Word: rios
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...First Spark. To blame was the state's eight-month drought, which has turned the southern part of Brazil-from the Uruguayan border to Rio-into a tinderbox. All it took was some farmers burning off their land for the next planting, cigarettes carelessly flicked away, campfires not quite snuffed out, or a spark from an old coal-burning locomotive. What started as a few scattered blazes soon blew in to hundreds of fires, then thousands...
...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...
...handle the crush of travelers, three of the biggest carriers joined to run a shuttle between Rio and São Paulo - the first successful air shuttle in the world. Called an "air bridge," it provides nonreservation flights that take off every 20 minutes during rush hours, carrying more than 2,000 passengers a day. Air bridges also reach from Rio to Brasília and to the inland industrial city of Belo Horizonte. Last year the country's eight heavily subsidized commercial airlines carried 4,000,000 passengers nearly 2 billion passenger-miles; only U.S. and Canadian airlines...
...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...
...Brasilia, barring the gravest of national emergencies, the city empties as if somebody had pulled a plug. Congressmen slip out of the chamber, pick up their tickets at handy airline booths right in the lobby of the Congress building, and rush to catch the 7:30 Electra to Rio...