Since Brazil already had a large waterfall, there was apparently little need for a second.

The decision had been made in April 1973, and Itaipu’s reservoir would flood the falls. Environmentalism was not a priority of either dictatorship, and the political and economic benefits of Itaipu simply overshadowed any concern for the dam’s environmental footprint. Marcondes Ferraz’s protests fell on deaf ears, and construction on Itaipu proceeded apace.

Conclusion

There are few stories about large dams that discuss the environmental merits of different sites during the planning stages. Environmental historians who study dams have been more concerned with the environmental impacts of dams after construction or protest movements to halt dam building altogether. Itaipu and Guaíra Falls presents an especially revealing case study because of the high stakes involved: one of Brazil’s most celebrated engineers proposed building the world’s most powerful dam while sparing one of the world’s grandest waterfalls. Instead, the Brazilian military government chose to build—in partnership with Paraguay—an even larger dam downstream that flooded the falls in order to resolve a century-old border dispute that had evoked the memory of a traumatic war and threatened Brazil’s international reputation.

This story offers an important insight that should not be confused with nostalgia for a utopian counterfactual. Marcondes Ferraz’s proposal would have entailed tradeoffs that are impossible to fully assess given that the dam never went forward. The most immediate tradeoff was of course the geopolitical difficulties of the original blueprints. The site also had lower output than Itaipu, might have revealed technical challenges for engineers, and—like Itaipu—its costs might have been higher than anticipated.⁸¹ The project would have also had its own environmental footprint that might have ignited protest. Indeed, one of the scheme’s critics argued that diverting water from the Paraná River could have destroyed Guaíra Falls by drying them up.⁸² Such has been the case with the iconic Paulo Afonso Falls that abut the dam that earned Marcondes Ferraz his engineering fame—huge storage reservoirs upstream and persistent drought over the past decade have dried the falls entirely.⁸³

On the other hand, both governments might have been able to resolve some of these issues had the proposal been considered more seriously. Brazil could have softened its hardline stance on the disputed territory and pursued a binational version of Marcondes Ferraz’s scheme that would have been more palatable to Paraguay. With additional studies and open debate, it might also have been possible to address any technical problems or deleterious socioenvironmental impacts that arose. These considerations, although worthy of speculation, are largely beside the point.

The point is not that Brazil should have pressed ahead with the original proposal despite its geopolitical shortcomings, but that there were more options available than Itaipu or no dam. Marcondes Ferraz’s scheme—in all its potential variations—existed as a third option, a path between complete energy optimization (building a dam that floods the falls) and complete environmental preservation (building no dam at all). That this alternative was championed by one of Brazil’s most respected engineers—whose gilded reputation allowed him to protest during a period of severe political repression—suggests that the plan was a viable solution, even if the military governments and the engineers they hired deemed it inferior to other proposals in geopolitical and economic terms. It is important to emphasize this point because it discredits the false narrative that there were only two choices: Itaipu or Guaíra Falls, material progress or environmental stewardship.

The danger of such narratives is that they encourage complacency with environmental destruction. Itaipu’s environmental impacts are universally mourned, but there are many who are willing to accept such damage if they believe it to be a necessary sacrifice for the benefits of electrification. The same is true of a host of other environmental disasters: lamentable, but necessary for the rewards of industrialization. On the other side, those who argue that such sacrifices are not worth the benefits of material progress have a hard time convincing others to engage in environmental protection if it means giving up the basic gains of such advancements (such as electrification).

If we learn the history of environmental degradation as a lamentable but necessary sacrifice for industrialization, then we will lose the battle to mitigate global warming and other pressing environmental issues because we will continue to write off such damage as the inevitable and acceptable price of material progress. Some environmental degradation is indeed inescapable, but the more dubious forms of destruction are seldom the result of the abstract forces of progress; they are more often the result of decisions made by powerful actors—in this case two intransigent military governments—in pursuit of their economic and political interests.

The Brazilian miliary regime’s interest in peace and partnership is admirable, although environmental despoilation need not be the price of international cooperation. Indeed, in other times and places, neighboring countries have worked together to protect shared natural monuments. Marcondes Ferraz highlighted the example of the United States and Canada, who built neighboring hydropower plants at the iconic Niagara Falls without flooding it.⁸⁴ In South America, Brazil and Argentina’s neighboring Iguaçu Falls National Parks—created in the 1930s about 110 miles downstream from Guaíra—are also evidence that international cooperation and environmental preservation are compatible. In fact, both governments created the parks in part for their geopolitical benefits (bringing people and resources to a contested borderland), and, for decades, international tensions hampered collaboration at the ground level. Nevertheless, both governments maintained the parks, which have together preserved one of the largest remaining tracts of the Atlantic Forest and have each become UNESCO World Heritage Sites that attract millions of tourists annually.⁸⁵

The second point, therefore, is that, for reasons of political convenience, Marcondes Ferraz’s proposal was not considered more seriously, studied further, and debated openly among engineers and the public. Guaíra Falls is not lost under a reservoir because Brazil needed to industrialize; it is under water because Itaipu was the most convenient way for the military government to rid itself of a troublesome geopolitical problem and because building such a massive dam would showcase the military regime’s effectiveness. Itaipu is a monument to many things: to Brazilian and Paraguayan engineering genius, to international cooperation, to energy independence, and to much else. It is also—above all—a lesson in the importance of democracy and transparency during the planning stages of large environmental re-engineering projects, and to the pressing need to dismantle false narratives concocted to justify environmental despoliation in the name of economic growth.

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