Backland's Capitalism

Morris Asimow is a U.C.L.A. engineering professor who has an unusual and valuable talent: he likes to build factories from scratch, preferably in distant and inaccessible places. That talent is particularly useful in Latin America, where a desperate race with rising expectations often causes governments to concentrate on grandiose heavy-industry schemes while ignoring the vital need for smaller enterprises. Several projects have been launched to fill that need, but Asimow has proved to be in a class by himself as a one-man aid program.

Counting on a sort of do-it-yourself capitalism, Asimow has set up several locally financed corporations in Brazil's backlands to build, operate and own small factories. Starting with practically nothing, his projects in the state of Ceara have become models of what can be done with very little. U.S. aid officials in Brazil are so impressed by the results that recently they sat down with Asimow to negotiate a $2,200,000 loan for his project. Last week another Brazilian state, Sergipe, asked Asimow to come in and set up a self-help project.

Suspicious of Foreigners. Asimow, 57, knows what he is about. During World War II, he took time out from his U.C.L.A. classroom to put together a small aluminum extrusion plant out of scraps and hand-me-down equipment. In 1949, the U.S. Government sent him to New Guinea to recruit native labor and set up a plant to reduce surplus war planes to scrap. "That convinced me," says Asimow, "that if you could do such projects on an island like that with unskilled natives, you could do it almost anywhere in the world."

Working mostly during summer vacations, Professor Asimow since 1962 has put his conviction to the test in Ceara's Cariri valley in northeastern Brazil, where per capita income is well under $80 a year. He gathered a team of graduate students and professors from U.C.L.A. and the University of Ceara. At first, Brazilians were suspicious of the foreigners and skeptical of a corporation's chances: there was little capital, more faith in land than in stock certificates, and more trust in relatives running a business than in directors.

But within two months, Project Asimow, as it has come to be known, organized five separate corporations to mill corn and to make shoes, transistor radios, structural ceramics and pressed wood. Asimow hired local managers and sent them to U.C.L.A. for training, persuaded local landowners and merchants to buy stock and serve on the all-Brazilian boards of directors. Distrust turned to civic pride, and investments, ranging from $7 to $10,000 each, poured in. Together, the five corporations have raised more than $1,000,000.

Onward with RITA. By now, the shoe factory is producing 80 pairs a day, the radio plant is in operation, and the other three are under construction. Spreading out, Asimow is back in Ceara this summer, organizing new corporations to build a cement plant, a dairy and a meat-processing plant. The U.S. has already agreed to back similar projects all over Latin America. Work has begun in Chile, Ecuador and Mexico, and requests are pouring in from Peru, Venezuela and several Central American republics. Giving it bureaucratic approval, the U.S. has assigned such programs a name and initials--Rural Industrial Technical Assistance, or RITA.

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