Brazil: New Capital. New Hope
ALEXANDER, ROBERT J.
Economic and cultural upsurge reflects enthusiasm for prospects of what is fast becoming 'America's second Great Power' BRAZIL: NEW CAPITAL, NEW HOPE By Robert J. Alexander BRASILIA, the new...
...Before the war...
...Since World War II, a fundamental change has occurred in the Brazilian people's psychology...
...Another of the ways Brazil resembles the U.S...
...People have swarmed into the western parts of the states of Sao Paulo and Parana, up into the more remote sections of the state of Minas Gerais, and have spilled in growing numbers into the "Far West" of Brazil, the states of Goyaz and Matto Grosso...
...Jorge Amado...
...New York University...
...It is in this region that many Brazilians see the real future of their country...
...Murals by Portinari and other artists are becoming an increasingly popular feature of Brazilian public buildings and other edifices...
...He is developing a school of younger men who are re-planning parts of Brazil's older cities and are finding full room for their talents in the construction of Brasilia...
...For the first time they have become fully conscious of their actual accomplishments and of the vast promise which the future holds for them...
...Brazil now has a heavy chemical industry, and synthetic rubber plants are being constructed...
...Government contracts, extensive government controls over the economy, and...
...Ferrari is a young PTB deputy from the state of Rio Grande do Sul, whose campaign literature symbol is a pair of clean hands...
...His associates feel it is better for their party to be in the government in a secondary position than not at all...
...Opposed to the Lott-Goulart ticket is one composed of Janio Quadros for President and Fernando Ferrari for Vice President...
...Many Brazilians, however, suffered from a kind of national pessimism or inferiority complex...
...The Brazilian school of architecture, which adapted modern principles first developed in Europe and the U.S...
...But since World War II...
...However, the President has been tenacious...
...This attitude began to change during the long dictatorship of Getulio Vargas from 1930 to 1945...
...Brazil possessed a small iron and steel plant in the state of Minas Gerais...
...Manufacturing is expanding out of its original center in the Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo area...
...It typifies the bursting enthusiasm of what is fast becoming America's second Great Power...
...Jose Lins de Rego and Raquel de Queiroz, the historian...
...Economic and cultural upsurge reflects enthusiasm for prospects of what is fast becoming 'America's second Great Power' BRAZIL: NEW CAPITAL, NEW HOPE By Robert J. Alexander BRASILIA, the new capital, is doubly symbolic of present-day Brazil...
...Opinion is divided on this question, but in all likelihood the armed forces, which followed Lott in his attempt to make sure that the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box was honored in 1955, will not take a different position if Quadros is the victor in 1960...
...Quadros has adroitly dodged the charge that he is a pro-Yankee by making a tour around the world, during which he visited the Soviet Union, Western Europe and many of the neutralist nations of the Middle and Far East...
...The Quadros-Ferrari ticket has already won the support of a group of minor parties...
...The mineral resources of the area have barely been scouted, and optimism runs high about their potentialities...
...music and architecture...
...In the past, Brazilian politics, culture and even economy tended to be modeled on the institutions of other nations— Portugal...
...The country has become almost completely self-sufficient in textiles, and in most processed foodstuffs...
...The nation's basic steel industry is symptomatic of this transformation...
...have created the opportunity for many politicians and their friends to become very wealthy very rapidly...
...The Brazilian steel industry is having a hard time to keep up with the increased demand for its products...
...Kubitschek probably is correct in his apprehensions that if he doesn't have the government well established there before he goes out of office next January, his successor may find reasons for indefinitely postponing the move...
...The nation's already tight foreign exchange budget has been further strained by the tremendous amounts of structural steel and other products which have had to be imported for this purpose...
...Finally, like other peoples of the Americas, the Brazilians had a feeling, which lingered on from their colonial past, that anything produced abroad was better than a similar product made at home...
...He is dynamic, seems to be a man of ideas, and heads the faction in the PTB which would like to convert it into something resembling the British Labor party...
...The Ministry of Education building in Rio de Janeiro is one of the gems of modern architectural design, and equally original examples are to be found among the country's public buildings, schools, office buildings and churches of the country...
...Meanwhile, work is beginning on another steel plant, to be built in Minas Gerais with the aid of Japanese capital...
...On leaving the governorship, he got himself nominated by the Partido Trabalhista—to which he did not belong—in the neighboring state of Parana, as candidate for Congress—and won a smashing victory...
...Kubitschek is deeply in his debt...
...and which represent the political inheritance of the late Getulio Vargas, the Parlido Social Democratico and the Partido Trabalhista Brasileira (PTB...
...Hardly was Volta Redonda in operation when plans were afoot to increase its capacity to 500.000 tons...
...So far there is very little real enthusiasm for the Lott-Goulart ticket...
...At present the plant is being still further modified to permit an output of one million tons...
...Roberto Burle-Marx has won an international reputation as a landscape architect...
...This campaign promises to be a rough one...
...Whatever its advantages, the building of Brasilia has not been without cost, both in financial and in human terms...
...He is a sworn enemy of Goulart...
...He first gained fame during the war, and one of his most recent accomplishments has been a large mural done especially for the United Nations in New York...
...In conjunction with this drive into the interior, the construction of Brasilia takes on its real importance...
...France...
...Firms from the South are establishing increased numbers of branches in the cities of the Northeast...
...the government-owned plant of Volta Redonda, capable of producing about 300.000 tons of steel a year was opened, doubling the country's production capacity...
...The main opposition party, the Uniao Democratic Nacion-al, has not made up its mind whether or not to back this combination...
...They have argued that the resources and people required for it would have been much better used on the building and paving of high-ways...
...Soon after the war...
...One question which remains in the background in the Quadros-Ferrari candidacy is whether or not the armed forces will allow them to take office if they win...
...many who enthusiastically supported him a few years ago have become disenchanted by his ineptness, demagoguery and lack of firmness in dealing with corrupt elements within the PTB...
...In four centuries only a small beginning had been made on this Herculean task and in 1945 most of the population still lived within 200 miles of the Atlantic Ocean...
...They were convinced that the nation never could develop a broad economy which would be capable of providing higher standards of living for the great masses of the people...
...most Brazilians have lost their doubts about the capacities and future of their nation...
...Belo Hori-zonte and other cities in the state of Minas Gerais are the center of a booming metallurgical industry, the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in the extreme South, has a wide range of rapidly growing industries...
...most of all, the manipulation of the foreign exchange operations of the Banco do Brasil...
...The candidates are already in the field and electioneering is going full steam ahead...
...As for Goulart...
...As a demagogue, Vargas laid great stress on Brazilian nationalism, but he also initiated policies which stimulated the country's industrialization and economic diversification...
...Erico Verissimo...
...It was also the result of the vastness of the task of taming the huge plains, the primitive jungles and the great river valleys which make up most of the republic's territory...
...There are other regions which would support millions of head of cattle...
...Brazil now has some of the largest publishing houses in Latin America, which are turning out increasingly large numbers of high-quality books by Brazilian authors such as the novelists...
...Iron, bauxite, coal and other mining enterprises have expanded their activities both for the internal market and for sale abroad...
...the expansion of the country's hydroelectric facilities and the stimulation of agricultural production...
...of the 1870s is in its all-encompassing corruption...
...At the same time, it is being constructed at the cost of the bounding inflation and economic dislocation which characterize all of the nation's current development efforts...
...The capital will be officially transferred to Brasilia this April...
...At least one additional plant is now being negotiated, and it will probably be built in the state of Sao Paulo...
...Other branches of industry have also expanded rapidly...
...In this manufacturing boom Brazil resembles the U.S...
...Great Britain, the United States or Fascist Italy...
...Inflation, which has been an acute problem in Brazil ever since the war, has doubled since construction got under way...
...Much of this demand comes from the new automobile industry, which now produces virtually all of the country's needed trucks and cars, and uses over 90 per cent Brazilian-made parts in their assembly...
...The cement industry has increased to keep pace with the boom in urban construction and road building...
...Brazil is industrializing at a furious pace...
...Other demands for steel come from new agricultural machinery plants, typewriter factories, etc...
...to a tropical climate and gave them an original twist, has won worldwide renown...
...Finally, it has been widely rumored that one of Kubitschek's motives was his hope that by doing so he could raise the quality and efficiency of the Federal Government's operations...
...Quadros made a spectacular name for himself as Mayor of Sao Paulo city and Governor of Sao Paulo state...
...Lott, whose nomination was backed by extreme nationalists and the Communists, immediately began to make statements which disconcerted many of his followers, including declarations favoring the outlawing of strikes and warning the more violent anti-Yankees that they should not expect him to engage in any vendetta with the U.S...
...The city of Curitiba...
...They will also promise to repeat on a national level Quadros' success in bringing order out of Sao Paulo's confused finances...
...He was the man who, as commander of the armed forces, deposed President Joao Cafe Filho in November 1955...
...Some Brazilians and many foreigners have been highly critical of this effort...
...The moving of the capital could occasion a greatly needed new start in the work of governing Brazil...
...There are vast areas in which a plough has never turned but which are believed to be potentially rich agricultural lands...
...The resemblance is even greater in the way in which Brazilians have suddenly begun to "go West," to fill in the great heartland of their country, which until recent years had only a widely scattered and very sparse population...
...One was certainly his desire to play a role in his country's history: Assuredly, the President who moves the capital will have automatically cut a niche for himself in his nation's annals...
...The two parties which backed Kubitschek in 1955...
...Although relatively few Brazilians may be aware of their nation's cultural accomplishments, they can scarcely be completely ignorant of the tremendous economic changes going on throughout the country...
...Modern Brazil's cultural achievements are in themselves sufficient to arouse considerable national pride...
...Although Brasilia itself will probably not be a major issue in the presidential campaign which is already under way, its side effects certainly will be...
...capital of the state of Parana, just to the south of Sao Paulo, has doubled its population since the war and has become a manufacturing center of considerable importance...
...Nor did they believe the country could produce works of world significance in literature, art...
...Joao Goulart...
...Gil-berto Freyre, perhaps the best-known contemporary Brazilian writer, and the critic...
...On the other hand, if the UDN, which stands for the anti-Vargas forces in Brazilian politics, doesn't support Quadros and Ferrari, this may well mean yet another victory for the late dictator's political heirs...
...Neither candidate belongs to the UDN, so there is a strong element which balks at supporting them...
...President Juscelino Kubitschek's sudden decision three years ago to undertake the construction of the new national capital was motivated by several factors...
...when it appeared as if Cafe Filho would not allow Kubitschek to take the presidency he had won a month before...
...head of the Partido Trabalhista...
...There is a widespread scarcity of construction materials in other parts of Brazil because of the enormous demands of the new capital...
...The new capital is located in the heart of the state of Goyaz in a region which was selected a century or more ago to be the capital of the nation, but which no government had hitherto had the temerity to convert into the Federal District...
...Lott's running mate is the current incumbent...
...have named as their presidential choice Marshal Teixeira Lott...
...In any case, Quadros and Ferrari will undoubtedly make a great deal of the corruption issue...
...Perhaps the stirring of the imagination and the exhilaration which surround the whole move to change the capital can contribute to overcoming some of this gross corruption...
...Admittedly the government apparatus in Rio is highly overstaffed, and includes many civil servants who have little interest in their "service" to the country other than the fact that it affords them the chance to live in one of the world's most enchanting cities...
...which would almost certainly be the case if Goulart were to strike out on his own as PTB presidential candidate...
...Goulart is a man in his forties, who apparently thinks he has time to wait for a further chance to make his bid for the top office...
...Viana Moog, the sociologist...
...This expansion was quickly followed by further modifications which increased the plant's capacity by another 50 per cent...
...in recent years...
...He cleaned out much of the monstrous corruption in both those administrations, brought the state out of the deep red, and had a picturesque personal kind of rule which much disconcerted the old pros...
...The country has produced at least one world-famous painter, Candido Portinari...
...Alceu Amoroso Lima, who was recently a visiting professor at...
...during the two or three generations after our Civil War...
...Many of these hangers-on will be loathe to move to a new capital, on a dusty windswept plain, a good 700 miles from the nearest beach...
...Another was the hope that by moving the capital, which inevitably necessitates the construction of highways and railroads from the population centers 3-400 miles away, the vast Brazilian hinterland would be opened up to rapid settlement...
...In part, this feeling was rooted in a belief that the large Negro element in the population, which remained relatively close to its African cultural roots, was largely unassimilable in a modern nation-state...
...using charcoal as its fuel...
Vol. 43 • February 1960 • No. 8
