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Novacap had extraordinary powers, and Pinheiro used them. He floated bond issues, snagged a $10 million Export-Import Bank loan. He expropriated the 2,260 sq. mi. of the Brasilia federal district at $1 per acre, sold selected lots for $3 per square meter and up, a plan that will raise one-fifth of Brasilia's costs. He hired 1,500 contractors, flew in the first building materials at high cost. Through Kubitschek, Novacap raided departmental budgets. Checking the figures, newsmen have found at least $117 million of financing for Brasilia. It absorbed, for example, 95% of all hospital construction funds for 1959. As deficit spending sent the cruzeiro spiraling from 65 to 200 to the dollar, the opposition awoke. "The limit of insanity! A dictatorship in the desert!" cried Rio's Correio da Manhã. "Madness," echoed O Globo. Kubitschek, sensing now a grand cause, replied: "The capital is moving, and anybody who tries to stop it will be lynched by the people."
Workers—ultimately 60,000 of them—flocked from all over Brazil, in particular from the drought-stricken northeastern bulge. "They mortgage everything to pay for a jouncing, weeklong ride in a truck to Brasilia," said a contractor. "After six months they visit home by plane."
Pinheiro made room for the rush by handing out free four-year land leases in mushroom shantytowns neighboring the capital site. In a nearby Wild West shack city called Cidade Livre (Free City), seven banks, 60 rooming houses, 750 stores sprang up. José Calaça, 52, arrived with a truckload of groceries, unloaded it "in waist-high grass," sold out all his cooking oil immediately, now does a $30,000-a-month business at his Casa Colorado. Says he: "The only way to lose money here is to throw it away." In Free City, construction crews line up at the Romance Barbordello, and venereal disease causes more absenteeism than accidents on the job.
Dirt & Deadlines. But up the capital went. In June 1958, Kubitschek spent a weekend in his Palace of the Dawn (called "Niemeyer's cardiogram" by critics because of its leaping concrete pillars—see color). Pinheiro tacked signs marking the completion date on every building; ten-story ministries rose in 45, 36, even 28 days. More than 5,000 miles of road, most of it straight as a pencil, stretched out to São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, and even across the jungle to Belém at the mouth of the Amazon. Morbidly afraid of dark rooms, elevators and airplanes, Niemeyer endured agony on his frequent plane trips to the capital ("It's shameful, but I can't help it"). He finally moved to Brasilia, where he dropped 19 Ibs. off an already lean frame.