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In the task of creating a new community of Latin American nations on their own, the leaders who met in Punta del Este will be looking to the U.S. and Lyndon Johnson for limited help, for encouragement and moral support. When it comes to the hard business of getting actual results, though, their eyes will be turned toward Brazil and its new President, Arthur da Costa e Silva. Brazil is the key to the success or failure of any attempt at economic integration in Latin America. Its influence and power are decisive; its vast land embodies all of the deepest problems and brightest prospects of the Southern Hemisphere. While Costa, 64, made his first appearance among his Latin American colleagues after only a month in office, Brazil itself was poised on one of the most challenging and crucial phases of its history.
The world's fifth largest nation (3,-290,000 sq. mi.) and the eighth in population (85 million), Brazil represents half of South America's landmass, half of its wealth and half of its people. With potentially more arable land than in all of Europe, it is first in world production of coffee, third in sugar, corn, cocoa and tobacco. Within the vast solitudes of its mountains, rolling plains, winding rivers and lush, tropical rain forests, it contains the world's largest hydroelectric potential, one-seventh of the world's iron-ore reserves, 16% of its timber and an incalculable wealth of gold, silver, diamonds and other minerals and semi precious stones.
The size and huge resources of their country have given Brazilians an almost mystical sense of destiny—a feeling that greatness has always been inevitable. Onetime Dictator (1930-45) and President (1951-54) Getulio Vargas cried: "We are marching toward a new future different from all we know." "We are doomed to greatness,"' lamented President Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-61). "This is the land of Canaan, unlimited and fecund," said President Jánio Quadros, who only held office for seven months in 1961 and who also rashly declared: "In five years Brazil will be a great power." Everytime they strike up their national anthem, Brazilians join in a chorus of self-hypnotic confidence in the future:
Nature made you a giant,
A beautiful, powerful indomitable colossus,
And your future
Will match this greatness.
Stiffened Spine. Yet today is yesterday's tomorrow, and many of yesterday's fond hopes are still hopes. For all the hallelujahs, Brazil today—like all of its neighbors in Latin America—is faced with staggering problems that cannot be put off much longer. Brazil has South America's highest child-mortality rate (11.2%), its third highest illiteracy rate (50%), its third lowest per-capita income ($285), and one of its most ruinous rates of inflation (41%). About 1% of Brazilian landowners control 47% of the farm land. Side by side with a wealthy aristocracy dwell filth, disease and poverty so dismal that they rob men even of the urge to protest. The average life span is 55 compared with 72 for advanced countries, and 40% of all Brazilians have been afflicted with a major disease.