Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. We have an interesting story to tell about how the energy behind big progressive projects can sap away.
Todays stamp is from Brazil from perhaps the pinnacle of Brazilian postage in the early seventies. Almost every stamp was about a new dam, a new industry, and in this case the Rondon project, a new project to provide water to the interior regions of Brazil. Almost every stamp in Brazil today is the 200th anniversary of this or that. Still interesting, but lacking a certain optimism about the future. The early seventies also saw an improvement in the color and quality of printing of Brazil’s stamps. All in all, The-Philatelist declares the seventies the golden era of Brazilian stamps, at least to date.
The stamp today is issue A638 a 50 centavo stamp issued by Brazil on May 5th, 1970. It was a single stamp issue with a map of Brazil stylized to emphasize water resources. According to the Scott catalog, it is worth $3.00 cancelled.
Marshal Rondon was tasked in the Brazilian army with laying telegraph lines in the interior of Brazil around the turn of the 20th century. This involved a lot of map making and first contact with Indian tribes in the interior. That the contact with the Indians went well was a major boon to the project, although Marshal Rondon was once caught with a poisoned arrow. Rondon was a member of a small religion called Positivist that came out of the teachings of the French philosopher Comte. They believed that human progress would gradually transform the earth into a paradise without anything supernatural involved. In later years Rondon took up projects to advance the conditions of Indians even leading to Brazil’s first Indian reservation. He was recognized as a hero leading him to be awarded the rarely granted army rank of Marshal.
After his death, Rondon was named in many memorials. There are also the Rondon projects of which I came across several. Brazil invokes his name on big projects that involve raising the standards in rural areas. In the case of todays stamp, it was a project to provide water for agriculture in rural areas. This would be very controversial today as the cost in terms of deforestation and loss of natural habitats is more seriously cosidered. There is little mention of this project today so I think it is safe to assume it was not successful. There was another Rondon project that involved setting up educational academies in rural areas to bring up the standards of education. Much online about this is forming alumni groups of graduates of the academies. From this it is reasonable to assume that some education actually took place. One does get a sense though that men like Rondon are missed because the system that put together todays great projects never seem to have measurable results, just big bills. In Rondon’s day, the telegraph messages had to get through before he was celebrated.
Well my drink is empty so it time to open up the discussion in the below comment section. Could Rondon have made his later namesake projects work if he had been around to lead them? Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.