Word: brasilia
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...miles south of the Amazon River, and almost parallel to it, the Transamazonian Highway project is already being billed by President Emilio G. Medici's military regime as the work of the century. Not since the feverish 1950s, when former President Juscelino Kubitschek built the city of Brasilia and had the 1,350-mile Belem-Brasilia highway carved out of the jungle, have Brazilians responded with such a display of national pride to the challenge of conquering their last natural frontier...
Safety Valve. Mobbed by well-wishers at the airport in Brasilia, the country's inland capital, Pelé told them that the cup victory was "the greatest moment of my life." He believed it, and so did the fans, who delight in Pelé's every triumph. The victory provided the Brazilians with a chance to resort to their natural safety valve: the Carnaval. This spontaneous outburst, as Brazilian psychologists have observed, gives the torn and fragmented nation an opportunity to coalesce in a common cause and experience a common...
...seemed to work that way last week. In Brasilia, the President, retired Army Marshal Emilio Garrastazu Medici, who is usually withdrawn and formidable, declared a two-day holiday and played host to Pelé & Co. at a victory lunch in his modern Palace of the Dawn. During the jubilation over the win at Mexico City, Medici himself strode out of his palace in shirtsleeves to join a crowd of young Brazilians who were celebrating the national triumph in the streets...
...youngest of a mere handful of world capitals that have been designed and built from scratch (Pakistan's Islamabad is still unfinished), Brasilia was intended to be much more than Brazil's seat of government. Kubitschek envisioned it as the hub of a 5,000-mile highway network that would open the vast interior and draw people away from the coastal cities where, he complained, Brazilians "cling like crabs to the crowded shorelines...
Kubitschek was stripped of his political rights after a military junta seized control in 1964, but his visionary aims are taking shape. Thousands of peasants have flocked to the "satellite cities" that spread out from Brasilia to a distance of 25 miles. Trucks rumble along the 1,350-mile Belem-Brasilia highway, spawning hundreds of roadside settlements, some of them with a distinct frontier flavor. At one hamlet, appropriately called Piza no Freio (Hit the Brake), the only permanent residents are a madam and her four girls...