Constitutional & Healthful

Technically, Rio has always been a temporary capital. The Constitution of Independence in 1824 called for a federal district (on U.S. lines) somewhere near the geographical center of the country; four succeeding constitutions repeated the provision. But nothing ever came of the idea, despite its periodic champions. Last week, poker-faced President Dutra said that he was dead serious about building a permanent federal capital in the dry, wild, highland cattle country of the deep interior.

The President and his fellow champion of the capital switch, a hustling henchman named General Djalma Polly Coelho, see more than mere constitutionality in the scheme. They want Brazilians to expand into the huge areas back of the present narrow strip of coastal settlement. They hope that moving the seat of government beyond present railheads, smack into the healthful, mosquito-free heartland, might start Brazilians colonizing all the way from Belem at the mouth of the Amazon to Sao Paulo state in the south.

General Polly, who modestly estimates that the project would cost $190 million, wants to model the new capital--to be called Brasilia--after Washington, D.C. For scoffers, the General has two reminders : 1) 41 years ago Brazilian dreamers planned the model city which is today the lively, bustling reality of Bello Horizonte; 2) Golania, the model capital of the state of Goiaz, was only a gleam in a city planner's eye five years ago.

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