BRAZIL: The Giant at the Bridge

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Nature made you a giant,

A beautiful, powerful, indomitable colossus,

And your future will match this great ness.

—Brazilian National Anthem

Brazilians speak fondly of their country as the Land of Tomorrow, the Land of Promise. In their hearts they feel that nature has endowed Brazil with endless resources, that one fine day Brazil will be as populous, powerful and prosperous as the U.S.—if not more so.

The Brazilian dream is made of more than dream stuff. Brazil is indeed a giant. In population (57 million) it nearly matches all the other nine republics of South America put together. In area (3,287,842 sq. mi.) it is the world's biggest republic, big as the U.S. with a second Texas thrown in. In such big cities as Sao Paulo (see opposite page), the fastest-growing major metropolis, a new breed of Brazilian businessmen is changing the face of the land with a zeal unmatched in all of Latin America.

Brazil's headaches and growing pains are proportionately huge; the country is racked by inflation, is desperately short of development capital and pitifully dependent on its one big export, coffee. As the finance ministers of Latin America gathered last week for the inter-American economic conference (see below), Brazil was an almost perfect case history of the economic ills besetting most of Latin America.

But in Brazil there was one big difference: the first stirring of new hope in a new leader, a man who symbolizes a break with a troubled past and a promise of a brighter today—President Joao Café Filho.

So Little Time. For most of the past quarter-century, Brazil's public life was dominated by the towering figure of Getulio Vargas, a man of flawed greatness who ruled at times as a dictator, at times as a constitutional President, but at all times as the enigmatic, subtle boss of what was essentially a one-man team. Vargas, more than most of his countrymen, dreamed the big dream of Brazil's future, but in the end he failed to cope with the urgent problems of the present. Last August, in the midst of a shattering political crisis, after a group of top-ranking generals had warned him that he must resign for the country's good, tragic Getulio Vargas put a bullet through his heart. That was the time for Vice President Joao Café Filho (which translates as John Coffee Jr.) to step forward.

A man of strikingly different character from Vargas, Café Filho is far more concerned with the problems of today than the projects of the future, utterly lacking in any taste for the intricate maneuvers and favoritism of partisan politics. Instead of trying to hold all the administrative strings in his own hands, he has brought teamwork into the government, delegating real authority to his ministers and giving them firm support. Instead of trying to cure Brazil's economic ailments with painkilling expedients, he has adopted a bitter-medicine program of "disinflation" and austerity.