Nauta to Iquitos Road
A History of the Iquitos Nauta Road
The Iquitos-Nauta road is a 100km stretch of highway between Iquitos, the biggest city in the Peruvian Amazon and a small town called Nauta, one of the earliest colonial settlements in the Amazon.
For many years, local residents have been fighting for this road to be finished. Finally, after decades of delay and failure, the last stretch of road was asphalted last year.
The idea to connect Iquitos to Nauta was first made during the government of Augusto B. Leguia (1908-12) in the form of a plan to build a railway between the two towns. Rubber fever was sweeping the Amazon region and had transformed Iquitos into a rich colonial settlement. Nauta in turn was now being recognised as the town where the Amazon river began and a place which would be strategically important for Iquitos. In the end, 4km of railway was built from Iquitos as far as the suburb of Moronacocha, but when Leguia lost power the project stopped. When he returned to power in 1919, his dreams had changed and the railway was never completed. It was not until the second government of Manuel Prado (1956-62) that the project was reignited, and moves were made to continue work on creating a railway between Iquitos and Nauta by the Engineering division of the Army. However the 1962 coup put an end to these plans, and the decision was made to build a road instead. This was to be the beginning of a long slow process.
18 years would pass before new feasibility studies for the construction process would be started again, this time funded by laws introduced in 1976 by the military government of General Francisco Morales Bermudez to ensure state revenue from the petrol boom. The works were started in 1980, with the investment of some $0.5m.
Sources: La Historia (parte 1) La Carretera Mas Cara Del Mundo…….¡Por fin se hizo realidad! P 28-9 in Kukama’s Revista Amazonica Edicion No 1.
Our Research
The aim of our research was to try and understand the construction and the history of the Iquitos-Nauta road as a social process. In order to do this, we spent time talking to people living along the route of the road, people who had been involved in constructing the road, and communities who felt their lives had been changed by or were likely to change as a result of its construction. We talked to people working in institutions like the regional government, NGOs, churches and engineering companies about their involvement in the road. We interviewed people who had worked in various roles during its construction, and interviewed the men who made the first cuts through the jungle in the 1950s.
We also spent time in the archives in Iquitos, trying to understand the history of the road. We travelled along the road in different kinds of transportation - taxis, buses, mototaxis, by foot, and we stayed in Nauta, and got to know some of the people who lived there in order to try and understand how the road figured as part of broader social changes that the town had faced over the years. We travelled between Iquitos and Nauta by river - and found ourselves stranded in the middle of the amazon on a boat with a malfuntioning motor.
We are writing up our research as a series of research papers and a research monograph. Click here to look at the various papers that we have written, most of which discuss aspects of the Iquitos-Nauta road.