BRAZIL: Journey to the East

President-elect Jânio da Silva Quadros, a man of many surprises, last week managed not only to surprise but to shock his fellow Brazilians. During his campaign, Quadros' pitch curved left and right to suit his audience, but few doubted that he would follow outgoing President Juscelino Kubitschek's pro-U.S. foreign policy. As soon as U.S. election returns were in, a top Quadros supporter, Rio Diario de Noticias Publisher Joāo Ribeiro Dantas, flew off to Florida to congratulate the President-elect and suggest a Kennedy-Quadros meeting as soon as convenient.

Vacationing in London last week, Quadros set the record straight. He made it clear that he was not only cool to a meeting with Kennedy, but acted very much like a man taking his nation along the road to neutralism. He ignored an invitation from President Eisenhower to visit the U.S., has so far shunned a meeting with France's President Charles de Gaulle. Instead he put out feelers to India's Nehru. Egypt's Nasser and Tunisia's Bourguiba about the possibility of a visit, sent an aide to see Algerian Rebel Leader Ferhat Abbas. Quadros also began unofficial talks with British economists about getting British loans to liquidate Brazil's U.S. debts, hinted at reorienting Brazil on a new European "axis."

Back home, the Quadros moves had everyone in a dither. "It's a bomb." roared Rio's pro-U.S. Diario Carioca. "Jânio has now evidenced his enchantment with the idea of neutralism. Does he have in mind selling our cotton to Nasser, our tea to Nehru and our sugar to Fidel Castro?" Quadros, who interrupted his busy international politicking long enough to undergo a minor eye operation in the fashionable London Clinic, brushed off such criticism but found time to scotch a rumor that he had shaved the bushy mustache that has become his trademark. From his hospital bed he wired home: "Mustache intact although adversaries tearing hair."