Educação pode mudar sua vida

BRASILIA, Sept 7 — Brazil has found a path to eradicate poverty in its recent oil discovery but will not squander money it does not yet have, the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said on Sunday.
State-controlled firm Petrobras surprised the oil world last year with the second-biggest oil find in 20 years. Since then Latin America’s largest country has been gripped by a frenzied debate over how best to manage its new oil wealth. Despite years of strong economic growth under Lula, Brazil is still troubled by glaring poverty and inequality.
The tapping of the reserves with a test well on Sept. 2 symbolized “the opening of a direct bridge between natural wealth and the eradication of poverty,” Lula said in a nationally-televised address commemorating Brazil’s independence from Portugal in 1822. Oil wealth would be spent primarily on education and eradication of poverty, creating “timeless and endless wealth” for the Brazilian people, Lula said. The former metal worker, who has spoken about oil almost daily in recent weeks, said Brazil was seeing the crowning of a successful policy of growth and income distribution.
Lula said exact reserves were still unknown in the field that is 500 miles (800 km) long by 125 miles (200 km) wide off Brazil’s southern coast. “But one can say with full certainty, (they) will make Brazil one of the world’s largest oil and gas producers,” Lula said.
Critics say Lula is seeking to maximize political gains from the oil discovery before municipal elections on October 5. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil’s president from 1995 to 2002, warned on Sunday in O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper of false nationalism and a pre-election climate in the oil debate of recent days.