By U.S. standards, Brazil's Highway BR-14 is certainly no Indiana turnpike or New York State Thruway. Meandering 1,350 miles from Belém to Brasilia through the jungles and scrub of Brazil's wild interior, it is barely two lanes wide; the surface is dust in the dry season, mud in the wet, and some of the ruts could swallow a Volkswagen alive. Yet in the eyes of former President Juscelino Kubitschek, who built the road between 1956 and 1960, BR-14 is "the highway of dreams" for underdeveloped Brazil, and the means to "a new civilization on the central plateau." So...
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