Plan for National Integration in Brazil, 1970

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Plano de Integração Nacional
(PIN)
The 1970 Plan for
National Integration
in Brazil

Brazilian nationalists, both civilian and military, have long harbored fears that unless Brazil integrates and develops its far-flung territories it will lose them. In 1970, six years after the military takeover of government in 1964, the Brazilian Government launched a program of national integration under the slogan of Integrar Para Não Entregar (To integrate in order not to forfeit). The PIN involved:

Construction of roads to link the various regions of Brazil
Settle the surplus population from the Northeast and the shanty towns of the southeastern cities in the unsettled areas of the west, in particular the states of Rondonia and Acre. The slogan for this program was Unite men without land with land without men.
Create settlements of small farmsteads in the areas along the national roads and in the settlement areas in the west.
Subsidize cattle ranching to produce food for the coastal cities and for export.
Develop Brazil's natural resources such as the newly discovered mineral deposits in the Carajás Region.

The Plan for National Integration (PIN) was probably initiated in 1970 because a severe drought in the Northeast in that year was creating extreme hardships. The government assistance program for the Northeast put 500,000 to work building roads. Later the Federal Government in Brasilia launched the national road-building program with the funding of BR 230, a three thousand mile road to lind the Northeast with Amazonias.
The year 1971 saw the creation of the First National Development Plan, the Amazon Development Plan and the Land Redistribution Program. Federal Government organizations were created to implement these plans. The Superintendency for the Development of Amazonia (Superintendéncia do Desenvolvimento da Amazônia SUDAM) was to handle the Amazon Development Plan. Formally the Land Redistribution Progam was the Programa de Redistribuiçáo de Terras e Estimulos à Agroindústria do Norte e Nordeste (PROTERRA). PROTERRA was not only involved in the redistribution of unutilized land but also in the promotion of agribusiness and the replacement of substistence farming with market-orient farming. This reflected a shift in official economic development strategy away from import-substitution development toward rural commercial development.
The task of assisting the settlement of migrant farmers along the new highways was given to INCRA, Instituto Nacional de Colonizaçáo e Reforma Agrária (the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform). A new road , BR 210 (the Perimetral Norte), was authorized to span 1700 miles along the northern bank of the Amazon River.
(To be continued.)

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