The Open Road

Brazil last week won a heat in its race with Argentina for a share in the cattle, oil and forest riches of landlocked Bolivia. With a 30-man entourage, Brazil's President Eurico Caspar Dutra flew to the Bolivian town of San Jose de Chiquitos for a meeting with Bolivia's President Enrique Hertzog. The occasion: the opening of a Brazilian-built railroad connecting San Jose with Corumba, Brazil--part of a system that will eventually stretch 2,500 miles across the continent from Santos to the Chilean port of Arica.

After kneeling together before a 300-year-old altar in San Jose, the Presidents got off some conventional remarks, then flew to Corumba, where they swapped compliments and gifts. One sharp-eyed observer noted that Hertzog's gift to Dutra, a medallion engraved with the likenesses of the two Presidents, came in a case stamped "made in Buenos Aires."

(A major general when he left Rio, Dutra found himself a full general when he returned. Under a new military law, he was entitled to the promotion because of his World War II service as Minister of War, but had modestly refrained from signing his own promotion papers. Acting President Nereu Ramos took care of that chore in his chief's absence.)

Up & down the hemisphere last week, Presidents, ex-Presidents and Presidents-elect were on the move:

BEFORE HE LEFT FOR BOLIVIA, Dutra sent regrets to the invitation of President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla (just back from a junket through Chile's northern provinces) to visit Chile. It was impossible because Brazil is playing host this week to Uruguay's President Luis Batlle Berres.

CUBA'S PERIPATETIC PRESIDENT-ELECT Carlos Prio Socarras, who had already received the full treatment in Mexico (TIME, Aug. 9) and who plans to visit the U.S. after his inauguration in November, turned up in Guatemala City. He and Guatemala's President Juan Jose Arevalo found a mutual bond in their distaste for the Dominican Republic's Dictator Rafael Trujillo and Nicaragua's Anastasio

("Tacho") Somoza. Said Prio: "The anachronistic presence of dictators on our continent retards our progress . . ."

EL SALVADOR'S FUSTY PRESIDENT Salvador Castaneda Castro got an invitation to visit his neighbor-once-removed, Costa Rica's Junta President Jose Figueres.

INTO MEXICO CITY'S swank Reforma Hotel checked Panama's chastened ex-President Arnulfo Arias Madrid. Dr. Arias, who had been briefly in Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala since his drubbing at the hands of the electoral jury in Panama's presidential elections (TIME, Aug. 16), spoke some nice words about Mexico, then asked permission to settle there and practice medicine.

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