Well Done!

At Rio's Santos Dumont Airport one morning last week, a hearty, smiling man with a grey mane and snapping eyes stepped out of his airplane and into the warmest welcome that a grateful nation could give a favorite son. Bands tooted, crowds cheered, and friends and relatives rushed forward to be crushed in his warm abraco (hug). Oswaldo Aranha, president of the General Assembly of the United Nations, was back home.

Before U.N., at many an inter-American conference and in dozens of crises, the quick-witted Brazilian had engineered the compromises that held the hemisphere together. He always knew how to break an impasse with a joke and he could drop a tear at the twist of a metaphor.

Larger Pasture. Now the whole world was the ex-Gaucho's pasture. No longer could Aranha's foes charge that he danced to the U.S. or any other fiddle. Against U.S. opposition, he had maneuvered the Ukraine into the Security Council and pushed through the Assembly a modified and generalized Soviet resolution against "warmongering." He kidded the Russians out of their delaying verbosity so skillfully that Andrei Gromyko reportedly admitted: "He is anti-Russian but he is also objective and impartial when presiding." The middle way--mediation between the extremes--is Aranha's hopeful course to world peace. He can point to one significant milestone so far: the partitioning of Palestine, which he describes as a "bold and historical experiment."

For that, Jews had blessed him as he left New York, and there were more of them at Santos Dumont. To the Jews and to his peace-loving Brazilian countrymen, he had a word of hope: "The wish to use words [in the U.N.] springs from the wish not to use arms." He had also a sober warning: "The world is undoubtedly divided into two blocs, the democratic and the Soviet. The work of all democrats and liberals must be devoted to attract back to liberty and democracy those who have renounced it."

Family Album. This week, Aranha was enjoying his pleasantly tumultuous home (Senhora Aranha never knows how many to expect to dinner) on one of the precipitous lavender hills of his favorite city. "Man did much for New York," he says, "God did much for Rio." He chattered with his two sons, Oswaldo Jr., 26, and Euclides, 27, and his daughter Delminda, 24. He dashed next door to see his 74-year-old mother, Dona Luiza, who bore 21 children and continues to advise the close-knit family brood on all matters public and private. On Saturday, Racing Enthusiast Aranha drove over to the Jockey Club, watched his three-year-old Itororo win a $2,000 race, and got another ovation.

The Future. What next for Aranha? Certainly not rest, or sleep (he thinks more than five hours a night is barbarous). Politics? Probably. From 1930, when he plotted Revolutionist Getulio Vargas into power, until 1944, when he nimbly jumped from the dictatorial train before it crashed, Aranha has turned his brain and famous smile to practically every important task that Brazilian public life offers. Only the presidency escaped him. For that, in 1951, his feverish admirers now thump the tub.

Aranha, now 53, holds some powerful cards. His own opposition National Democratic Union Party sees him as a natural; President Dutra and the government respect his work at U.N. But talkative Aranha cagily refuses to say a word about the presidency. "It is like being advertised as the star of a football match," he says warily. "You may be destroyed before the end of the game."

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