The Man Who Became a Hope

As a rabble-rousing labor leader, Brazil's Joao ("Jango") Goulart never hesitated to make political time with anticapitalist proclamations. "My only commitments are to the proletariat," he once said. As an opportunistic Vice President under Janio Quadros, he toured Red China, heaping praise on Mao Tse-tung's regime as "an example that shows how people can emancipate themselves from the yoke of their exploiters." Last week Goulart, now Pres ident of Latin America's biggest and most important nation, arrived in Washington for a seven-day visit to the U.S. A 21 -gun salute greeted him as he stepped from his 707 jet, and at the end of the red carpet stood President Kennedy. Said Kennedy: "We look to the future with hope. Our hope comes in part because of the leader ship that you are giving to your own great country." Moderate & Reassuring. The enthusiastic welcome for the new Joao Goulart was accompanied by only a few twinges about his recent past. When he was in line for the presidency after Janio Quadros' abrupt resignation last August, Goulart was the object of grave apprehension both in Brazil and in the U.S. Brazil's anti-communist politicians and military men distrusted him to the point where they brought Brazil to the brink of civil war before a parliamentary system was devised to limit his powers as President. To make matters worse, Brazil, which the U.S. hoped to make a cornerstone of the Alli ance for Progress, was in economic chaos; financial mismanagement had produced a zooming cost of living, a runaway currency, and a severely unbalanced foreign trade.

In his seven months in office, Goulart cannot claim to have salvaged the situation. Yet as President, he has proved surprisingly moderate in his approach. U.S. businessmen in Brazil are reassured by his apparently genuine desire for free enterprise and foreign investment. And he also seems convinced of Brazil's desperate need for a leading role in the Alliance for Progress.

Home with Goodies. That was Goulart's message to the U.S. last week, and it was well received. In five meetings with Kennedy he found sympathetic understanding for his political problems, and a willingness to help with Brazil's economic difficulties. The day Goulart arrived, Alliance officials agreed to a rapid, no-strings-attached infusion of $144 million to help Brazil's sorely underdeveloped and Communist-ridden northeast--food, water, electricity and housing at the village level. "He came up here with the objective of getting immediate aid with no, or minimal strings," said a U.S. official. "He's going home with the goodies." In turn, Goulart sought to clear up the bedeviling issue of utility company expropriations by offering fair value for any utility, provided that the company reinvests most of the money in some underdeveloped sector of Brazil's economy.

Time and again he made it clear that Brazil intends to maintain its "independent" foreign policy, including relations with Communist Cuba and the Soviet bloc. But he did not interpret independence as neutrality; he expects Brazil to pursue democracy's objectives--among them a desire to end Communism in Cuba--in its own way.

The Brazilian President carried his message to New York and Omaha, where he visited the underground headquarters of the nuclear-armed U.S. Strategic Air Command, then he headed for home by way of Chicago and Mexico, taking with him a promise that President Kennedy will repay his visit with a trip to Brazil sometime this summer.

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