It is ironic that Brazil’s Northeast, once the focus of international envy, has become a center of increasing international concern because of the plight of its millions of inhabitants. But Professor Robock, who formerly served as a United Nations’ consultant to the Nordeste, decries the widespread gloomy estimate of the region’s future prospects, and contends that regional disparities between the Northeast and other parts of Brazil are currently diminishing and are likely to continue to do so.
In this brief but informative study the author reviews the many federal programs established since 1877 to cope with the complex problems that have long afflicted the nine-state “drought polygon,” and contrasts the older, largely unsuccessful “hydraulic approach” with the newer “economic development approach” championed by Celso Furtado and the SUDENE. He examines the SUDENE’s plans in detail, criticizing them on a number of grounds, notably the planners’ relative inattention to the region’s educational needs and their failure to relate regional planning to national objectives. He shares some of the misgivings of many Latin Americans about certain aspects of foreign aid programs, particularly when introduced on a crash basis, as has been the case with the current United States’ program for this region.
Professor Robock also makes a number of other points that are worth pondering, among them: (1) that subdivision of the Nordeste’s large properties into smaller units would merely “aggravate an already bad situation,” and that it would be more rational to consolidate many small farms into larger (potentially more efficient) units; (2) as such consolidation occurs and as primitive hoe culture gives way to modern agricultural techniques, the agrarian sector’s manpower needs are bound to lessen; (3) part of the resulting population surpluses can be absorbed by accelerating existing industrial programs, but the rest must be resettled in under-populated parts of Maranhao and in the west central states.
A particularly useful feature of this study is the inclusion of comparative data on other underdeveloped lands where the author has done field work, including the Philippines, India, and Liberia. Though footnoted, the book lacks a bibliography, and the glossary is inadequate. For some curious reason the author insists on calling the Nordeste’s most important river the San Francisco. But despite minor blemishes, this book will prove useful to all who are seriously interested in contemporary Latin American problems.
