Originally published on 1/21/2005 by O Estado de Sao Paulo
EDUARDO NUNOMURA
Special report from Porto Velho
Excluded from the map of national concerns, the Madeira-Mamoré railroad today has become an old iron scrap on the verge of national stardom. No government has plans to reconstruct its 366 kilometers. No entrepreneur dares to spend a single buck to put the old steam trains back on the rails. But starting this week, a TV series will tell the story of how the most epic landmark of civil engineering in this country was constructed, in the beginning of the 20th century. And many will ask themselves: How is it today? It is the way it has been since it was deactivated in 1972: abandoned.
Abandoned public works aren’t anything new in Brazil. The Iron Railroad Madeira-Mamoré is another one. Amid the recent discussions about infrastructure (or the lack of it) in this country, this example of negligence promises to become a subject of national debate. Its fate demonstrates in essence the scorn of Brazilian governments and governors toward the country’s historical and architectural heritage. From Porto Velho to Guajará-Mirim, it is just one sad, lifeless railway.
Moss, leafs, trunks, trees – it is the Amazon forest reclaiming the space of the iron road. In other places, there are sidewalks, shacks, houses, buildings and shops. The earth has already covered thousands of rails and railway sleepers. And asphalt, just as well.
The iron bridges that once supported tons of locomotives and wagons have become useless objects in the landscape. Or useful, when they have to replace the bridges on the BR-364 highway. And particularly ideal to the business of 72-year-old Joaquim Gonçalves Mendes. A year ago he built a bizarre bar for miners over one of these bridges, the Mutum-Paraná.
“I thought: I’m going to get a piece of this bridge. It’s all banged up anyway”, recalls Mendes, the son of a “seringueiro” (rubber collector) who nine years ago built a house on a land invasion, right after Madeira-Mamoré. Born in Guajará-Mirim, he “reached out” to ride the train before it was deactivated in the 50’s.
He misses those times, but prefers to keep his mind on the future. “Will I get in trouble for staying here?”, he asks, only to answer to himself. “I am not breaking anything, I’m only taking care so that she (the railroad) will not be put to an end. Go look on the other side of the bridge.” In Mendes’ bar there is a pool table, plastic drinking tables and chairs, a wooden floor laid over the rails, a straw ceiling, loud music and a lot of drinking to quench the thirst of the miners who extract gold from the local rivers. The delivery truck for beer and soda makes it there somehow. With so many easy breaks and a clientele that grows on the weekends, the businessman is thinking about advancing a little farther onto the railway.
The little more than ten squared meters occupied by Mendes is nothing close to another type of invasion that is taking place along the Madeira-Mamoré.
Farms that are measured in hectares (ten thousand squared meters), with posts and hundreds of cattle roaming next to the rail tracks, are taking over what was supposed to be a railroad. They are negotiated freely, with ads on BR-364 indicating the name of the property and telephone number. By law, 150 meters on each side of the center of the tracks belong to the Brazilian government.
The lack of inspection is part of a legal entanglement that has been tying up things since 1992. In that year, former president Fernando Collor de Mello signed a bill transferring all the properties of the railroad to the State of Rondônia. But that never happened.
At best, some attempts were made to reactivate some of its segments in the form of tourist attractions. Practically ownerless, the Madeira-Mamoré has had its rails stolen, its locomotives were vandalized and a lot of iron already turned to rust in the shops of Porto Velho.
The so dreamed connection between the Atlantic and the Pacific that would run through its rails never materialized. When it was built, between 1907 and 1912, still during the peak of the rubber and Brazilian nut epochs, the railroad was the best possible way of transport. For some inexplicable reason, few are those who have the courage today to admit that it is economically dead, and even fewer those who are capable of offering any kind of solution to what to do with it.
SHORT GAUGE
The Madeira-Mamoré has a railway gauge of 1 meter – the standard gauge at the time. Today’s cargo trains use a gauge of 1.2 meter. The difference of 20 centimeters is crucial. Adapting it to the current standards would be unreasonably expensive. If it is kept the way it is, the only ones able to stand on the rails would be the old Baldwin locomotives. That is why some people talk today about recovering two of its segments for tourism. Something around 36 kilometers. And what about the other 330 kilometers? Not one word.
“Those discussions only arise because of the politicians”, resumes José Lemos, known as “Zé do Apito” (Whistle Joe), an former engineer for Madeira-Mamoré. The son and grandson of railway men, this public service worker of the town of Guajará-Mirim is the keeper of the final segment of the railroad. With a salary that “runs around R$ 500 ($ 192.30)”, he criticizes the scorn of the federal and state governments, but also the community’s lack of interest toward the railroad.
From a wooden house built less than 3 meters from the rail tracks, “Zé do Apito” handles the maintenance of the line. He cuts the grass and weeds and makes sure that no one is vandalizing the tracks or building over them. And still thinks about earning some change with his trolley, a wooden cart that runs on a boat engine and can make the 29 kilometers to Iata that are still transit able. “The idea is to get the vegetables from some dwellers and bring them here. It is hard for them because there is no road.”
AT THE FRONTIER
Madeira-Mamoré was born out of the Petrópolis Treaty, in 1903, which obligated Brazil to build the railroad in the benefit of Bolivia, interested since the middle 19th century in having a connection line to the Atlantic Ocean. It got the deal out of losing the State of Acre to the Brazilians. Today, very few Bolivians on the other side of the border resent the lack of the railroad for commerce, but many would like to see it reactivated for tourism. So says Elias “Tico” Mesquita, mayor of the sister-city of Guayaramerín. “The train should be the most important piece for integration of the two countries”, explains the Bolivian mayor. “If the Brazilians knew how the railroad influenced our culture, they wouldn’t have deactivated it.” In fact, in Guayaramerín, where people speak “portunhol” (a mix of Portuguese and Spanish), one of the hottest topics today is “Mad Maria”, the Globo miniseries that will also be shown there starting Tuesday. “Everyone will want to see the railroad, but how will that happen if it doesn’t work anymore? Reactivate her.”
The railroad holds a number of myths, such as being built on rails of gold, or that for each railway sleeper a human life was lost, and that it cost 62,000 contos de réis (the currency at the time). Writer Manoel Rodrigues Ferreira, the author of “A Ferrovia do Diabo”, or “The Devil’s Railroad”, the main reference book in Portuguese about the Madeira-Mamoré, calculated that this cost would be equivalent to 28 tons of gold at the time. He estimated that some 6,208 workers of several nationalities died because of the construction. So much money buried and so many lives lost, whose real value now will get a chance for recognition.
