The Brazilian Mirror: Some Brazilian Writings in English Translation

Extract

All Americans know that much of our coffee comes from Brazil. Most have heard of marvelous Rio de Janeiro, one of the beauty k queens of the earth—a city compressed between ocean and granite hills with dazzling white beaches, mosaic sidewalks, scores of night clubs, merry-making sambas, and a lavish Carnival. Quite a number have read of its awesome new capital Brasília, a fabulous creation of glass and concrete built in the middle of nowhere. Some are aware that it is a vast country, our largest and most powerful Latin American neighbor, with huge natural resources and a mushrooming growth in population: its high-grade iron ore reserves are among the richest in the world; its population is estimated to be 80,000,000, the major portion distributed along the Atlantic seaboard. Brazil, the fourth largest country in the world, occupies approximately one-half of South America, with a surface of 3,287,195 square miles, much of it unexplored, and has borders with all the countries of that continent excepting Ecuador and Chile.