The southwestern Amazon basin, centering on the Territory of Rond nia and the State of Acre, is symbolically if not exactly geographically, the Wild Wild West of Brazil's northern rainforest fron tier. In Brazil the name Rond nia evokes exaggerated images of lawlessness, land feuding, and indigent peasants in search of a homestead. Despite the problems and the perception, the region has pushed ahead, in the view of the govern- ment, with large-scale...