Latin America: Regaining a Lost Habit

Few projects have ignited Latin American imaginations more than Peruvian President Fernando Belaunde Terry's "Marginal Highway." Envisioned as the key for unlocking the vast, virginal resources of the eastern Andean foothills, the road was originally planned to run 1,500 miles across Peru.

Its aim: to open up 5,000,000 acres of the country's richest land for colonization, thus doubling the total amount of national acreage under cultivation. Then Belaunde got the idea of extending the road beyond Peru, and persuaded Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay to join in. "We have lost the...