Diario las Américas Newspaper, October 14, 1956, Page 25

' ten>to twenty ‘million tons of sur Key to territory’s future is youth. Btudents of rural school near Macapa parade on a national holiday. ment mail plane that dropped in at .Macapa once ‘a week. Captain Nu- nes went to Rio, talked a com- mercial airline into adding Maca- pa to its stops, with thrice-weekly through service from the. capital. Another -line offers daily flights from Belém. Today the visitor can put up in a small modern hotel, take in a movie, and visit the huge Portuguese-built fortress of Sao Jo- sé de Macapa, once crumbling, now restored as a national monument. If progress was not to be limited to the capital, roads must be built to reduce the territory's depend- ence on river transportation. The governor persuaded the federal roads department to help out. To- day a 480-mile road network leads into Macapa, including a 304-mile section ~stretching north three- fourths of the distance to French Guiana. In addition, the last stretches, of a 121-mile railroad de- stined for a leading role in the that dwarfs anything Amazonia has seen in its history. In his campaign to convert Ama- pa into-a productive sector of the national economy, Colonel Nunes was not without critics, who point- ed to the large sums of federal money required to finance the ter- ritory’s expansion. But his geolog- ists had assured him that Amapa was rich in minerals. Surely one would be found that would bring great wealth..One was — mangan- ese, the vital hardening alloy met- al without which warships, tanks, and armor plate would yield to high-powered shells like butter to a hot knife.- Manganese ore will start moving from the territory to Sparrows Point, Maryland, some- time this year; eventually the ship- ments will amount to between five hundred thousand and a million tons a year and bring to Brazil’s coffers at least thirty million dol- Jars annually. Amapa’s share of the After Nunes became governor, modern building like the Macap& Flying Club sprang up, complete with electricity and plumbing area’s development are now being completed. In the twelve years of Janary Nunes’ administration, the popula- tion of Amapdé more than doubled —it is now fifty thousand—and Macapé now a bustling town of twenty-three thousand, shot from forty-ninth to third place in the entire region of Amazonia. Mere physical change, important as it may be, is perhaps not the most significant transormation in Amapa. The land is awake to a new spirit, transmitted by the youthful energy of the governor and his staff. Youth is the keynote in Ama- pa. The visitor is struck by the healthy, vigorous appearance of Macapa youth in action, at the wheels of huge earth-moving mach- ines, in factories, on basketball courts, in gymnastic exhibitions. The remarkable transformation of Amap4é makes it important not only to Brazilians but to foreigners in a dozen world capitals as well. For behind the sudden economic spurt is an international project lights, no sewers or cesspools. SUNDAY, OCTOBER returns will enable it to repany the federal government within a short time. The Amapa manganese story be- gan in 1941, when a river trader named Mario Cruz, in his travels up the Amapari, stumbled over a piece of rock that was heavy, like iron, and made a good anchor for his canoe. Several years later, when he learned that Governor Janary was offering rewards for the dis- covery of valuable mineral depos- its ,Mario Cruz took his “iron anch- or” to Macapé. The governor sent the sample to the National Miner- alogical Laboratory in Rio, which reported : “Manganese — 55 per cent pure.” To explore and survey the man- ganese area, a concession was granted to a Brazilian firm, Indus- tria e Comércio de Minérios (ICO MI), in 1947. This company then operated, and still does, mangan- ese mines in the state of Minas Gerais. The deposits, in the Serra do Navio (Ship Mountains) region, turned out to be so rich — from 14, 1956 face ore alone averaging 45 to 47 per cent manganese — that addi- tional outside financing would be required for large-scale operation. Captain Nunes looked first to Brazilian interests, National law, in faet, reserves the exploitation of mineral wealth to Brazilian individ- uals and companies. But the pro- ject was so extensive and would de- mand such heavy investment that no willing risk-takers were found. Governor Nunes concluded that unless the manganese were to lie in the ground unused, a way must be found to bring non-Brazilian capital into the venture de- spite all the opposition he knew he would face. Why not invite foreign- ers to participate on a minority basis, with the government leasing the manganese deposits, charging a royalty on shipments, and requir- ing the concessionaire to fulfill a number of obligations? Buttonhol- ing one government official and publie figure after another, con- vincing them that his method would have foreign capital working for Brazil, he got the idea accepted A U.S. concern, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, became the new’ part- ner in ICOMI, owning 49 per cent of the stock. The Brazilian-owned 51 per cent is held by the all- - Brazilian firm Companhia Auxiliar de Empresas de Mineracao. The government satisfied the strictest demands for protection of Brazil- ian interests. In exchange for the rights to work the Serra do Navio deposits for fifty years, ICOMI agreed: ( . To build a 121-mile railroad from the Amazon to the mines; to con- struct port -facilities adequate for vessels up to thirty-six thousand tons; to pay the ferritorial govern- ment 4 per cent on the f.o.b. value of each metric ton of ore shipped; to pay an additional 1 per cent, or at its choice invest 20 per cent of its profits in Amapa; to pay, be- sides, a 5 per.cent royalty on ship- ments over five hundred thousand tons a year, up to a million; to sup- ply Brazil’s own manganese needs. To build the railroad and port installations and equip the mine, the company secured a $67,500,000 loan from the Export-Import Bank in Washington. Repayment, with 4 1-2 per cent interest, begins only after the start of the ore shipments. - Until liquidation of the loan, ex- pected by 1965, 70 per cent of the ore shipped must go to the United States, the rest to be exported else- where if better prices are found. Manganese is one of the strategic minerals the United States does not possess in appreciable quan- tities within its own borders. Its yearly consumption, some two mil- lion tons, is supplied chiefly from Africa and India. The Soviet Union is another of the world’s leading manganese producers. So vital is manganese considered to U. S. de- fense that in working out the Ex- port - Import loan to finance the Amapa undertaking, the U. S. Defense Materials Procurement Agency pledged itself to buy five and a half million tons of ore for . stockpiling, if this proves necessary to* guarantee a market. However, Bethlehem Steel the leading U. S. builder of naval vessels, needs so much manganese that “it hardly seems likely. Bethlehem has invested heavily in its Brazilian operation. Just how heavily, officials won’t say, but construction of preliminary works was originally budgeted at forty- five million dollars. This included a pier and all dock facilities at San- tana Island, the port for Macapa; a single-track railroad to the ore fields (and purchase of fifty ore gondolas and three diesel locomo- tives); a comfortable base camp at Porto Platon to house twelve hun- dred workers and engineers, near- ly a hundred of them Nr-th Ame- ricans; and installations for strip mining and loading at the'ore site, ICOMI and Behtlehem officials have high praise for tough-trader Nunes, ‘who often came to their aid in getting bureaucratic red tape cleared away. For his part, Colonel Nunes-regards the affair as “an extremely useful experiment . sie , sles wee -4in collaboration between national Before Nunes, Macapé locked like this: sagging buildings, no electric “ and foreign capital. U. S. technical ability has played, an important Mining company buildings port district of Macapa reflect growth that came with discovery of manganese in Amapa. role in the development of the re- gion and the nation.” ‘ Colonel Nunes’ influence will long be felt in Amapa On his desk when he*turned the governmental reins over to his successor, Amil- car S. Pereira, were blueprints for a fifty - thousand - kilowatt hydro- electric plant to be built on the Araguari River with the help of a 350,000,000 cruzeiro loan from the National Economic Development Bank. President Kubitschek has just signed the bill authorizing es- tablishment of the Amapa Elect- ric Company. Also projected under under the Numes administration is a small steel mill, to utilize the territory’s iron reserves. Man- ganese boats could return from the States with coal, which is scarce in Brazil, and the mill could furn- ish the entire Amazon basin with barbed wire, galvanized iron, and steel plate for the construction of river vessels. on petroleum imports, dollars that otherwise might purchase needed foreign-made industrial equipment. Except in distribution, direct parti- cipation of foreign private capital is prohibited. Obeying the same twelve-hour-a- day schedule he followed:in Ama- pa, Colonel Nunes is busy famil- iarizing himself with the multiple aspects of his new assignment. Pe- trobraés operates a tanker fleet, a refinery in Santos producing forty- five thousand barrels a day, a pipe- line up the escarpment to Sao Pau- lo, and an asphalt factory, and is sinking exploratory wells with twenty - six drilling rigs. Colonel Nunes’ work, which oft en gets him up at five — from six to ten A. M. are his preferred working hours, and he puts in eight hours more at odd times of the afternoon and evening — leaves him little time for his wife Nunes pushed construction of new schools for pupils up through high school. The drive, the determination, the dedication to work, the insistence upon giving his personal direction to every phase of Amapa’s opera- tions, the high standards of con- duct and responsibility he demand- ed from himself and his subordin- ates — these are the qualities that led to his choice as head of Petro- bras. President Kubitschek had report- edly had his ye n he energetic colonel for a long time and Colonel Nunes confirms a newspaper ac- count of their first meeting. On that occasion he predicted that Dr. Kubitschek, then governor of Mi- nas Gerais, would be president in 1956 and that he himself could spend four more years in Amapa, Governor Kubitschek, not yet. a candidate, laughed. “That’s what you think,” he said. “If I go to Ca- tete Palace, you'll have an import- ant role in my government.” In his new job, Colonel Nunes occupies a pivotal spot in the na- tion’s economy. Brazil produces se- ven thousand barrels of crude oil a day; it consumes 190,000, and the demand is growing by nearly 20 per cent a year. As a result, it spends some $280,000,000 a year Youngters line up just before swimming in pool at one of new schools, HEMISPHERE ‘ Pose 11° and four children or for the poe try, novels, and books on technical and administrative problems that are his preferred reading. In man- ner the colonel es expansive, cour teous, and frank. Although he speaks French, Spanish, and Eng- lish “sufferably,’ he seldom left Brazil, except for two brief trips to Portugal and short visits to French -Guiana. He enjoys travel by air — a necessity in running the sprawb ing operations of Petrobras — de- spite a 1945 crash-Ianding in a lake on Marajé, the Netherlands - size island at the mouth of the Ama» zon. Neither he nor the pilot was scratched, but the accident and the two hour wait for rescue produced, according to Colonel Nunes, “ag interesting sensation.” In his new position, Colonel Nw nes’ thoughts will not be far re moved from the Amazon. Right now drilling is going on most intem sively in the area sround Nov. Olinda, where oil was Soeoiaied early in 1955. The question “he faces now is, Can oil do for the en tire Amazon valley what manga» ese is doing for Amap&? What the tough little colonel accomplished in Amap& helps provide a basis for the answer. “public ‘demonstration of thele