The Road to Extrema

To attract settlers Brazil built a highway, the notorious BR-364, through the heart of Amazonia. Journalist-novelist Reiss ( Saltmaker ) traveled the portion of the road that connects Porto Velho and Rio Branco, the capitals of Rondonia and Acre, to Extrema, a frontier town of colonists and sawmills. Here, where the forces of law and order are in a shambles, Reiss interviews squatters, gold miners, Indians, unarmed forest police, rubber trappers, ranchers and local officials. He paints a grim picture of destruction and pollution before offering contrasting scenes of New York, introducing a cancer patient being treated with medicine derived from the forest, describing a major bank's efforts to arrange a debt-for-nature swap and reporting that thousands of Latin American refugees, dispossessed of their land, work on Long Island, most as gardeners. Reiss's journey dramatically demonstrates the link between the rain forest and the rest of the world. (Mar.)