(10 of 10)
Crown of Thorns. No city in the world is quite like Brasilia, the seven-year-old vision of tomorrow carved out of the wilderness. Its unfinished cathedral is designed in the shape of a gigantic crown of concrete thorns. Its Congress building looks like a huge cup and saucer. Its population areas are laid out in Orwellian modules, with all the foreign-ministry officials living here, the bank employees there, the military officers over there. Artificially created to open up the frontier and shift the country's balance westward, Brasilia was long considered the "mad city" that Ku-bitschek built, was shunned by officials, who preferred to spend their time in Rio. But Brasilia has been made more attractive with bright colors and expensive trees and shrubs, and its fine university draws students from all over Brazil. Even its night life has picked up, and fully 30 of the federal deputies defeated in last year's elections decided to remain in Brasilia and make their homes there. "Brasilia," says Costa, "is indispensable for national integration."
Uncompleted, ambitious, yet troubled—as the already growing slums at its outskirts attest—Brasilia symbolizes all the hopes and visions of Brazil, and the distance yet to go. The tug of modernization is strong and compelling, but tradition and apathy are fighting hard rearguard actions. The economic indexes show that, broadly speaking, Brazil is falling behind many other advancing countries, including some of its neighbors in Latin America. But this is not the final judgment, for Brazil has reached a middle stage in its development at which the dynamics of modernization can work wonders if the country can only channel its energy to employ them. Perhaps that channel will be provided by Arthur Costa e Silva and by Latin America's new awareness that it must act now—and together—to solve its problems. But optimism of the sort that has drenched Brazil in the past like blinding sunshine must wait on surer signs that, having reached the take-off point, the giant of the south will really take off.
*Which holds that man can achieve a sound, viable society only by recognizing conditions for what they are and dealing with them scientifically and pragmatically, rather than engaging in metaphysical speculation on what society should be.