Power for the Bulge

The Sao Francisco River is South America's fifth longest;* for more than 1 ,000 miles it winds northward from the quartz-bearing uplands of Minas Gerais through the arid, scrub-covered backlands of Brazil's northeastern bulge. Then, suddenly, it hurls itself 275 feet down a jagged granite precipice in the spectacular Paulo Afonso Falls.

At the falls last week, some 2,000 laborers were at work on a $43 million hydroelectric project designed to serve the power-starved cities of Brazil's "forgotten corner." In charge of the job was a corps of young (average age: 30) Brazilian engineers of the Companhia Hidro Eletrica do Sao Francisco. In the ten months since work began, CHESF has put up a city for 4,500, made a start on a 2-2-mile dam, and is getting ready to carve a huge subterranean power station in solid granite.

Half a Million Kilowatts. In 1953, when the first generators are to be installed, the Paulo Afonso plant will produce 120,000 kw. for the five neighboring states of Pernambuco, Alagoas, Paraiba, Sergipe and Baia, doubling their present supply. When all nine of the planned generators are in operation, the output will be approximately i 1/2 times as much as Wilson Dam at Muscle Shoals.

CHESF began as a gleam in the eye of Pernambuco's Senator Apolonio Sales, Minister of Agriculture under the Vargas dictatorship. Sales saw Paulo Afonso as part of a larger, TVA-style plan for development of the whole valley, with irrigation, flood-control and sanitation schemes. He was swept out of office in the avalanche that toppled Vargas, but not before both CHESF and the Sao Francisco Valley Authority (for which plans are still incomplete) had been set up.

With President Eurico Caspar Dutra's support, a provision was written into the 1946 constitution setting aside 1% of all national revenues for development of the valley for 20 years. Since then, Dutra's enthusiasm for the project has become almost an obsession.

Twenty Million Dollars. CHESF is capitalized at $20 million. Half of its initial stock issue was underwritten by the federal government, which in turn was allowed to sell 49% of its shares to private investors; the other half was underwritten jointly by four northeastern states, municipalities, private corporations and individuals. For added capital, CHESF is counting on additional government money and is looking to Washington for a $15 million World Bank loan.

To CHESF's engineers, as to most Brazilians, Paulo Afonso's progress is a matter of national pride. Impatient at the delay in getting heavy earth-moving equipment over back roads, CHESF's shirtsleeved, roly-poly President Jose Antonio Alves de Souza told his men to go ahead without it. As his barefooted laborers struggled last week to haul rude, four-handled wooden trays of rock from the darn excavations, Alves de Souza said: "Sure, we've got too many men here now. But we can't just sit and wait for the machinery to come. We're in a hurry."

*The four leaders: the Amazon, the Parana, the Madeira, the Puriis.

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