Lust for Territory

Brazil boasts the largest supply of uncultivated, uninhabited and cheap land left anywhere in the world. Its vastness stretches from the rugged jungles of Amazonia southward to the plains of the state of Goias, where the sky is so immense that half a dozen thunder storms can often be seen brewing in it while the sun shines. For years, the gov ernment has offered ten-year tax exemptions on some land and various other lures to attract settlers to the country's largely undeveloped interior. The drive has also attracted hundreds of Grileiros (land grabbers), who have come and gone, buying up acreage for virtually nothing. Since Brazil built the city of Brasilia out in the vast wilderness for its capital, however, the land buying has developed into a full-fledged boom.

The highway from Brasilia to the Amazonian city of Belem that was completed in 1960 has opened up hundreds of square miles of virgin land. This fact, coupled with visions of towering skyscrapers rising from the freshly turned red earth, has brought speculators and just plain land seekers flocking from West Germany, Japan, the U.S. and other countries. They have bought up land for as little as 70 an acre from private owners, sometimes reselling it for as much as $2 an acre. Around the Hotel Nacional bar in Brasilia, some speculators regale foreigners with Bunyanesque tales of undiscovered mineral riches in the soil.

New Frontier. In recent years, foreign investors have together bought more acreage in Brazil than the combined territory of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The three biggest foreign owners are the British-owned Lancashire General Investment Co. (2,460,000 acres), J. G. Araujo Ltd., in which Texans are said to have an interest (1,977,000 acres) and Indianapolis real estate man Stanley Selig (1,519,000 acres). Not all the land buyers are speculators; many hard-working American farmers are among those who have gone to Brazil to reap the rewards of a new frontier. One such is Farmer Henry Fuller, 38, of Houston, who owns half a million acres, grows crops and raises cattle, and plans to build a school, a church and a trading post on his land.

Like all such bubbles, the one in Brazil may burst, or at least shrink. Many a deed buyer, making the first visit to his acreage, has found that it is 24 hours by Jeep from the nearest city, or that he must put in roads, irrigation and other costly improvements before it has any lasting value. While a few U.S. farmers say that they can grow everything from rice to cotton in the soil of Goias and Bahia, others have found their land nearly infertile. Since homesteads are not staked out and land records in Brazil are chaotic, ownership, moreover, is often uncertain and difficult to prove. Potential prospectors for mineral wealth have been dismayed by the discovery that anything they dig belongs, by law, to the government.

Open Door Policy. Alarmed by the heavy foreign ownership, ultra-national opposition politicians and newspapers have begun to demand action from the government of President Arthur Costa e Silva. Senator Marcelo Alencar of the Movimento Democrdtico Brasileiro charges that no less than one-third of Brazil is now in the hands of for eigners, and has proposed an amendment to the Brazilian constitution to discourage foreign purchases in the future. A government investigating commission has recommended a crackdown on land frauds, while sanctioning legitimate sales to foreigners. Costa e Silva has no immediate plans to change the constitutional provision that allows land sales to non-Brazilians. "We should keep the doors to foreign investment quite open," says Colonel Walter de Andrade, head of the Amazon Development Agency, "because we need more than we can get."

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