How Much Time?

Brazil and the U.S. signed an agreement last week that should go a long way toward making life bearable for the 25 million peasants in Brazil's poverty-stricken, drought-blasted Northeast bulge. Over the next several years, the two countries will pump $276 million into the area--$131 million from the U.S., $145 million from Brazil--to build roads, power plants, schools and irrigation projects. The question is whether the two Alliance for Progress partners have enough time.

In the primitive Northeast last week, the fast-growing Communist-influenced Peasant Leagues were on the point of open rebellion against the landlords who monopolize what wealth there is in the blighted area. The leagues had a martyr, too. One of their leaders, Joao Pedro Teixeira, 40, had been murdered as he walked along a road near his home town of Sape. Police said one suspect confessed that he had been paid by the landlords. As the peasants gathered by the thousands to stage protest marches, jittery plantation owners called in the army. Troops fanned out across three states, raiding Peasant League headquarters and searching for "agents of subversion."

Wrote Rio's respected Jornal do Brasil: "The agents of subversion are the big landowners who refuse to admit times have changed."

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