Yanqui on a Southern Swing

Monday, Dec. 13, 1982 By KURT ANDERSEN.
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The next day Reagan and Figueiredo, 64, were together almost constantly. The two men talked privately for 30 minutes, then summoned Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, Secretary of State George Shultz and other officials from both governments for an additional hour of discussion. Said a Brazilian official: "The conversations were very candid and yet very gentle." The Falklands, Shultz said, "didn't come up as a matter of dispute." In fact, Brazil only halfheartedly supported Argentina in the war, mostly out of a sense of continental solidarity.

After a 25-minute horseback ride around his moated ranch outside the capital, Figueiredo held a barbecue at which both the food (beef, veal, sausage and lamb) and recorded American music (Willie Nelson) were hearty, even macho. At Wednesday night's banquet, the clos est the trip came to conventional pomp, Reagan stood to offer an elaborately friendly tribute—and a faux pas at the end. "Now," he said, wineglass raised, "would you join me in a toast to President Figueiredo, to the people of Bolivia—no, that's where I'm going—to the people of Brazil, and to the dream of democracy and peace here in the Western Hemisphere." In fact, despite his salvage attempt, Reagan was headed for Bogota, Colombia, not Bolivia.

Although Administration officials tried to downplay the significance of the trip, a number of agreements were announced. Most important, the U.S. will lend Brazil $1.23 billion, at 8% annual interest for three months, to tide over the debt-burdened (nearly $90 billion in foreign lOUs) country until a $4.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan comes through next year.

The two governments will form five vaguely defined "working groups," each with a six-month mandate to discuss certain issues: economics, nuclear power, science and technology, space and "militaryindustrial relations." The economic issues are most important. Washington, for instance, objects to Brazil's subsidies of exports to the U.S., especially of shoes, orange juice, steel and airplanes. Instead, Brazil wants more direct American aid. In a deft but easy bit of diplomacy, Reagan invited Brazil to send a prospective astronaut to the U.S. for training and, eventually, to fly on a space shuttle mission. (The President is copying the Soviets, who have flown astronauts from Cuba and France.)

During a five-hour stopover in Bogota, Reagan met with quasi-Populist President Belisario Betancur at his official residence, Narifto House. Betancur took office last August and has already symbolically yanked foreign policy away from unquestioning fealty to Washington, most notably with a proposal that Colombia join the Non-aligned Movement, a largely Third World group.