Christian work in Latin America Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV FACTORS DETERMINING THE CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF THE COOPERATIVE TASK TO BE SHARED BY CHRIS- TIAN FORCES FROM ABROAD I. ACCESSIBILITY Among t... more »he favoring conditions in respect to accessibility are the size and power of the cities as contrasted with the sparseness of inhabitants in the remoter regions, save in the West Indies, where no part is remote. The national capitals of Latin America contain 6.8 percent, of the entire population; the provincial capitals another 11.5 percent. In Colombia nearly one-third of the people live in the capital cities. As in all Latin civilizations, the cities wield preponderating power. Here they constitute the financial, the intellectual and the political national forces. The banking capital in Brazil outside the eight chief centers is negligible. Argentine government students of the higher grades are in five municipalities. Thus the major bases for present and more extended Christian operations are fixed, with the entire structure of society so organized as to make their out- reaching lines of diffusion to the frontiers natural and effective. Practically all national capitals and metropolitan centers and many of the secondary cities are located on Jines of water or of rail transportation. Yet there are vast areas of hinterland. The mountain plateaus and heights from northern Mexico to the southern Andes may be traversed in but a few regions by rail. The chief reliance is still, and for a generation will continue to be, more primitive means of travel, although railroad mileage is being added steadily. Extreme hardship and even danger are inevitable in travelling to some of the principal towns in or over the Cordilleras. The traveller has at times to go for two or three days over mere trails at great elevations without finding ...« less