A Kennedy Comes Calling

Though Cuba is still the U.S.'s most harassing burden in Latin America, Brazil is fast becoming almost as big a one. Last week, in another of those flash moves that the New Frontier is so addicted to. President Kennedy sent his brother Bobby winging down to the modernistic outback capital of Brasilia to present Brazil's President Joao ("Jango") Goulart with some home truths, as seen from Washington. Kennedy and Goulart talked for three hours in the library of the presidential palace. When the two emerged, Goulart looked grim.

Bluntly the Attorney General (aged 37) told Goulart (aged 44) that U.S. patience is at an end with a country whose perilous economy rests on a wildly spiraling inflation (65% this year alone) and whose foreign policy seems increasingly to be a neutralism in favor of the Communists. Over the past ten years, the U.S. has pumped $1.4 billion worth of aid into Brazil. Unless Brazil makes a genuine effort to solve its problems, said Bobby Kennedy, the U.S. can hardly be expected to pour more millions into an economy heading for chaos and a government catering to Yankee baiters.

Three times this year, the U.S. embassy in Rio protested open attacks against the U.S. by Brazilians in high office and anti-U.S., pro-Communist block prejudice in trade. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon brought to Washington what is described as a "devastating" report on Brazil's muddled affairs. At his press conference a fortnight ago, President Kennedy himself publicly cautioned Brazil about its political and economic instability. In sending Brother Bobby to Brazil, Kennedy made sure that the message would get through loud and clear.

At least some Brazilians thought it had. Hermano Alves, one of Rio's leading editorialists, recalled the stormy sessions in 1961 when President Kennedy's emissary, Adolf Berle. called on Janio Quadros to ask for cooperation on Cuba: "Mr. Berle went to see Janio Quadros and came out looking angry. Thus began Brazil's independent foreign policy. This week Mr.

Kennedy went to see Jango Goulart and came out looking very happy. Thus ended Brazil's independent foreign policy.'' It was hardly that simple. Goulart, a wealthy rancher and political opportunist who climbed to power with the support of labor and the far left, still needs the left's support--at least until a plebiscite next month determines whether he will regain the presidential powers denied him by the distrustful military when he assumed the presidency in September 1961. In public. Goulart takes care not to antagonize the left by seeming to knuckle under the U.S. Privately, he says reassuringly that once the plebiscite is out of the way he will try to steer Brazil back to a middle road between East and West, will work at restoring order to the economy. Until election day Jan. 6, this would have to be taken on faith.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.