Talk:Tocantins River

Talk
Initially, I started making only minor edits to this page, just because I saw too many misspelled Portuguese place names. Eventually I came to realize that the original article was based on (or transcribed from) some very old source - the spelling and style suggested a non-Brazilian source no more recent than the early 20th century, almost 100 years ago!

Worse, I found a lengthy reference to "cataracts and rapids" in the lower course of the river. Those are long gone now, since the huge Tucuru&iacute; hydroelectric dam's reservoir submerged them. I was unable to find out when exactly that happened, but given that the power plant became operational in 1984, it must have been in the early 1980s - about 25 years ago. No mention was made to the Tucuru&iacute; project, which has substantially altered the economy of the eastern Amazon region, creating prosperous booming cities on the river, like Imperatriz or Marab&aacute;, and a whole new industrial area based on aluminum processing near Bel&eacute;m.

Likewise, the new Brazilian state of Tocantins, created in 1988 taking its name from the river, was not mentioned at all (and the featured map does not show it, either; the map is certainly from the 1980s, because it does show the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, which was created in 1979).

I also believe that the paragraph on the Araguaia river is too long and has irrelevant data (who cares if one can ride a canoe on the Araguaia?), but I did not change it. I am not an expert and my changes were meant only to remove the most blatant inaccuracies and faults, but if someone else can contribute with a better article, please do so. Unfortunately, the Portuguese-language Wikipedia article on the river (which in theory should be more complete and accurate, being closer to the best original sources) is little more than a stub and doesn't help much.

--UrsoBR (talk) 09:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I suspect much of the text came from the 1911 Britannica - go ahead and rewrite. I did the map and will fix it, the map data was from 1992 so assumed the boundaries hadn't changed since then, I didn't look closely though and didn't realize they hadn't incorporated an earlier change. Kmusser (talk) 14:58, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Map fixed. Kmusser (talk) 16:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)