BRAZIL: Fighting Plans

After being at war only six weeks, Brazil has found the formula that the U.S. has been seeking since Pearl Harbor—one man and one organization with the power to control and coordinate the tremendous upheaval of modern war. The man: João Alberto Lins e Barros. His title: Coordinator of Economic Mobilization.

Under powers stemming directly from President Getulio Vargas, João Alberto last week was made responsible for: 1) maximum production of industry, mining and agriculture; 2) imports and exports of raw and manufactured materials; 3) mobilization and utilization of labor; 4) coordination of transportation, at home and on the seas; 5) price fixing; 6) distribution of commodities; 7) arming and clothing of military forces; 8) tightening of collaboration among federal, state, municipal, official, semiofficial and private organizations; 9) fuel and food rationing.

Working with Coordinator João Alberto will be other Government ministers and the U.S. industrial mission of economists and technicians, headed by Consulting Engineer Morris Llewellyn Cooke, which is to assist in the surveying and planning of Brazil’s war program and its integration with that of the U.S. and the United Nations. The U.S. mission arrived in Rio de Janeiro last week, promptly visited the industrial city of São Paulo with João Alberto. Just as snappy was João Alberto’s ministry, which in one day converted barren offices in an eight-story building on the Rua Mexico into a den of typewriters chattering in the same key of confused urgency as those in Washington.

Tall, dreamy-eyed João Alberto has the craggy features of a scholarly lion. He has been head of Brazil’s Foreign Trade Council, Minister to Canada, a member of the Economic Committee of the League of Nations. He gained experience for his new position when, in 1939, he was appointed president of the National Defense Commission to organize Brazilian industry. He has a son in the U.S. air force. He believes that “economics is a local science” and that Brazilian and U.S. experts must work out Brazilian problems in Brazil. Some of the problems:

> Inflation, which has bounced up the price of canned goods 20% to 30%; nylon stockings to double their pre-war price; rice, once 800 reis (4¢) per kilo, to three milreis (16¢).

> A currency shortage caused by inflation, hoarding, illegal withdrawal of “frozen” Axis funds and the sinking of the S.S. Texas, carrying currency engraved in the U.S. for the Brazilian Government. (Last week an eight-day bank holiday was decreed to prevent a run on banks and tide over a temporary crisis.)

> Transportation, handicapped by submarine sinkings of ships at sea and fuel and power shortages.

> Lack of chemicals and production machinery (German pre-war specialties) needed for armaments and new plants. (Says João Alberto: “Ah, machine tools, that’s what we need more than anything.”)

Mobilizer João Alberto will also need all possible assistance from the U.S.—not alone in dollars and machines. For the U.S., Brazil’s problems are a test of the Good Neighbor policy. For João Alberto they are a test of his ability to manage Brazil’s great potential strength. Last week he had suddenly become one of the big men of the Americas. He had behind him the good will of the U.S. More important, he had the good will of his own people.

Piles of scrap (with special places for lipstick containers) dot Brazilian streets. Many are topped with the flags of Brazil and the U.S. Blackouts are held in the towns along Brazil’s 3,000-mile coastline which juts out invitingly toward Dakar in West Africa (see p. 28). Recently a marionette poster appeared on the streets. When passers-by pull a string, a figure of President Vargas vigorously shakes a likeness of Adolf Hitler by the throat.