New York Times: For as long as most can remember, Brazil has gazed nervously at maps of the vast, mostly uninhabited territory of the Amazon rain forest. In the 1960s and ’70s, generals here saw the colonization of the Brazilian Amazon, which is half the size of Europe, as a national security priority. Ocupar para não entregar – “occupy it to avoid surrendering it” – was the slogan of the day. Highways were built, and Brazilians were offered incentives to conquer the land in the Amazon and transform …