Slipped Trip

Janio Quadros, the conservative, eccentric but successful former Governor of wealthy Sao Paulo State, is the closest thing to a candidate of the right in next October's Brazilian presidential election.

Thus his clear motive in visiting Castro's Cuba last week was to grab a few leftist votes from his chief rival. Government Candidate Henrique Teixeira Lott.

The trip was a flop. Quadros was supposed to stay in Castro's Cuba six days. But when papers back home began calling him "irresponsible" and his statements of praise for Castro a "pact with the devil," it apparently dawned on him that Brazilians have no vast yearning to take their cues from a reckless government on a chaotic island that is only one-tenth as populous as their own country. Two days before his visit was supposed to end, he dashed off bread-and-butter messages to his hosts, climbed aboard a plane for safer terrain in Venezuela.

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