 Stretching over 4,000 miles across South America, the Amazon River has long defied human efforts to tame it. Not a single bridge crosses it, and not one dam halts its flow. This program visits urban centers on the banks of the Amazon and examines new attempts to harness—or exploit—the river’s energy and natural abundance. The journey begins at Iquitos—a Peruvian city blighted by poverty and inaccessible by road. Next is Manaus, a hub of tourism and industry in Brazil—and an effective springboard to discussions of controversial dam proposals. At the mouth of the Amazon, viewers find Belém, where the river is both agriculturally productive and highly vulnerable to development. (51 minutes)
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