Brazil today and tomorrow

by L. E. Elliott Joyce

Brazil built her first railway three years before the Argentine brought her first line into operation—a modest strip of thirteen miles running west from Buenos Aires—although British Guiana has the credit of possessing the earliest railroad of South America; during the Empire construction proceeded steadily but with a certain caution, and it was not until after the formation of the Republic in 1889 that floods of concessions for railway construction invaded Brazil. The years 1890–91 show the highwater mark of such plans, and while many of these dried up without leaving a trace there remained sufficient impetus for much genuine and useful construction.

Lines began to go farther afield, to form networks and connected links; they were part of general improvement plans which presently included harbours and wharves, waterworks and sanitation schemes, city paving and draining and beautifying. It is true that from the time of the Republic is dated Brazil’s plunge into debt upon a great scale, but since the new American countries could not wait until they had sufficient money in the national pockets to pay for railway, harbour and sanitation, and Europe stood ready to lend her surplus gold in aid of the work, Brazil is scarcely to blame for borrowing as did her sisters, north and south. Her very extravagance helped to advertise and advance Brazil, the royal-spending world customer with rich products for sale to justify her; she attracted immigrants, merchants, capitalists, technical men and scholars as she never would have done without her renown as a land of careless magnificence.

Borrowing and building went on without any serious check until 1912, when the first Balkan War cast long shadows into the financial world; less than two hundred miles of new railway line have come into operation since that year in Brazil. But the previous fat years, many more than seven, had by that time not only brought about rail access to many fertile interior belts, but also the linking of the more important systems by lines reaching up and down the coast. The brilliant French author, Pierre Denis, was able to say ten or twelve years ago that there was “no general railway system in Brazil; there are small independent systems, covering with their meshes the regions of long-established colonization, but without inter-communicating lines.” He found connection between two groups only, remarking that “the line from S. Paulo to Rio is today the only means of transit between two groups of states, excepting the ocean highway.”

At the end of 1922 the situation is greatly changed. Not only have many states been linked up but three sister Republics are in direct communication with Brazil by rail. São Paulo city communicates by systems under allied control with Uruguay; Argentina is in touch at the western edge of Rio Grande do Sul, where the town of Uruguayana stands on the river boundary between the two countries opposite to the Argentine port of Libres; Bolivia is reached at the frontier town of Corumbá, on the border of south-western Matto Grosso, as well as at the Madeira-Mamoré Falls in the north. Linking up with south-eastern Bolivia is the result of the penetration of south Matto Grosso by the North-Western of Brazil Railway; this line, which has direct communication with the city of S. Paulo, reached Itapura on the river Paraná a few years ago, and pushed on energetically from that western edge of S. Paulo State across the narrow southerly neck of the huge neighbour, arriving early in 1916 at Porto Esperanza on the river Paraguay, only a few miles from the objective of the road, Corumbá town on the frontier of Bolivia. This transportation service gives Bolivia an outlet of which the interior republic has stood in need since she was deprived of a seaport of her own on the Pacific; perforce sending her products out through other republics, Bolivia has been already aided in the north with the opening of the Madeira-Mamoré line, giving better access to the river highway of the Amazon.

The North-Western line has pushed farther afield from the seacoast than any other in Brazil: the constructing company is Belgian, with headquarters in Brussels, and the Federal Government in this as in many other instances guarantees interest on the capital expended, a loan having been raised for this purpose in Paris in 1909. An able Brazilian engineer, Dr. Firma Dutra, directs the work; all the rolling stock, including dormitories and restaurant cars, has been built in Brazilian workshops with Brazilian hardwoods. Another approach, parallel to and south of the north-western, to the great stock-raising lands of Matto Grosso is offered now that the extension of the Sorocabana line from Salto Grande to the port of Tibiriça on the Paraná river is completed; Tibiriça is a famous cattle crossing where thousands of head of the stocky beasts reared on luscious interior pastures are brought into the State of S. Paulo. Their numbers have been greatly augmented since the opening of two packing-houses in S. Paulo at the end of 1914, and excellent service has been rendered by the Paulista enterprise, the Companhia de Viação São Paulo-Matto Grosso, which owns the port of Tibiriça, operates ferries, runs a steamboat service up the Paraná river to Jupiá (Itapura) where the North-Western brings merchandise from S. Paulo city, as well as service on three or four tributaries of the Paraná; the company has constructed a highway, now bordered with coffee plantations, rest-pastures for the passing cattle, and embryo villages along the route, all the way to the city of S. Paulo.

There are three chief fans of radiating railroad lines in Brazil, starting from the coastal border from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco. The first two form networks of lines of much greater extent than the third, and besides these systems there are several points along the littoral where a railway penetrating inland is already the handle of a new fan. The southernmost state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, is well served, lines running through the middle of her territory from north to south (the Auxiliaire, now part of the Brazil Railways group) and east to west, so that the state is in touch with Argentina, with Uruguay, with the States of S. Paulo, and Santa Catharina and with the seat at each end of the Lagôa dos Patos, a busy lagoon with the town of Rio Grande at the entrance and Porto Alegre at the northern end: the railroad splits into two at Cacequy in order to serve both the rival ports. Superior docking at Porto Alegre sent practically all visiting vessels to the upper end of the lagoon until the end of 1915, when the new harbour of Rio Grande was formally opened. The work, a long and expensive series of tasks, was performed by a French company, and includes the deepening and maintenance of the channel to permit the entry of deep-draught vessels, docks and wharves; Rio Grande is a fine state with a cool climate, an industrious population, and thriving business. It has been carefully colonized with white European settlers, has space for a million more, and with its easy access to other centres of population by sea and rail has much to attract newcomers. Increasing exchange is carried on with the Argentine, chiefly by water.

Santa Catharina’s rail service consists of the north-and-south link of the São Paulo-Rio Grande line, a short local line between the colonies of Blumenau and Hansa, and two short strips running inland from the sea, one from Imbatuba to Laguna and thence inland to Lauro Muller, serving the coalfields of that region; the other from the excellent little island port of São Francisco, across to the mainland at Paraty, and thence inland to Joinville, Rio Negro and Tres Barras, where the lumber yards of a company controlled by the Brazil Railway Company feed it with freight. The Tres Barras yards operate with the Paraná pine for which the southern States of Brazil are famous, ship it to many other parts of the Brazilian Union, and in 1915 arranged to supply Argentina alone with forty million feet a year.

S. Francisco port has entered upon a new life since the lumber business has been flourishing; a double row of settlements has sprung up beside the track of the railroad and agriculture is showing development in a region that has been steadily if slowly settled by the descendants of the early colony of Joinville.

The State of Paraná is better off for connections; in addition to the north and south link with the sister states of São Paulo and Santa Catharina, she has a railroad running off from it at the station of Ponta Grossa due east to Serrinha (whence a branch connects with Rio Negro directly to the south), on to the pleasant capital town, Curityba, and down the wonderful mountain road already referred to until the port of Paranaguá is reached, one of the lively younger shipping points of the southern littoral.

São Paulo, the next state northwards, is the possessor of the best system of penetrating railroads in Brazil: she has more mileage than any other single state in the Union, counting over four thousand miles. In his Message read before the S. Paulo Congress on July 14, 1916, the President of the State, Dr. Altino Arantes, remarked: