Brazil Offers Paradox Of Old, New Methods
(This is another "Latin American Report", part of a periodic feature designed to present a continuing picture of developed countries in the nations south of the United States.)
RIO DE JANEIRO—(UPI) —Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek, in the words of U. S. Ambassador John Moors Cabot, is the man who has awakened the giant.
Cabot was referring to Kubitschek's industrialization and public works programs designed to give this largest Latin American country "50 years of progress in five."
But whether the giant is awakening to a period of increasing prosperity and opportunity or an extended economic-social hangover is a question.
Brazil possesses an estimated 68 million population and half the western hemisphere land mass below the equator and is the logical Latin American pace-setter.
But it is a nation of problems and paradox. Modern industries in the cities contrast with antiquated farming methods. Jet airliners ply between towns unconnected by roads. Brazil recently became the seventh nation in the world to begin producing uranium for electric power reactors.
Millions live in extreme poverty alongside the wealthy and middle class. Living conditions in Rio De Janeiro are typical of Brazilian urban centers. Eight hundred thousand of approximately 3 million Caricomans live in shantytowns without water, electricity or simple sanitary facilities.
Although the bulk of slum inhabitants are workers and their families living on the minimum wage, an estimated 50,000 unemployed inhabit shacks and live off their neighbors. Communist propagandists find easy converts in the backwash of humanity. No city in Brazil is free of this blight.
While the average Brazilian illiteracy rate is about 50 percent, it exceeds 90 per cent in some northeastern plantation regions. Six million of the 12,700,000 population between the ages of six and 14 do not attend school in Brazil. More than 80 per cent of Brazilian children who go to school attend private institutions despite constitutional guarantees of free education.
President Kubitschek is convinced the best, possibly the only way to improve the lot of millions of less fortunate fellow Brazilians is rapid industrialization and improvement of communications between the coast and the interior.
He regards transfer of the National capital from Rio to unfinished Brasilias as his most outstanding accomplishment. The government was officially moved to the new central highland city April 21 amid a display of pomp rarely witnessed in the Americas.
But more than two months after the shift, only a skeleton staff is functioning in Brasilia. The bulk of federal employees remain in Rio ministries. Both houses of Congress regularly fail to muster quorums and the federal Supreme Court is in enforced recess.
The basic motive in the move is to force Brazilians to build communications and settle the interior. Eighty-five per cent of the population still lives along the 4,899-mile coastline.
The Brazilian president has announced he will dedicate the final year of his administration to holding down government spending and the cost of living. Last year, cost of living rose more than 50 per cent.
Deficit financing is standard government practice in Brazil. During his four years in office, Kubitschek has developed it into an art.
Besides a July 1 pay raise for federal workers, a boost for the military worth 17 billion cruzeiros is under discussion in Congress.
Labor unions are agitating to get the minimum wage raised from 6,000 to 10,000 cruzeiros a month.
The U. S. Government, private bankers and European countries have declined to consider loans to Brazil unless it makes its peace with the International Monetary Fund. Last year, Kubitschek ordered a break in negotiations with the fund. He also refused fund recommendations for monetary reform and major public spending reductions.
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Esso Contributes $5,000 Apparatus
The University chemistry department has received from the Esso Research Laboratories at Baton Rouge, La., a gift of equipment valued at more than $5,000.
Page 5
The gift is a Podbielniak Hyd-Robot low temperature distillation apparatus, which is used in the fractional distillation of materials which are gasses at room temperature. It will be used in the organic chemistry research program at KU.
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BERLIN, N. H. —(UPI) —The buzz — not the sting — of a bumble bee was listed as the cause of an auto accident in Berlin.
Buzz, Not Sting, Causes Crash
Francis Phair told police a bee flew into his car and the buzzing distracted him so much he rammed a parked car.
Ticket Supply Exceeds Demand
STEPHENVILLE, Tex. — (UPI)— Some days police have a hard time giving tickets. A recent spot check of 300 motorists failed to turn up a single vehicle without the proper state inspection stickers.
Fungi can spoil paints.
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