http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/world/americas/brazil-military-drills-to-defend-amazon-.html 2014-11-08 20:45:14 Brazil Military Drills to Defend Amazon Half of Brazilians believe the resource-rich rain forest will become the target of a foreign power. Military exercises this month simulate warding off such plunderers. === MANAUS, Brazil — Brazil’s army is deploying troops this month to the far reaches of the Amazon in a military exercise simulating a foreign invasion of the The troop mobilization, starting on Monday and called “The operation will provide ways for optimizing a strategy of resistance in the region,” said Gen. Guilherme Cals Theophilo Gaspar de Oliveira, chief of Brazil’s Amazon Military Command. He also emphasized that the exercise was aiming to “consolidate a doctrine of jungle combat.” The drill aims to prepare soldiers to respond to a foreign military force larger than Brazil’s armed forces, officials said. While Brazil has long been at peace with its smaller neighbors in the Amazon and no country was specified by name in the preparations for the exercise, some military strategists in Brazil have long focused on the United States as a potential threat. Officials in Brazil and the United States have In fact, a chance for improving relations may be emerging after Ms. Rousseff’s office Still, the army’s drill reflects Brazil expanded its military presence in the Amazon during the dictatorship that held power from 1964 to 1985, when generals offered incentives to settlers to occupy the frontier. While some political analysts contend that potential invasions belong in the realm of conspiracy theories, others delve into history to show that foreign designs on the Amazon are not so far-fetched. History books like “The Deepest South,” which describes an antebellum plan by southerners in the United States to develop the Amazon with American slaves, have been translated into Portuguese and Brazil’s army also drew inspiration from history in naming its latest military exercise, which involves 550 troops here in Manaus, the Amazon’s largest city, and outposts like Santa Isabela do Rio Negro and Caracaraí. Machifaro is a region of the Amazon where in the 16th century resistance coalesced against Spain’s attempts to gain control of large portions of the rain forest held then by the Portuguese empire.