The Bridge (1965)

South America with Europe was nearly a billion dollars a year the trade with the United States was somewhat less I'm a paraguayan Paraguay produced broken ends coil backups burned by their own Crews Italian ships [Music] they are experts at destruction the weight of susses began to pile up cotton of Peru cotton of Brazil cotton once used on the Looms of Europe Bale after Bale each bail a field of cotton which South America needs and needs badly but cannot use does not have the machines to use to weave one-tenth of its own cotton the new warehouses filled of a roof with sacks of coffee here are the years of war 1939 40 41 42 43 a billion cups of coffee product of Agriculture that grows nothing but a single crop and the immense Pampers of Argentina with a climate like our own Midwest growth beef wheat corn but today only the beef is taken for us the wheat ripens too long in the fields is heck into the Silence of the granaries 200 million bushels of surplus a year countries which depend for their life on one or two or three crops feed these crops At Last Only to the runner field corn is stored Outdoors there's no more room in the warehouse will this food ever be eaten Sabe no one knows it is corn that the United States doesn't need that Europe cannot get [Music] corn has dropped to one cent a bushel Corners cheap corn can be bought by the wagon load left on the cob till it grows dry and hard in the Sun yeah the corn of Argentina is being used as fuel for the furnaces of the factories get it she likes trains roads trucks to move it and in Europe there is war the blacksmith Burns corn on his Forge the surpluses of South America are burning but other fires burn in South America night and day the fires of Industry the United States is at War the United States needs masses of raw materials to forge into weapons Asia and Africa are far away the United States looks to South America [Applause] under the soil lie pools of high-grade oil new wells go down night and day Wells to supply new oil to American fighters [Music] the new well begins to pump at first there's nothing only the yellow mud that smells of kerosene but in half an hour there's oil Rich oil prospected and drilled and pumped out of the Virgin Jungle of Eastern Venezuela [Music] and in the Chilean desert life [Music] once more they are blasting nitrate out of the desert nitrate and iodides bismuth and antimony The Ore is blasted and scraped and dumped out of South America from mines three miles high beryllium Vanadium tungsten flat cars loaded with tin down from the plateau of Bolivia to the seaports of the United States and in the courtiero of Chile Where the hills are solid copper ore in the largest open mine in the world there's a warning [Music] then silence [Music] day and night the copper is blasted out copper is needed for shells and bullets for gun parts and radios the war boom is on the metals needed by the United Nations copper and lead and manganese reach new levels of intense production sheets bars ingots aluminum more sheets of mica industrial diamonds and rare metals and raw Goods of every kind pouring out of South America moving by planes steamer and truck toward the factories of War thank you it is still morning over South America but there is no war boom here there is only one road into this town there is only a market nine out of ten in South America live near towns like this nine out of ten have never seen a mine or an oil field they live by the Earth and by the labor of their hands their lives have always been hard nothing changes here but the faces on the coins [Music] thank you the people of South America are as fine and capable as any in the world but their beauty is weakened by disease and their children too many of them will die before they can read [Music] in this market the meat is transported and sold in the open without Refrigeration there is no ice and no means of making ice in this market the cheapest food is still the food of the Indians potatoes Yucca and other starchy roots poor this is what most South Americans eat potatoes dry corn Els of starch to be ground into bread that's what is sold that's what is bought in every South American town this morning the morning passes corn is ground on a stone mortar the midday meal is being prepared [Music] mother needs water there is no source of water in the house her oldest daughter takes the can goes half a mile to the Town Pump [Music] and so which the daughter carries has great advantages it's quite unbreakable and it leaks only a little it is the product of an American Oil Company but this family has no use for the oil [Music] the meal is ready potatoes squash Yucca there's plenty of hot starch but the vitamin content is not very great no green vegetables either cooked nor Raw no whole grains and no milk [Music] please the baby gets sugar and water [Music] in the father's plenty of portion of black meat foreign [Music] and the afternoon begins and work begins again we are making packed saddles for mules for only mules connect this town with the world around it 300 years ago a woman like this was making Saddles exactly like this without tools out of straw woven with bare hands the people of South America and the great majority live not by wheel and gear and kilowatt but by hand and foot and back using bone tools taking weeks and weeks to weave a single garment [Music] the productivity of such labor is very low [Music] only in the last generation has weaving by hand given way a little to weaving by machine machines that can make a hundred yards while the Weaver makes one machines that can make clothes out of the Surplus cotton of South America bright new factories making floor textiles paper even cement and glass new thousands of industrial workers but they are only thousands the millions of South America still work in the old way work on the land scratching the Earth with slow oxen and a wooden plow [Music] under the Hooves of Horses The Grain is threshed the chaff is thrown to the wind with a wooden Fork this is the agriculture of a thousand years ago the fields of wheat lie beautiful in the afternoon light but beyond them is erosion increasing like a disease in this country a farmer will say yes there was good land in this Valley but it was plowed too often now there is always too much water or too little water and sometimes no seed will take root foreign the air is good but the rate of illness is high the chief disease malnutrition everywhere in the world somehow the face of poverty is the same [Music] how will this girl grow up and to what kind of South America perhaps the answer is here in the continent itself [Music] for while the great centers of population are in Argentina in coastal Brazil in central Chile and in the high plateaus of the Andes there are vast agricultural areas still unused Venezuela has many thousands of square miles Colombia Ecuador Bolivia Peru and Brazil has the region of the Amazon in these unused lands lies the agricultural future of South America but they are not easy to use they are warm flat Rich they have abundant water too much water they are covered with stubborn jungle they are sparsely populated some areas as little as one family per square mile and here once more there are a few tools of any kind [Music] around them is the Silence of the Jungle a land without winter breeding place of plant animal and human diseases hot and moist crawling with life and with the enemies of life with insects that can devour a crop from Roots to leaves foreign foreign how can this land be conquered can this house become a city [Music] are there tools to do the job the tools are still in the ground unknown unused the wealth of South America still lies enclosed in stone in Peru in Chile Venezuela Brazil a billion tons of iron ore and all the metals of the world and enough water power to Electrify the continent with these resources South America can open the doors of the 20th century steel is ready the steel that will go not the Pittsburgh Lancaster Yokohama but still to be forged into more machines for South America steel to be delivered into the arms of the future from the United States and from the South American shops will come the machines that will convert the unknown and undeveloped areas into human use convert cotton into clothing rubber into tires steel and the machines to make machines for half of South America is still a wild frontier not enough roads not enough men not enough tools the work has just begun the work of Road buildings the work of Health Engineers the work of soil experts the work of planting in the new fields of the Amazon Valley [Music] thank you the seeds of those of rubber the young tree has the kind of root that will resist disease but it yields little rubber so the bud of another variety of tree whose root is weak but whose trunk gives a high yield of rubber latex is grafted onto the healthy route seven years of Care by Indian workmen of the Ford plantation and out of the Amazonian Forest comes the full yield of liquid rubber science can make the jungle straight make it yield not one crop but many oranges as well as Industrial Rubber pineapples as well as rice and cacao and all the known vegetables of the world [Music] when the richness of South American soil Bears the full Harvest none of one or two crops for export only but all a variety of human food when the Farms of South America plan to feed men not ships then the children of this continent will have something to inherit but none of these things are complete they have just been started and no measures of industrialization or of improvement for agriculture no measures to raise the living standards of the South American people are possible without transportation there are some Railways mostly in Argentina but the mileage is small and sometimes key links are broken for months at a time the network of Highways is small and roads are often washed away in the rainy season there are steamer routes but mostly to other continents the vastness of the continent is still impenetrable the Great Rivers of the Amazon system sometimes as wide as 200 miles are still used mostly by small craft by native canoes or not used at all the jungle Still Remains untamed and unused the Western desert dry and dangerous is a storehouse of metals and chemicals one Railroad and one Highway across the length of its 2000 miles [Music] [Applause] roads have been cut and twisted across the cold passes of the mountains but the roads are few the Andes still hold like a wall the second highest in the world [Music] to build any road here is a trick of engineering acrobatics [Music] it is not easy to drive along these Cliffs to follow the chasm of these Twisted Rivers [Music] the vehicle must be short the motor powerful the load not too great the travel 10 miles in air distance there may be a hundred miles of Curves and grades it is not easy to base an economy on roads like these because you cannot go fast you cannot go far the corn of Argentina Burns and the coffee of Brazil rots while each Valley tries to live alone the things people need are still carried on the backs of mules [Music] The Long Afternoon of South America is measured out by the Hooves of mules by the feet of men too poor to buy shoes the freight of South America still goes on the backs of a man a woman a child foreign climbs five centuries pass and above her head there stands a bridge the bridge of air itself the bridge that Springs toward the future no area in the world is self-sufficient and the greatest amount of trade has always been between the most industrialized countries Air transport will bring any place in the world within 68 hours of South America [Music] let us watch the future apps thank you what will go up with this enormous plane is it farm tools fertilizer tested seeds [Music] it will carry as much in one year as a hundred trucks 10 000 mules [Music] is it books charts microscopes for new College or hold tractors moving up to replace the last of the wooden plows the plane is ready with its 20 tons of cargo it takes off from Santiago Lima Quito from cities not yet built workmen of Ecuador multiply This Plane a thousand times multiply at minor of Bolivia it skips the jungle uses the shortcuts of the air the Indian of Brazil will be the neighbor of a woman and child in cold Peru above their heads a motive flies in the softness of the air it can bring you what you need South American can lift it over the deadly snow of the volcanoes here there are no obstacles of mountain swamp or desert here there are no boundaries between country and Country the air itself can carry the traffic of all the continents the air is the bridge into the future all right foreign