Carved out of the wilderness 580 miles north of Rio, Brasilia was the creation of President Juscelino Kubitschek, who started building Brazil's new capital in 1957 as one sure way of opening up the country's interior. The "Capital of Hope," he called it. His successors felt no such attachment. Recoiling from the dust, disorder and frontier-town isolation, Janio Quadros called it "the cursed city," spent much of his time huddled in the palace projection room, guzzling Scotch and staring at Liz Taylor movies. Joao Goulart studiously avoided the unfinished capital for months...
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