Chapter LXXVI - The New World Order
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By the 1946 it had already been a whole year since the end of the 2nd World War and the world was once again changing, for starters both the US and Brazil launched a program to help the struggling economies of Europe after the conflict, dubbed the “European Reconstruction Initiative”, the plan consisted in both nations granting large scale economic aid to the countries of Europe and while at first many more countries accepted German interference meant that aid was restricted to places occupied by the New World Giants, the aid in itself was massive at a whopping $13 Billion (equivalent to about $115 Billion) and to be distributed amongst the nations of Portugal, Spain, South France, South Italy, Britain, Ireland and Switzerland, all of this aid meant that the nations’ economies began to skyrocket as they started to rebuild after the previous devastation, however since Brazil was actively seeking to detach itself from European affairs, they would only agree to the plan after the US agree to cover 2/3 of the expenses something which slightly soured the great relationship between both nations.
In the east meanwhile the occupation of Japan was consuming quite a lot of resources and since Brazil wanted to recall its troops back home, specially after some nasty incidents of Brazilian soldiers arresting suspected ultranationalist terrorists which caused riots in the south of Japan, they decided in 1947 to hand over their occupation zone to the Americans which then fused both occupation zones into the State of Japan, a constitutional monarchy friendly to the USA, this action however was not appreciated by the Chinese who over the past years have been fighting a bloody civil-war between the Nationalists and the Communists, however by 1947 the Communists were loosing on every front and a Nationalist victory seemed inevitable, thereby the government in Nanking decided that it was once again time to dwell into foreign policy and one thing they didn’t like was having 3 American aligned nations (Korea, Japan and Vietnam) right on their border, and so, relations between both countries also began to sour.
However back in Brazil itself, the nation’s government was working on a very secret project, that of creating an atomic bomb, because you see after the bombing of Nagasaki and Kyoto the Americans had actually shared with the Brazilians on how to build such a weapon, however at the time the government had no real interest in such weapon but now that relations between Germany and the US were deteriorating,
São Sebastião thought it would be wise to build a device of their own, the project which began in 1947 took very little time to actually be completed and in 1948 the Brazilians detonated their first atomic weapon in the Northeastern
Sertão, and thus Brazil became the world’s third nuclear power.
But as far as the civilian government was concerned the weapon was merely a deterrent and after the exhibition they went back to what they did best, reforms, in 1947 to meet the increasing energy demand the Brazilian government created
EletroBras, another state-run company however designed entirely for the purposes of making energy for the rapidly growing nation, the company however was totally separate from its sister company
PetroBras and instead of oil it focused manly on two sources of energy, nuclear and hydroelectric, thereby on the 10th of February of 1948 the company announced the creation of
SãoJoão-1 a nuclear power plan which was to be constructed in the Aurelian city of São João Del-Rey by 1950 and generate energy for the nearby metropolis of
São Sebastião,
Tieté and
Nova Bragança, the project was however controversial as many people distrusted the idea of having a power-plant that if it were ever to explode might consume the entire city on fire, however despite these protests the project went ahead, thus beginning Brazil’s fascination for nuclear energy.
SãoJoão-1 the world’s first nuclear power plant (1949).
Similarly the Brazilian government also dedicated a huge amount of funds to the issue of healthcare, in order to meet their goals of providing quality healthcare for all of its citizens the government took a page from the German welfare system and on December of 1948 PM
Reginaldo Janseens got a bill passed on both houses that would create a universal single-payer healthcare system, the system was nicknamed
SUS (
Sistema Único de Saúde/Single Health System) and would begin operations in January of 1949 with a girl named
Regina Batista being the first Brazilian in history to be treated by SUS’s services, soon the service became one of Brazil’s main prides as it allowed for its citizens to be able to access high-quality healthcare at any time they want.
However perhaps the most emblematic things during the late 40’s, would be the construction of a giant statue in the city of São Sebastião to commemorate the Brazilian victory in the WW2, the project was spearheaded by the brilliant architect
Alarico Argüelles and would be located in the island known as
Broa do Mar[1] and since he was a very Catholic man he decided to baptize his creation as “
Cristo Redentor”(Christ the Redeemer) and would become the main symbol of the city to the point that the statue’s mere existance was already associated with Brazil’s capital and thus become Brazil’s very own Statue of Liberty.
Lastly but not least the Brazilian government began talks with the metropole about the issue of decolonization, Lisbon seeing where the winds were blowing hoped to acquire Brazilian help in their endeavors of peacefully decolonizing Africa and turning them into independent monarchies just like Brazil, to this end a huge congress was held in the Brazilian city of
São Salvador and it counted with the attendance of not only Brazilian and Portuguese delegates but also pro-independence delegates from all Portuguese colonies in the world, the congress which was held in 1948 would discuss numerous issues which included: form of government, borders, inter-economic cooperation,ect. All of this, led to the Salvador Declaration whereby Portugal committed itself to an eventual independence of its colonies over a period of 20 years in which the colonies governments and economies would be prepared for independence. This meeting, also resulted in the birth of
Trans-Lusitanismo a concept whereby the Lusosphere[2] should look towards one another for political and economical integration, with the king of Portugal serving as a symbol to unite them all, a symbol which may transcend ethnic and linguistic diversity[3].
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[1] OTL Pão de Áçucar
[2] The idea of a United Portuguese speaking will be very much a thing in TTL
[3] AKA the Lusosphere will have their own commonweoath
