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Vanishing Baiters. Even Cuba proved less surly than Red China. Fidel Castro deplored the murder, said he had no reason to wish for Kennedy's death, but conceded that "perhaps" Cuba might have had motives "to feel like it" and vaguely suggested that "reactionaries" were really to blame. Elsewhere in Latin America, all the Yankee baiting seemed to disappear for the moment. A sense of pessimism about the future gripped Brazil, and the downtown streets of Rio de Janeiro were filled with people whose tight faces, glazed eyes and unaccustomed silence revealed their feelings. In the favelas (shantytowns) on Rio's outskirts, samba bands called off their rehearsals for the carnival, and President Joao Goulart said about Kennedy: "I kneel before his memory."
The most eloquent Latin American voices were those heard in the street. A janitor in Quito, who had been listening to the news on radio, refused to read his newspaper because "it's too painful to go over such a sad story again." Despite later revelations about the crime, most Latin Americans persisted in believing that Kennedy had been slain because of his support for Negro rights. In Buenos Aires, women cried, "Qué barbaridad!", and old men made sad, futile gestures with their hands. Said one grieving Colombian: "It seems as though all the Presidents in all the Latin American countries have died."
To the north, throughout Canada, theaters and arenas closed their doors, and large cities became hushed with a curious quiet. Prime Minister Lester Pearson was just about to open a session of Parliament when he was handed a note. He threw it on the top of his desk, slumped back in his seat and seemed at a loss for words. His voice broke as he said: "The world can ill afford at this time in our history to lose a man of his courage."
History's more precise appraisals would come later, as would the resumption of all the world's usual enmities. But for a brief time at least, the U.N. General Assembly, standing in silence, was in a mood to agree with U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who said: "All of us who knew him will bear the grief of his death to the day of ours."