Word: brazilianizing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Brazil, an economic columnist complained that "it seems that there are only eleven important people in the world"-the Brazilian team members. Estimates of the games' cost to Brazil's G.N.P. in lost production ranged up to $2 billion. Auto industry workers were negotiating with manufacturers for afternoons off during the World Cup series, to be made up later...
...choked by sand bars that a canoe can barely nose through. Bridges cross dry gulches overgrown with weeds and shrubs. Many once plentiful plants and birds are gone, and human beings who live there are disfigured by skin cancer. The scene is 300 sq. mi. in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo, a once lush strip north of Rio de Janeiro that is now on its way to becoming a desert. The cause of this ecological disaster...
...area went from forest to zero," laments Brazilian Environmentalist Augusto Ruschi. "There were no gradual, intermediate stages. Within 20 years, the Atlantica forest was turned into pasture lands and coffee plantations, and now the area is marching toward desertification." The process is hastened by decreased rainfall. Even when it does rain the water runs off quickly, because there are no tree roots left to hold it. Nutrients are washed away, and the land can barely support the Pomeranians' cattle and subsistence crops...
While the Pomeranians can move away from the region, there is no quick cure for a dying ecosystem that took thousands of years to create. The Brazilian government has offered fiscal incentives for reforestation of the area, but profit-hungry companies respond by planting Australian eucalyptus and American pine, trees better suited for making a quick buck than for restoring an original habitat. Says Ruschi: "There are laws prohibiting the killing of rare species, but there are no laws preventing the destruction of the whole forest." Environmentalists are calling for conservation, but for many Brazilians, economic development remains...
...plays an aggressive, three-plus-handicap game of polo and is a qualified paratrooper. He is a gifted amateur cellist who can be moved to tears while listening to the music of Berlioz. He has scuba-dived in the Caribbean, schussed down Alps, sambaed into the night with Brazilian beauties. A keen student of history, he can discourse persuasively on the neglected virtues of his ancestor King George III, and is host and interviewer on a TV series on anthropology...