(See Cover)
Home last week after a ten-nation tour of Latin America, Presidential Envoy Adlai Stevenson was the bearer of uneasy tidings. The leaders of Latin America's democratic governments were still in a state of "mental shock" over the Cuban disaster; U.S. prestige was in sharp decline. Though everyone recognized the danger of Castro's Communist Cuba, the bearded dictator loomed so large across the Caribbean that no one was willing to join in strong, concerted action against him. The one immediate hope, reported Stevenson, was a mild plan, advanced by Colombia, for a call to Castro to renounce his ties to Soviet Russia. If he refuses, the Organization of American States might then read him out of the hemisphere's family of nations.
Venezuela would probably join an anti-Castro move. In Central America, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras would prove no problem. Argentina and Peru most likely could be counted on. But the huge, increasingly powerful nation of Brazil—the Brazil of Janio Quadros—was a bigger question mark than ever. For 44-year-old President Quadros, after a whirlwind five months in office, has proved that he is nobody's cup of coffee except, possibly, Brazil's.
Rebellion Invincible. Rising from nowhere to take command by the greatest popular vote in history, Jânio Quadros has burst on the world like Brazil itself—temperamental, bristling with independence, bursting with ambition, haunted by poverty, fighting to learn, greedy for greatness. Quadros cries that Brazil is a great power, if not today, then tomorrow. He shouts that he is leading a revolution, a revolt against graft and governmental inefficiency, against social and economic backwardness, against nagging Latin American feelings of inferiority before the world. "This rebellion is invincible," says Quadros. "It is a state of mind, a collective spirit, a fact of life that has already filled the nation's conscience and that no one will compromise or paralyze—I will not be stopped unless by assassination."
Listening to the man and watching his antics, some in the world gave him a loud raspberry. Paris' tart-tongued France-Soir compares him to "Marx—not Karl, but Harpo." Yet Brazil's common man calls him "messiah," "the savior," "the healer of our ills." As Quadros flogs his nation along his chosen path, other voices can be heard calling him "paranoiac," "autocrat," "dictator." Rio's Governor Carlos Lacerda, formerly a Quadros supporter, now a bitter critic, once termed him "the most changeable, the most mercurial, the most perfidious of all men ever to emerge in Brazil's public affairs."
A sounder assessment is that of Rio's independent O Globo, which wrote on Quadros' inauguration: "He will not be easily managed by anyone. He could be a great President. He certainly will not be an easy one."