Dream Capital

Ever since they won independence, Brazilians have dreamed of a cool, gleaming inland capital far from the humid, colonial seaport of Rio de Janeiro. Last week, on a 4,000-foot plateau 600 miles northwest of Rio, the first buildings of the new inland capital of Brasilia were inaugurated.

President Juscelino Kubitschek, who assumed sole responsibility for the project many Brazilians still consider fiscal folly, did the honors with a series of firsts. He attended the first service and the first wedding in Architect Oscar Niemeyer's swooping, triangular Chapel of Our Lady of Fatima. With his family and chef he moved into Niemeyer's long, low Palace of the Dawn, acted as host at the first dinner dance, spent his first night in the sumptuous presidential bedroom, took the first bath in the sunken marble presidential bathtub.

Much government work will be done in Brasilia with Kubitschek in residence, but the airplane-shaped city (TIME, Dec. 30) is still years from becoming the Brazilian government's exclusive place of business. For last week's inauguration, 20,000 workmen toiled through the night under strings of temporary lights to make the palace, the chapel and a hotel ready for use. Sewer and water systems were installed; 80 miles of roadway were paved within the federal district, and 500 homes and six apartment blocks were nearly finished. Of the ministries and the thousands of housing units still needed, there was no sign but long lines of foundations.

But an 82-mile road, Brasilia's first paved ground link to the outside world, was ready for Kubitschek's inaugural ride --and ready to carry tons of cement and steel for buildings yet to come. For Kubitschek, who plans to transfer 8,000 government workers to the new capital by 1960, it was a moment for an oratorical allusion to Brasilia's role as steppingstone to the vast, undeveloped interior of Brazil. The new capital, he said, "is the conquest of all that has been ours only on the map."

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