Belo Monte will be the world´s third-largest hydroelectric project and will displace up to 20,000 people while diverting the Xingu River and flooding as much as 230 square miles of rainforest. The controversial project is one of around 60 hydroelectric projects Brazil has planned in the Amazon to generate electricity for its rapidly expanding economy—and one that has generated an enormous amount of criticism.
Faces of the Lost: Photos from Brazil’s Controversial Belo Monte Dam
Mario Tama / Getty Images
Indigenous men await the start of the Xingu +23 event that gathers resisters of the Belo Monte dam project in the Amazon basin on June 13, 2012 in Santo Antonio, near Altamira, Brazil. Santo Antonio is adjacent to where the Belo Monte dam complex is under construction and the entire community will be expropriated for the construction.
