Mistake at the Serrador

The U.S. Embassy staff in Rio was doubly surprised last week. In the first place, they did not realize that Dr. Irene Diggs, the State Department exchange student for whom they had booked a hotel reservation, was a Negro. And they did not dream that in Brazil, which has enough mixed blood to have almost forgotten race distinctions, a hotel would turn a Negro away.

But that was what happened when trim, 40-year-old Ellen Irene Diggs, Ph.D. in sociology and anthropology at the University of Havana, registered at Rio's new, 2O-story Hotel Serrador. Dr. Diggs went off without fuss to another hotel. But when word of the Hotel Serrador's decision got around, she became quite a figure in the news and editorial pages of an angry Brazilian press. Cried Rio's Democracia: "In a land where race discrimination is not the concern of statesmen or a headache for sociologists ... an incident like this demands an explanation." Said Dr. Diggs: "I am dis>> illusioned. . . ." Explained shamefaced Serrador Manager Arcangelo Maleta: "There was some mistake."

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