Brazil: The Unmissing Man

Brazil’s favorite guessing game for the last four weeks has been “Whither Brizola?” A demagogic leftist Congressman and brother-in-law of deposed President João Goulart, Leonel Brizola had last been seen two days after the revolution, scooting up a Pôrto Alegre street in a green Volkswagen—an angry, rock-throwing crowd chasing him on foot. Then he dropped from sight. Was he hiding out in his home town of Pôrto Alegre? “Impossible,” sniffed the Pôrto Alegre military. “We would have captured him.” Uruguay? “Impossible,” echoed the border patrol. “We have the strictest vigilance.”

Brazilians saw him everywhere—and nowhere. In one 24-hour span, the cops in three Brazilian cities thought they had him cornered; in Pôrto Alegre, he was reported 21 times, even after gauchos began shearing off their Brizola-like mustaches. Four times, sensation-mongering newspapers declared Brizola dead. Then came Brizola’s voice over a radio transmitter somewhere in the south. When Brizola’s wife Neuza joined Brother Jango and his family in their Montevideo exile, she claimed that Brizola was somewhere in Uruguay. But ten days later, a Rio paper front-paged a letter from Leonel “somewhere in Brazil.” “I have traveled thousands of kilometers,” he wrote, “and visited hundreds and hundreds of homes and ranch es. Everywhere I was received as a son.”

Police were still chasing down blind alleys when the prodigal leftist finally turned up last week in Montevideo. He had apparently spent the last few days in Pôrto Alegre, tidying up his affairs; and now he planned to visit “several Latin American countries” with his family. “I am an engineer,” he said, “and can support my family by working.” But how had he smuggled himself across the border? Simple, says Brizola. He just hopped in a car and drove over.