Lot more than coffee ..Brazil, Brasil;

              a
lot
more
than
coffee
On the job and on the go
principal Bill Jeffares visits a
match manufacturing plant
where the dipping process is
so secret no photographs are
allowed. Elsewhere principal
Bob Moore chats with the
controller as they move
around giant dies
slambanging in a General
Motors installation that
spreads over acres. They live
and work in two cities which
are about 300 miles apart in
a country that counts such a
distance as inconsequential;
the cities are linked by an "air
bridge" which connects both
metropolises with turboprop
service every hour on the
hour.
Detroit? Chicago? No. It is
February, yet both men are
perspiring. They are chatting
with client executives in
Portuguese. Bill and Bob are
both with the Firm in Brazil.
Bill is based in Rio and Bob
in Sao Paulo. And in the
Southern Hemisphere it is
summer.
If the practice of accountancy
is basically the same, the
setting is paradoxical. The
bustle and energy of Brazil,
the steady growth of
commerce and industry, set
up familiar vibrations among
the U.S. and British citizens
who are making a new home
through assignment to
Deloitte, Haskins & Sells. The
cities scale upward to the
constant clatter of new
construction. The traffic jams
rival London or New York in
their busiest hours. And yet
it is Brazil... the insouciant
lilt of the bossa nova and
samba . . . the heritage of
Africa and of Europe in one
. . . the beach life that goes
on each day of the year. ..
the annual free-for-all that is
Carnival. Brazil is a nation on
the way to the top. Yet she
knows how to have a good
time, too.
This is a country that, as the
expression goes, "has
everything," although her
economic development was
comparatively late starting.
She was discovered eight
years after the Columbus
landing—1500—by the
Portuguese navigator Pedro
Alvares Cabral. She achieved
her independence from
Portugal—and a new monarch
- i n 1822. She did not
become a republic until
November 15, 1889.
Size. On a mercator
projection Brazil is South
America's crag-nosed "face"
staring east into Africa. She
takes up fully one third of
South America and is actually
larger than the U.S.,
excluding Alaska. Variety.
Living happily together and
sharing one another's cultural
heritage is a range of ethnic
stocks—Caucasian, Oriental,
Indian, black and all shadings
between. Cementing the
variety of traditions is a pride
in Brazil's Portuguese
heritage, unique in South
America. Topographically the
country puts barely explored
jungle next to semi-arid
grasslands; pushes lushly
fertile farmlands next to
abruptly thrusting mountains
and plateaus. The world's
largest river system—the
Amazon—waters the sparsely
populated north as oversized
cities cling timidly to the
coast in the central and
northern sectors of a
shoreline that is veritably all
beach. Climate. The farther
south you go the cooler it
gets, but the climate is always
equable the year around,
Sao Paulo is the second largest
city in South America,
a sprawling metropolis of more
than six million people.
This view was taken from the
roof of Edificio Italia.
The cylindrical building on the
right is the new Hilton hotel
under construction and to be
operated by Hilton International
Co., a client of Haskins & Sells.
Edificia Italia, with forty-three
floors, is Sao Paulo's tallest
and most photographed building,
a prime example of ultramodern
Brazilian architecture.
Since September 1969 the building
has been home to the Sao Paulo
Office, which has purchased
one and one-half floors.