Integrated development programmes were implemented m many Latin American countries m the 1970s m response to the failures of industrialization policies to allevtate poverty. A massive integrated rural development programme in Brazil's Northeast is assessed with respect to its production, employment, and mcome effects. Exports, import substitution, and commercial crop and livestock production expanded. Employment effects were meagre and negatively correlated wtth income; coupled with technological and crop mix changes, labour is displaced. Income effects are skewed, remforcmg inequalities in rural income. Integrated rural development programmes in Brazil have thus sped up capitalist development) maintainrng the inequalities of Latin Amen can economic growth represented on the one hand by rural poverty and underemployment and on the other by a worsening of urban conditions Ill slum areas.