some town horses still draw the trolley cars bridges across mountain streams maybe precariously or solid the burrow is a useful beach but slow compared to the trout he sees along the road wait patiently for their low in the very shadow of the airline ride to the strange contrast in transportation still persists here in the united states transportation is comparatively  a great expanse of planes interrupted only by rolling hills and rivers and two mountain range but in mexico roads and railroads are hard to build hard to maintain look at mexico's topography for the most part a high plateau jagat with kenyans or sickly eight thousand feet above the sea you're to drive a car or compare the contour of our own land with another region south america at the equator in the west the andes rise in the highest walls human transportation has ever tried to scale at their highest two miles above our own pikes peak dream of gold eventually drove most of the explorers away from the river trails to prosper or to perish beyond the andes but a few men stayed behind men who took up their lives along the river and adapted themselves four hundred years their life along the tangled deeper ridden banks of the river has changed little they gather the heart of the jungle bring them many hundreds of miles down the river to the trading living traveling on their crude boat the river people have seen boom town born of rubber and gold spring up while then sings back into the slow rhythm of river life also for it all from the only communication between one city of another was by these but no roads no railroads only ships not on the shipping lines where european or united states  many were native latin american chile brazil argentina and others developed their own great steamship company to trade proudly with us and with all the world in the early days spain and portugal made to radical law which acted as barriers to all trade except with the mother country the nations could not even trade with each other there were men like franc but with a in the individual countries cities grew and prospered through expanding commerce with europe and eventually with north america these great capitals with their tall buildings and crowded boulevard cosmopolitan as those of other continents they are not connected with each others by any ordinary means of travel rio de janeiro in buenos aires days of prague by boat and the trends in only one section of latin america have railroads been widely developed in the plains and pappas of southern brazil or why and argentina mexico has fewer lines than it the country together in central america because of the mountains which form natural boundaries not all of the countries have been linked by ra in brazil the picture is even more unusual for here the only time the spur lines running from the coastal cities into the interior is pick up the riches of the jungle which never connect one city with another there is another situation in latin american transportation which is strange to us and some of the greatest states as large as rhode island there is a self contained transportation system with excellent road and even narrow gauge railway such as this one which brings sugarcane into one central point on the highest standard gauge railway in the world it is the main contact between the little coppertone with their indian workmen and north american overseers and the outside world way stations are only tiny indian  there is little passenger traffic and no goods to carry out of the dry hills but the precious co here the copper slabs are made to be carried across the steep narrow mountain passes down to the sea and on to the factories in the north  the problem is also difficult because latin america is not generally industrialized construction material and railway equipment must be imported even to the smallest parts for locomotives but there are also economic difficulties in most regions of latin america there have not been enough passengers and goods in the interior to support expensive r construction you can travel for miles and never see a house or a human being land it is interesting that the only place where the railroad has proved really profitable is in an area long neglected by the explorers whose mines were on the legends of eldorado that is on the plane divides in team and here the british have invested more than a billion dollars in an efficient widespread railroad system originally constructed to bring the products of the pappas to buenos aires so that they might be shipped abroad and the domestic advantage to argentina of this railway system has been a norm to this impressive picture there is another side spectacular but distressing where the argentine railways cross to chile they lie forever in the path of the avalanche here tons of snow and rocks have torn down the chilean side of the path burying tracks and houses this means weeks of labor by diggers and snow plows before the track can be restored to previous condition and the trains can again take up their schedule are still places the railroad cannot go and others where the countries cannot afford to build them in such regions highways are being built and automobiles buses and trucks are extending the transport this is the way in which one of the greatest transportation schemes of all time is slowly for the pan american highway when completed it will be the longest continuous highway in the world running from alaska  it is not yet beneath the work is slow and expensive the road must follow mountain trails which are all that remain of the great think a highway and must skirt marshes and break through jungles and cross rivers in flood t ime in addition each country along the path of the road is working to bring its own internal system of roads up to join the great arteries to bring its own people within easy reach of their neighbors latin americans love to travel for the wealthy person travel by plane pullman arizonan expensive cars is no novelty for the poor highway travel is new and exciting and buses are places for the sort of comradeship the roads they travel are not always dusty during the rainy season they are often flooded on the cars in the sports stre in addition to this complex problem of transportation there is the further problem of rapid transit between latin america and the united states railroad connections between north and south america do not exist and perhaps never will be built ships are slow even fast emerge take more than two weeks to make the journey between northern and southern ports a quicker way a way that leaves all these hurdles of time and space maybe for latin america the only fortunately latin america is fair minded perhaps more than we are we have so many other methods of transportation that we see the airplane as only one more step than a great latin america sees it as the immediate answer to its transportation problem a great network to link its countries together and itself to the rest of the world there are two main uses for the airplane in latin america it is a super explorer regular airliners have also been developed in south america as common carriers uncommon form each year it's the number of passengers and the quantity afraid and they'll rise tremendously in every country and the great airway systems have been enthusiastically welcome north american enterprise has provided added scope for latin american ingenuity and manpower navy workers and engineers have been trained as pilots the mechanics building airfields in hangars and servicing place local airlines independent of foreign capital are springing up everywhere we had a hundred years of struggle with transportation the covered wagon the riverboat the railroad the automobile and now the place but with the technical knowledge now available to her and with her extraordinary dream of the future latin america may well hurtle all the old obstacles and learn to travel and to carry or burdens over the new road south by a