J.K. in a Hurry

"In 20 years," says President Jusielino Kubitschek, "Brazil is going to be the world's fourth greatest power, ahead of all others except the U.S., Russia and China. We may even be ahead of China, too." Last week, with 14 months to go in his five-year term, Kubitschek was candidly proud of the humming factories, the new roads slashing through the jungle to the horizon's edge, the new cities leaping from red earth in the interior.

For J.K., as Brazil's press calls him, every new day is a welcome event, a chance to measure new success. At 5:45 one morning, on a typical day, Kubitschek rolled over in bed, buzzed for the papers. Fifteen minutes later he was ambling from telephone to telephone (four beside the bed, four in the bathroom, three in an adjoining study); in one hour he called three Cabinet ministers, one admiral, two generals, two secretaries, the chief of Cabinet, the food supply coordinator, and the administrator of the nearly finished new capital of Brasilia.

Speed Mad. At 7 a.m., in silk dressing gown and polka-dot pajamas, he padded down the hall of Laranjeiras Palace, his official Rio residence, to his one-chair barbershop for an hour-long ritual of shave, facial massage, manicure, interviews, English lessons, more phone calls. Ahead lay a morning of decisions: "I think you should get the Belo Horizonte-Brasilia highway ready by January instead of April. Why can't the contractors do it now and charge it to next year?" At 1:30 he ate a big lunch with his wife Sara and daughters Marcia and Maristela, then flew off to Sao Paulo to inaugurate a new Willys gear and axle plant and attend a banquet of fellow physicians.

"I've achieved my goals and even surpassed them," Kubitschek said as he sprawled out in his personal turboprop Viscount, his shoes, coat and tie off, and his toes wriggling happily. "They say it's madness to go so fast. We have to go fast. We have 63 million people and nearly 2,000,000 more people every year to feed, clothe, to supply with power and tools and the essentials of life." He points to his record: 1956 auto production zero, this year 170,000; 1956 oil production 5,000 bbl. a day, this year 100,000 bbl.

"I go everywhere," grinned Kubitschek, "I see everybody and the people see me. Deep in the interior, where airliners never go, when the children see an airplane, they call to their mothers: 'Look, mama, there goes President Juscelino!'" So far he has logged 6,000 flying hours in the air, prefers a helicopter to a car for getting around traffic-jammed Rio.

Vengeance Under Glass. Kubitschek's critics do not deny that he has been a builder, but wryly charge that Brazil's official motto, "Ordem e Progresso," has in the process become "Disorder and Progress." Kubitschek has printed almost as many inflationary paper cruzeiros (66.9 billion) as were printed in all of Brazil's previous history. He ignores Congress, shifts its appropriations to his pet projects--road building and Brasilia.

"You know," he says, "what Andre Malraux called Brasilia--'this city made by the will of one man and the hope of a nation.' " He has collected editorial attacks on the new inland dream capital, plans "to mount them all behind glass in the museums at Brasilia when the capital moves next April. Generations to come will look and laugh. That's vengeance!" he chortles.

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