The Hemisphere: Who Won

In Guatemala and Honduras last week, voters went to the polls to elect their next . Presidents, and Brazil neared the end of the slow, complex tally (TIME, Oct. 18) of its off-year congressional vote. In all three nations, the overall pattern of results was reassuring for Western Hemisphere stability: with minor local exceptions, the voting was peaceful and orderly, and moderates and anti-Communists did better with the voters than extremists of either the left or right wing. The big winners: ¶ Brazil's conservative President Joao Cafe Filho, though not on any ballot, significantly bested the politically potent ghost of the late President Getulio Vargas. After Vargas' suicide in August, ultra-nationalists and Communists rallied around congressional candidates running in Vargas' name; pro-U.S. moderates backed Cafe Filho. But not even Vargas' rabble-rousing former Labor Minister, Joao ("Jango") Goulart, succeeded in winning his race for Senator, and as the votes piled up, the net effect was a green light for Cafe Filho to steer Brazil down the middle of the road. ¶ Guatemala's President Carlos Castillo Armas, who seized power in June's anti-Communist revolution, was legally confirmed in office. By having the voters asked out loud whether they wanted him to continue in office and requiring an oral answer, he managed to roll up the vote in the proportion of 1,000 to one. Concurrent elections for an assembly to write a new constitution produced some possibly troublesome opposition for the future—not from the well-beaten Communists, but from ambitious politicos of the extreme right wing. ¶ Honduras went anxiously to the polls, fearing armed revolution as the likely upshot of a three-way presidential race that looked like a three-way standoff. But Ramon Villeda Morales, a socially prominent pediatrician and a pro-U.S. liberal, got 48% of the vote. Because he missed an absolute majority, a newly elected Congress must choose the next President, but the talk of revolt dwindled rapidly in the face of such a clear verdict. Hondurans, whose history lists 134 revolutions in 130 years, pinched themselves and wondered if democracy had perhaps arrived at last.