The Candidates

From green hilltops to white beaches Rio echoed with speeches and campaign songs, and the walls were splashed with posters. Seven hundred candidates--a mixed bag of newsmen, poets, businessmen, radio humorists, housewives and even a bookmaker--were noisily campaigning for the 50 council seats at stake in next month's municipal elections. They represented 14 political parties.

In the suburbs, Government supporters staged festinhas (little parties) during the hot summer evenings. Communists organized samba clubs, ran off dancing contests. Winners got loving cups marked with such slogans as "More If You Want It" and "Each Year It's Better." Observers gave the Communists a good chance to win a majority of the council, wondered how they would get along with Rio's Government-appointed mayor who might not have much use for them.

The Baron. One Communist up for election was Rio's chief wag, the gentle, bearded Apparicio Torelly. A celebrated journalist, he is known to most Brazilians as the Baron of Itarare. He took that pseudonym after writing, during one of the country's revolutions, a series on the Battle of the Itarare River--a battle that occurred only in his typewriter.

If elected, Baron Itarare promises to lead the fight for a bicameral city council with the 50 election winners in the upper chamber, the 650 losers in the lower.

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