Hope in the Northeast

One of the first areas of the New World to be colonized, Brazil's Northeast reigned as sugar king for 200 years until Caribbean producers dethroned it in the 18th century. Then its markets dried up, and the land went backward, ignored by the rest of the nation. In this "other" Brazil, a bare, beaten region more than twice the size of Texas, 26 million Brazilians live in misery, almost 80% of them illiterate, disease and hunger holding the average life span to an appalling 35 years. Most nordestinos wring a grudging subsistence from the land, which is alternately scorched by drought and ravaged by flood and yields one-fourth as much corn, one-fifth as much cotton as the average acre of U.S. farmland. "Our agriculture," said Ceara State Governor Virgilio Tavora, "is just a bit more advanced than that of the Pharaohs."

Now, belatedly but unmistakably, Brazil's forgotten country is astir with new activity and new hope.

Industrial Push. The first faint breezes of change came in the 1950s when President Getulio Vargas established the Bank of the Northeast to make economic studies of the area and handle industrial financing. Soon after, the Communists began exploiting the region's miseries by organizing Peasant Leagues, some 50,000 strong, to take over the land by force. Then the Roman Catholic Church jumped in, set up schools to teach reading and writing, started its own labor unions--at risk of rupture with the powerful landlords who had long held the peasants in virtual peonage. The government, in turn, pressed ahead with a new federal agency, Sudene (for Superintendency of Northeast Development), which was created in 1959 to direct an ambitious long-range development program aimed at expanding agricultural production and pushing industrialization, the nine-state area's only real hope.

In its first four years, under the stewardship of dedicated, left-of-center Economist Celso Furtado, Sudene plowed $40 million into the area, mostly for dams, power projects, roads and other facilities essential to attract industry. The U.S. chipped in $131 million in development loans and grants, while private investors committed $300 million. Despite ever-increasing bureaucratization, overall production in the Northeast climbed 6% in 1964 (v. a 3% decline for Brazil as a whole). Then, in the wake of the March 1964 revolution, the military decided that Leftist Furtado should be purged; he was replaced by Sociologist Joao Gonc,alves de Souza.

Human Change. The new director, who spent eight years in Washington as head of the OAS's Technical Cooperation Department, has set Sudene a private investment goal of $55 million for 1965--and he is well on his way. Around Recife, where new skyscrapers jostle ancient slums, Italy's Pirelli plans to build a big, new electric-cable factory, and Willys-Overland do Brasil is busy on the Northeast's first auto-assembly plant. In seven of the states, work is under way on 1,000 miles of new roads that will help nordestinos bring in the goods they need and get their own products out to a larger market. Fifty-seven cities and towns boast brand-new water systems; 72 have new power plants. In Cajazeiras, new power, water and sewage systems all went into operation in one week. Sudene meanwhile is taking a giant step with a $90 million irrigation project at Petrolina that will water 250,000 long-parched acres in Bahia and Pernambuco. The reform government of Castello Branco has trebled Sudene's budget to $50 million a year.

Even more far-reaching is the change within nordestinos themselves. Says Recife Industrialist Renato Bezerra de Melo: "You feel a crazy desire on the part of everybody to learn--even among the illiterate. I can start any kind of course in my factory, and 200 workers will show up." In Rio Grande do Norte, one newly literate farm hand--still thrilled with the simple miracle of being able to read seed packages--explained why: "I have suddenly discovered that I am a man."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.