Resumen

Forthcoming roads spark feelings of aspiration and anticipate the advent of development in the Amazonian frontier. Through the speed they are expected to provide, roads are seen as undeniable bringers of political integration and economic connectivity into remote areas disconnected from their nation at large. However, the development that roads promise seldom takes shape as anticipated. This, ironically, reinforces the aspiration and anticipation they generate, perpetuating the demand for their construction. The demand for road construction clashes with conservation efforts in the vicinity of protected areas given the potential that roads have to generate environmental degradation. A month long ethnographic investigation in Peru's Manu Province was conducted in order to explore this phenomenon in the case of the construction of a road in the overlapping buffer zone of two protected areas: the Manu National Park and the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. The analysis of the points of view of local leaders, government officers and community members, and the events surrounding the construction of the road, reveal the need to portray roads as environmentally harmless in order to attain the legal and social licenses needed for their construction.