43073 (Tourism in Brazil), страница 3

Huge funds are not needed to change Brazil. What is needed is the will to change. Brazil needs a mental revolution, a reversal of priorities, so that its social development can catch up with its economic development. Otherwise, the currency can change, the president can change, even the capital changes place every now and again, but Brazil risks being labeled the land of the future well into the twenty-first century.

«Next stop, Paradise», barks a matter of fact voice over the intercom of the train on the Sao Paulo Underground. Nowadays Paradise is just a rather dingy district of downtown Sao Paulo, a station on the North-South Metro line, but five hundred years ago when the first explorers reached Brazil they thought it was the real thing. They found friendly, beautiful natives, an abundance of fruit and fertile soil. Travelers ever since have marveled at the beauty of Rio de Janeiro, gazed in awe at the vastness of the Amazon river, delighted in the palm-fringed beaches of the Northeast.