Word: brasilia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Home for the busy man about Brazil these days is where he unfastens his seat belt. In an ordinary, mill-of-the-runway week, one Cabinet minister spends Monday and Tuesday in the new capital of Brasilia, Wednesday through Friday at his office in the old capital of Rio de Janeiro, and flies home for the weekend in São Paulo. Publishing Executive João Calmon easily logs 30 flights a month, "which means," he says casually, "that I take off and land practically every day." A sudden crush of crises in his work recently compelled one labor...
...Brazilians have become confirmed air commuters, but then they have no choice. Their nation is bigger than the continental U.S., and its important cities are scattered hundreds and thousands of miles apart. To make matters even more mobile, Brazil has not one capital but three: the political capital of Brasilia, the cultural and communications capital of Rio, and the industrial capital of São Paulo (see map). Few business deals or political maneuvers can be arranged without touching all three bases...
...city, a stopover apartment in another and offices in all three. The scramble around the infernal triangle jams airports, exhausts the commuters, gives waiting wives grey hairs. Important Brazilians are the hardest-to-find group of people since Atlantis sank. "I'm sorry, he just left for Brasilia" is the familiar refrain of harried secretaries...
...most unpopular point on the triangle is Brasilia, which only six years ago was nothing but wilderness and a gleam in the eye of then President Kubitschek. Now it is a city of architectural splendor and 300,000 people, most of whom would rather be somewhere else. Housing is scarce, and so is night life. About one-third of the 475 Congressmen and Senators still maintain homes in Rio, a few war ministry bureaucrats even commute daily from Rio, and the foreign ministry, still based in Rio, keeps only a handful of clerks in Brasilia...
...Janeiro's Military Club shook with saber-rattling debate as officers protested the chaos and inflation around them and issued a two-week ultimatum for a 100% pay increase. Unless they got higher pay, shouted one officer, "it will not be the fall of the Bastille, but of Brasilia." Such talk annoyed the noncommissioned officers, a more left-wing bunch, who tend to consider Goulart something of a kindred spirit. From Rio's Sergeants' Club came accusations that the generals wanted to overthrow the President. A pair of oratorical army sergeants were put in jail for tirades...