Word: andeans
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...coconuts. But the great world port of Buenos Aires is 1,000 miles to the south, and the towering Andes have always blocked the shortcut route west through Chile to the Pacific. For three-quarters of a century, the people of the region have loudly demanded a trans-Andean railway; for more than a quarter of a century they have been building it. Last week they had it. A coca-chewing Indian had slung a sledge, a last spike had bitten into an iron-hard quebracho tie, and Salta in Argentina was linked to Antofagasta in Chile...
...through the barren, eroded land that the early Spaniards called "the country of desperation and death." Through the red-rock canyon of Quebrada del Toro, a 14,000-foot-high waste of salt desert, and along windswept slopes the construction crews fought their way, cutting 23 tunnels through the Andean rock and throwing bridges across 36 chasms. In summer they battled thirst, in winter the dry snow wind (viento bianco) that blows day & night. Sometimes construction was halted for months on end because the Chilean and Argentine Congresses did not vote funds (total cost: $30 million...
...people of the tiny Colombian village of Pauna, snuggling in the Andean foothills a day's motor drive from Bogotá, the new bridge over the deep, swift Río Minero had seemed as permanent and reassuring as Thornton Wilder's bridge of San Luis Rey. It was made of wood, suspended from steel cables. Across the 100-ft. span, donkey carts rattled, bringing produce to market. Across it, campesinos and the mountain people trudged to Pauna for the Saturday fiestas...
...from the beginning, the powerful Chilean National Agricultural Society led the opposition. It was dead set against the limited trans-Andean customs union that the treaty would set up. That, it said, would lead to Argentine food-dumping and put Chilean farmers out of business. Even Chilean vineyards, it contended, could never compete with the mass-produced wines of Mendoza...
...maybe he might, after all, offer a miracle. He had read news dispatches about artificial rainmaking in the U.S., resolved to have a go at it. He equipped a Peruvian air force plane with a rubber water tank, personally flew off to sprinkle a fat cumulus cloud over the Andean foothills. Rain fell, but it was in an area where it often rains at this time of year. Next day, Pedro was in the air again, with dry ice, found a cloud over the desert. The dry-ice ejector got stuck...