Bras

TO one of its early foreign admirers, Brasilia was "madness--but heroic madness." For most of its short history, the ultramodern inland capital has lived up to only the first part of that billing. When it was inaugurated in 1960, after four years of feverish effort and the expenditure of some $600 million, Brasilia's malls were pools of red mud, its streets were unpaved, and its new Senate did not even have seats. Only 20 of the country's 326 federal Deputies took up residence, and no sooner had the dedication ceremonies ended than virtually every official with the price of a plane ticket flew right back to the familiar comforts of Rio, 600 miles away.

Ten years later, the capital in the wilderness still needs a heroic effort to become a success. A respectable 60% of the federal Deputies now live in town, and Brasilia's population of 500,000 makes it Brazil's tenth-largest city. But many recalcitrant bureaucrats continue to ignore the lofty imperative of former President Juscelino Kubitschek, who conceived the idea of Brasilia: "We must march to the west, turn our backs to the sea, and stop staring at the ocean --as if thinking of departing."

Frontier Flavor. What Kubitschek could not achieve by evangelism, Brazil's military regime seems determined to accomplish by edict. In marking the tenth anniversary of the capital last month, President Emilio Garrastazu Medici decreed that Cabinet Ministers must henceforth conduct their business only in Brasilia. The Rio-based foreign diplomatic colony will have to follow suit by 1972. The move does offer one compensation to diplomats, though: Brasilia, with its limited escape routes, should discourage political kidnapings.

The youngest of a mere handful of world capitals that have been designed and built from scratch (Pakistan's Islamabad is still unfinished), Brasilia was intended to be much more than Brazil's seat of government. Kubitschek envisioned it as the hub of a 5,000-mile highway network that would open the vast interior and draw people away from the coastal cities where, he complained, Brazilians "cling like crabs to the crowded shorelines:"

Kubitschek was stripped of his political rights after a military junta seized control in 1964, but his visionary aims are taking shape. Thousands of peasants have flocked to the "satellite cities" that spread out from Brasilia to a distance of 25 miles. Trucks rumble along the 1,350-mile Belem-Brasilia highway, spawning hundreds of roadside settlements, some of them with a distinct frontier flavor. At one hamlet, appropriately called Piza no Freio (Hit the Brake), the only permanent residents are a madam and her four girls.

Some of the great expectations for Brasilia are not likely ever to come true. The city was laid out in the shape of a sweptwing airliner by Planner Lucio Costa, and studded with Architect Oscar Niemeyer's starkly modern structures of concrete, glass, marble and steel. It was to have housed an "open" society with no overt class distinctions; bankers and federal Deputies were supposed to live side by side with chauffeurs and congressional pages. Yet it has become one of the most stratified cities in the world. Because construction lagged, only bigwigs had enough pull to get into Niemeyer's "superblocks" of high-rise apartments. Soldiers tended to settle in one superblock, senior bureaucrats in another, legislators in a third. Lesser civil servants were relegated to long stretches of row houses. Chauffeurs and laborers settled in ramshackle favelas, slums that sprang up well beyond the central Costa-Niemeyer complex.

The 130,000 people who live in central Brasilia are well off and enjoy all the amenities. A network of six-lane highways enables them to whisk within minutes to tennis courts, golf courses or a 25-sq.-mi. artificial lake. Their chief complaint is a form of culture shock known as "Brasilia anguish." With self-contained stores, schools and churches, the vast superblocks tend to be homogeneous and sterile, totally devoid of the teeming street life of cities like Rio, Recife and Sao Paulo. Besides, says a resident, "there is nothing poetic about living in Superblock 310, Group B, Apartment 302."

Exciting Exurbia. Brasilia has reversed the U.S. urban pattern of a rotting core ringed by affluent suburbs. The surprising thing, notes Sao Paulo Sociologist Jose Pastore, is that the affluent, inner-city types frequently venture into the sometimes sleazy but always lively exurbs to recapture the spontaneity of the urban life they left behind. Says Pastore: "The socializing between adults so desired by Brasilia's planners is greater in the satellites than in the city itself."

Brasilia's hermetically sealed character hardened after the arrival of the military regime. The generals cracked down on the University of Brasilia, along with the rest of the country's campuses, snuffing out one of the city's few intellectual sparks. Since the dreadful Brasilia symphony folded in 1964, the cultural mainstays have been the German and French exchange groups that occasionally come to town.

The only people who really seem liberated by the city are its swarm of youths (40% of the population is under 15). In few other places in Brazil do young girls drive off on dates without chaperons. Brasilia's many grassy plazas echo all day to the shouts of small boys in pickup soccer games, and kite flyers abound, particularly on the huge mall in front of the Congress building. Perhaps recognizing that at least a whiff of frivolity is needed in what may be the world's best-ordered capital, the military regime has not yet made it illegal to walk on the grass.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.