comes.
Years and years ago they had gold. Then they had hunger. Soon they will have the highway.
With a shudder and a gasp the Chevrolet rattles to a stop in the central square opposite the church. The Franciscans operate a school there. We have a short talk with the schoolmaster, an earnest young Hollander who speaks a little English. Meanwhile Dona Cora has gone off in search of antiques: already we share her admiration for the simple elegance and the solid construction of the colonial furniture still to be picked up in these parts “for a song.”
We go along while Dr. Israél pays a call on a dreamylooking blond man who is evidently the local precinct boss for the Social Democrats. We sit in his parlor drinking cafezinhos and listening politely while he and Dr. Israél talk hurried politics in sibilant halfwhispers.
Disheveled little boys stare at us with grave gray eyes through the tall barred window that lets in the light off the square. A flock of them. They all are sandyhaired like their father. Our host looks too young to have produced so many. My Lord how many children people have in this country! “How do you ever feed them?” we feel like asking.
The two Brazilians remember their guests and make theconversation general. The road, they expain, will pass close to Paracatu. It will mean prosperity, rising land values, every house in town will be worth more. There will be buses, trucks to ship crops out, stores to buy things in, probably a bank. The eyes of the precinct boss mist with emotion as he points towards his boys who are pushing their pale faces against the bars in the window. “These,” he says, “will have a better life than I have had.”
Handicaps to Development
On the way back to the airstrip Dr. Israél begins to talk about that bank. A branch bank would be established, but what good would it do? The great roadblock to development throughout the country was the high cost of money. Suppose that fellow we’d been talking to wanted to set up some small factory that would employ people and give them much needed wages, he’d have to have funds. A bank would charge him twenty or thirty per cent interest, partly to cover inflation, but partly out of the old habits of medieval usury. Nobody could start a small enterprise under such a handicap. What impressed Dr. Israél most last time he’d visited the States was the cheap interest rates. No wonder we were so prosperous in North America.
Now he himself is a man—he gives us one of his famous grins—tolerably wellknown in the community. He ought to be what we called in America “a good credit risk,” but, not too long ago, he tried to borrow money to buy some cattle. He owns family lands out in this corner of the state that will only produce grazing every few years when the rainfall is sufficient. Well, an unusual rainfall gave abundant grass but when he’d tried to borrow money to buy cattle to eat it … impossible. There wasn’t much margin of profit in fattening cattle anyway. He found he couldn’t borrow the money to buy them at any interest rate that would make a profit possible… If he was in such a dilemma think of the poor man … and as close as Belo Horizonte there was a shortage of beef!
On the way back to the airstrip we pick up Dona Cora. “Good hunting?” Dr. Israél asks in mock despair. She nods. “Ay, ay.” Dr. Israél claps his hand to his wallet. “A pain in the pocketbook.”
Construction Site
After Paracatu the pilot follows the red streak of the new road. Where bulldozers are at work the sharp line blurs with dust. Again the emptiness of eroded hills. No trails now. We are flying over a wilderness of low shrubs and sourlooking flat lands spotted with round ponds left over from the last rains. After crossing into the state of Goiás the motors roar. The plane has begun to climb. The scrambled hills of Minas Gerais straighten out into the long hogbacks of the high plateau. The air is cooler.
Suddenly the
Years and years ago they had gold. Then they had hunger. Soon they will have the highway.
With a shudder and a gasp the Chevrolet rattles to a stop in the central square opposite the church. The Franciscans operate a school there. We have a short talk with the schoolmaster, an earnest young Hollander who speaks a little English. Meanwhile Dona Cora has gone off in search of antiques: already we share her admiration for the simple elegance and the solid construction of the colonial furniture still to be picked up in these parts “for a song.”
We go along while Dr. Israél pays a call on a dreamylooking blond man who is evidently the local precinct boss for the Social Democrats. We sit in his parlor drinking cafezinhos and listening politely while he and Dr. Israél talk hurried politics in sibilant halfwhispers.
Disheveled little boys stare at us with grave gray eyes through the tall barred window that lets in the light off the square. A flock of them. They all are sandyhaired like their father. Our host looks too young to have produced so many. My Lord how many children people have in this country! “How do you ever feed them?” we feel like asking.
The two Brazilians remember their guests and make theconversation general. The road, they expain, will pass close to Paracatu. It will mean prosperity, rising land values, every house in town will be worth more. There will be buses, trucks to ship crops out, stores to buy things in, probably a bank. The eyes of the precinct boss mist with emotion as he points towards his boys who are pushing their pale faces against the bars in the window. “These,” he says, “will have a better life than I have had.”
Handicaps to Development
On the way back to the airstrip Dr. Israél begins to talk about that bank. A branch bank would be established, but what good would it do? The great roadblock to development throughout the country was the high cost of money. Suppose that fellow we’d been talking to wanted to set up some small factory that would employ people and give them much needed wages, he’d have to have funds. A bank would charge him twenty or thirty per cent interest, partly to cover inflation, but partly out of the old habits of medieval usury. Nobody could start a small enterprise under such a handicap. What impressed Dr. Israél most last time he’d visited the States was the cheap interest rates. No wonder we were so prosperous in North America.
Now he himself is a man—he gives us one of his famous grins—tolerably wellknown in the community. He ought to be what we called in America “a good credit risk,” but, not too long ago, he tried to borrow money to buy some cattle. He owns family lands out in this corner of the state that will only produce grazing every few years when the rainfall is sufficient. Well, an unusual rainfall gave abundant grass but when he’d tried to borrow money to buy cattle to eat it … impossible. There wasn’t much margin of profit in fattening cattle anyway. He found he couldn’t borrow the money to buy them at any interest rate that would make a profit possible… If he was in such a dilemma think of the poor man … and as close as Belo Horizonte there was a shortage of beef!
On the way back to the airstrip we pick up Dona Cora. “Good hunting?” Dr. Israél asks in mock despair. She nods. “Ay, ay.” Dr. Israél claps his hand to his wallet. “A pain in the pocketbook.”
Construction Site
After Paracatu the pilot follows the red streak of the new road. Where bulldozers are at work the sharp line blurs with dust. Again the emptiness of eroded hills. No trails now. We are flying over a wilderness of low shrubs and sourlooking flat lands spotted with round ponds left over from the last rains. After crossing into the state of Goiás the motors roar. The plane has begun to climb. The scrambled hills of Minas Gerais straighten out into the long hogbacks of the high plateau. The air is cooler.
Suddenly the
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