Regarding Brasil: Fascinating country. I've been to Rio and find it stunning but culturally very different from el Plata. Ive met southern Brasilians (south of Sao Paulo) in Uruguay and Rio Grande/ S Catarina and they are almost the exact same culture as el plata. perhaps less corrupt than Argentines and less averse to work than Uruguayans (Gerdau Steel!! or Curitiba, the
best managed city on Earth) .
No first hand experience or news story however has opened my eyes to the fascinating albeit romantic nature of Brasil more than reading Sefan Zweig, Brasilien: ein land der zukunft!
He describes the country's long history of
Dutch disease constant urgent need for manpower and tools, then machinery, now and ever ROADS.
Describing the Minas Gerais gold rush Stefan tell us how at time there was so much gold, so many prospectors and so little infrastructure that a hoe (in either interpretation) was worth its/her weight in gold! (metaphorically).
The gold rush was followed by the diamond rush, then coffee, sugar, then rubber, and at many occasions it's been and still is timber. On later years it's been oil. The highs and lows seem to conform a constant oscillation that almost defines the nature of Brasil as the ongoing conquering of a continent: the frontier remains open in Brasil:
The beautiful Embraer Bandeirante specifically and Brasil's Aerospace industry in general are reason enough to have high hopes in a people proud and resourceful enough to solve and profit from their immense challenges.
After migrating to Brasil and writing that book while still wearing the rose tinted glasses, Stefan Zweig wrote another book about his lost European homeland "The World that Was" and killed himself the day he finished it in a suburb of Rio. He shouldve gone to California instead, but his book and fate describe the double nature of Brasil so accurately and yet so romantically.
To sum it up, what Stefan Zweig describes in his super subjective history of Brasil is that it is a land of opportunity that is always on a comeback while heading to disaster