BRAZILIAN ELECTIONS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The report in your issue of October 23 on my talk at Dunster House misstates entirely both what I said and what I believe regarding the problem of direct or indirect elections in Brazil next year. The inaccuracies appear in the headline and the first two paragraphs. My statement on this problem was confined to a description of the reasoning of the proponents of indirect elections, which I did not endorse in any way. I said nothing about "the risk of an electoral orgy," using the term "electoral orgy" only to describe the large numbers of offices to be filled in next year's elections.

It was also somewhat disappointing that your report made no reference to the main thrust of my remarks, which contrasted Latin American realities with various stereotypes widely held in academic and journalistic circles in the United States. They included the stereotype of uniformity contrasted with reality of heterogeneity; the prevailing structure of social classes and the needed types of change; the opportunities for modernizing revolutions in contrast to violent social revolutions; the political options other than dictatorships of left or right or simon-pure liberal democracy; the nature of the 1964 Brazilian revolution and the Castello Branco regime; and the viability of the Alliance for Progress. Lincoln Gordon   United States Ambassador to Brazil