The Cross & the Wheel

Brazil's tremendous gambling industry, which breathed easier when pious, roulette-hating Eduardo Gomes lost his campaign for the presidency, had new cause for jitters. Last week Rio's Cardinal-designate Dom Jaime de Barros Camara was out to drive the croupier from the casino.

Chief target: alert, 46-year-old Joaquim Rolla, who controls a healthy chunk of the $300-million-a-year casino business. In 15 years, Rolla jumped from an unlettered horse trader to operator of six booming gambling palaces. He got such a name for efficiency that ex-President Getulio Vargas once asked him to run Brazil's $90-million steel plant (now abuilding). Rolla declined, preferring to build, near the summer capital of Petropolis, the ultimate in hotel-resort-casinos, $10-million, castle-like Quitandinha, where Brazil's inflation-rich flip colored chips onto the felt and frolic on the dance floor (see cut).

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