Word: collor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Donning army fatigues, Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello boarded an air force SuperPuma helicopter last week and flew over the dense rain forest of Roraima in the northern Amazon. The region is home to the Yanomami, a stone-age tribe threatened with extinction. For the past three years, their federally protected lands have been devastated by gold prospectors, whose search for riches has led to the deaths of an estimated 1,200 Indians from the 9,000-member tribe, largely through disease. Last October a federal court ordered the miners to leave the territory. But hundreds remained, using crude...
...cash crunch was deliberate, the result of new President Fernando Collor de Mello's desperate all-or-nothing attempt to "obliterate" Brazil's inflation spiral, which hit a monthly rate of 73% in February. The severe clampdown, which the President unveiled just hours after his inauguration on March 15, went into full effect last week. By presidential decree, the plan freezes 80% of the country's banking and investment accounts; no one can withdraw more than $1,200 from savings for the next 18 months. And to cement his reform, Collor replaced Brazil's latest currency, the new cruzado, with...
While many Brazilians have spent their cashless week standing in line trying to withdraw funds at banks, others have learned how to barter for food. Anxiety runs high: the number of people admitted to hospitals in Rio because of chest pain has doubled over the past several days. Yet Collor's shock treatment has actually boosted his popularity. Elected with 43% of the total vote last fall, he has 80% of citizens supporting his new reforms...
...make his plan work, Collor, 40, will have to overcome a stubbornly resistant economy. Under former President Jose Sarney, Brazil tried to implement three anti-inflation programs in four years. All failed, mainly because as soon as the reforms were announced, consumers rushed to buy goods, creating a new surge in inflation. They were betting that the government could not control prices, and they were right. Thanks to Collor's freezing of assets, that shopping surge seems unlikely to happen this time. But labor leaders have vowed to strike if the President follows through on plans to sell or close...
...Collor, the challenge is to persuade his citizens that the current reform plan is not like all the others, to be abandoned when things get tough. "I am driving a packed bus at 150 km per hour, headed for a cliff," Collor told a group of legislators last week. "Either we put on the brakes and some people get a little bruised up, or we go over the edge...