All indicates that Sivam will be nothing but a branch
of the broadest aerial monitoring system ever
in South America and the Caribbean,
controlled by the US.

Amidst accusations by the Folha de São Paulo newspaper that the current Chief of Staff of the Air Force, lieutenant general Marcos Antônio de Oliveira, favored the Americans during the tender for the project, president Fernando Henrique Cardoso inaugurated July 25th, the Amazonian Surveillance System (Sivam), in Manaus. The stated objective of the project is to monitor, by means of airborne radar and satellite signals, 5.5 million square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon.

According to the Folha, general Oliveira leaked confidential information that favored the Raytheon company, the fourth largest Pentagon contractor, in a public tender against the French company, Thompson (now Thales) for deployment of Sivam. The stakes were US$ 1.4 billion. The military also supposedly promised to pass on information collected by Sivam to US authorities. The accusations are based on 400 documents that the newspaper obtained from the State Department.

Ever since the project was announced, in the early 1990s, Cimi has expressed concern on a number of occasions that, besides issues related to corruption, Sivam could negatively affect the rights and interests of the indigenous peoples and riverbank populations of Amazônia. Similar to the example of the Calha Norte Program, Sivam was conceived under the bias of the old militaristic doctrine of National Security, according to which the indigenous populations that live on the country’s borders are potential enemies of Brazil.

The newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo stated that Sivam is entering into operation just at the moment when there is a military build up on the border with Colombia, where nine fronts are located against the Armed Revolutionary Forces (Farc). As foreseen, information collected by Sivam will most likely be utilized by operations of the Colombia Plan, a US 1.3 billion project financed by the United States. Under the pretext of fighting drug traffickers, the project has clear military objectives within the neighboring country.

Everything indicates that Sivam will be nothing but a branch of the broadest aerial monitoring system ever in South America and the Caribbean, evidently controlled by the government of the United States. This assumption is in accordance to some of the Department of State documents disclosed by the Folha, in which the American government commemorates the victory of Raytheon not only as a business success, but as a geopolitical advance as well.

In a telegram dispatched on June 13th to the State Department, then-ambassador of the United States to Brazil, Melvin Levitsky, stated, "that this project represents not only a very important business opportunity (...), but it also represents an excellent opportunity to further the interests of the US government in the fields of environmental monitoring, air traffic safety and activities to combat drug trafficking, to name but a few".

This report was originally published by the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI).

Send your
comments to
Brazzil