IS SECESSION THE ANSWER?

Rio Grande Do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil, is 85 percent white, which makes it more European than the United States. Its residents are increasingly angry about paying more and more taxes that disappear into the poverty-stricken North. Since 1990, half a dozen separatist movements have sprung up in the state and approximately one third of the population supports secession in some form.

There have already been strong measures to seal off the indigent North. About a dozen cities in the state have adopted immigration controls to keep out Northerners. Last year, the town of Novo Hamburgo turned back a convoy of trucks that were bringing jobless poor people to the South.

The separatists have, of course, been called Nazis and fascists, but Irton Marx, a secessionist leader is confident that his movement will eventually succeed. "There is no way the press or the government can hold us back," he says.

James Brooke, White Flight in Brazil? Secessionist Caldron Boils,"
Jornal New York Times, 12 de Maio de 1993.