LEARNING TO LOVE LULA.

This article explores the economic growth of Brazil. Deep poverty, gross inequality, staggering debt, crippling interest rates, high unemployment, crumbling ports and roadways, horrendous crime--there is no shortage of problems in Brazil. What is different now is that this vast, energetic nation blessed with resources has been dealt its best chance in decades to begin reaching its potential and climb into the ranks of the world's most developed nations. The global boom in commodities has given the two-year-old government of President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva enough ballast to embark on an approach considered unusual in much of Latin America: straightforward economics. From steamy Manaus on the Amazon to Pôrto Alegre in the temperate south, Brazil is pumping out commodities at a record rate--beef, chicken, soybeans, wood, copper, iron ore--much of it headed to China, where exports from Brazil ballooned 80% last year. Industrial output is picking up too. Brazil's charismatic, working-class President intends to buck history. For decades Brazil has lurched from democracy to dictatorship and back, all the while experimenting with a variety of unorthodox economic schemes that guaranteed its exclusion from the ranks of the world's developed nations. If things go well, Brazil could emerge as one of the world's top economies, according to a Goldman Sachs report on the so-called BRIC countries--Brazil, Russia, India, and China.