THE BR-319 HIGHWAY (MANAUS-PORTO VELHO): THE DISCOURSE FOR “DRIVING”, THE ROAD ISOLATION OF A REGION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The objective of this article is to analyze the speech given by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, at the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) on NGOs, as well as the statements made by the rapporteur of the CPI, Senator Plínio Valério, from Amazonas, and how these statements reverberated and were broadcast on Amazonian and national news portals and television media. It also analyzes the Environmental Impact Study (EIA), a technical document required to obtain the Preliminary License for repaving the “middle section” of BR-319, whose narratives are dissonant with the minister’s speech. The study is justified by the current importance of the debates on the repaving of the BR-319 highway (Manaus - Porto Velho), both in relation to environmental impacts and the need for improvements in the transportation infrastructure in the Amazon region. The qualitative methodology used in this exploratory study was bibliographical and documentary, based on the discourse analysis theories of Michel Foucault (1993) and his scholars such as Veiga-Neto (2004), Saraiva (2015) and Lemke (2014). The findings indicate that the minister's speech problematizes the relationship between the reconstruction of the highway and the fight against environmental crimes, in addition to questioning the effectiveness of the social policies that would be implemented in the region after the work.