It’s Been 400 Years. Will Brazil's Voters Choose Progress?
The election this fall is a chance to reform the economy, but any sacrifice by government workers is politically toxic.
“Splendid cradle” is a good start.
Photographer: Mauro Pimentel/AFP, via Getty Images
With its natural bounty and continental sprawl, Brazil has long been the stuff of song. Converting this “splendid cradle,” as the national anthem has it, into national wealth and well-being is another story.
“As to the breadth of Brazil’s backlands I shall not speak,” wrote Franciscan Friar Vicente do Salvador, the country’s 17th-century historian, who knew a thing or two about the productivity trap. “For to now no one has bothered to explore them, out of negligence by the Portuguese who, while they are great conquerors of lands, fail to take advantage of them, contenting themselves to scuttle along the shoreline like crabs.”