Brazil's enormous northeast bulge has more people—25 million—than Argentina, more land—597,353 sq. mi.—than all of Central America. If the Northeast was a separate nation, it would rank second in population, third in area, in South America. Last week a governor of one of the nine states that make up the Northeast—Aluizio Alves of Rio Grande do Norte—described another feature of the region. "It is," said he, "the biggest blight on the Western Hemisphere, with dangers enough to be six Cubas."
Nature branded a curse on the Northeast. Except in a narrow coastal belt, rain is so scant that 87% of the area consists of parched, brown sertāo, a rolling hinterland matted with cactus-tough scrub where peasants hack at the hard soil with primitive hoes. Two months ago, the first rains in eight months brought a green fuzz to the sertāo. But drought had already ruined this year's crop of beans, corn and manioc-root flour, mainstays of the peasant diet. Famine swept the sertāo, sending thousands of camponeses to the towns in search of food.
In Limoeiro (pop. 30,000) last week, reported TIME Correspondent John Blashill, a mob of 1,000 men, women and children—some armed with shotguns and hoes—shouted angrily for "Food! Food!" Only by collecting donations from alarmed merchants did the local sheriff avert a battle. In five other towns, stores were sacked; in a sixth, a gun battle left one dead and two wounded. Officials of Pernambuco state belatedly impounded what food was left (speculators had bought up most of the crop, were selling it at markups of 500% to 1,000%). The federal government declared an emergency throughout the Northeast, and the U.S. Food for Peace program prepared to dispatch 6,000 tons of beans.
All Prohibited. Over the years, droves of peasants have fled from the dry hinterland to the region's fertile seacoast. But no bounty is to be found there either. A few feudal landlords own virtually all the land, and the best the peasant can expect is a life as a sharecropper or tenant farmer. As a sharecropper, he gives the landlord one-third to one-half of everything he grows, usually must sell his share to his patrāo for 30% to 50% below market price. At the plantation store where he buys supplies, interest on credit runs 20%. A tenant farmer is charged 4,000 to 6,000 cruzeiros per hectare per year to work land, often hoes the landlord's fields at a daily wage averaging 100 cruzeiros (30¢) to pay his rent.
The landlord generally disapproves of livestock (animals eat too much) and is anxious to hold down food crops because such industrial crops as sugar and cotton bring him a higher profit. A state such as Rio Grande do Norte therefore imports 70% of its food from southern Brazil at inflationary prices that the peasant (average annual income: $23) cannot afford.