Latin America

ON THE WORLD TODAY

IN Latin America two forces — variegated groups working for democratic liberties and the economic emancipation of peoples, and equally variegated groups striving to preserve special privileges through fascist or traditional dictatorships — are struggling more and more fiercely for control.

Victory over the Axis has not brought political peace or much understanding as to how nations must organize themselves socially and politically to promote the general welfare and to preserve physical security. Out of the clash of ideas as to how these things should be accomplished, a general battle seems to be emerging — in its broadest terms a battle of Left versus Right.

Some observers in Latin America expect decisive actions to develop in the first six months of 1946 — events that will indicate whether the decision is for or against further democratic development among our Latin neighbors. Others argue with equal plausibility that it will take until 1950 to tell which way the tide is turning.

The balance sheet

1. Argentina appears to be nearer than ever to taking the fascist path. The Perón terror is less widespread than in October and early November, but the reason is probably that Perón’s chances of being elected president on February 24 are improving.

2. In Peru, liberal President Bustamante, elected last June in the first authentically democratic election in Peruvian history, ran into the hardest kind of political sledding in December. The coalition of Apra Party members, Socialists, and Communists which elected Bustamante and controlled Congress was badly divided, if not entirely split, by inner disagreements and by the maneuvers of its enemies in a clash over government regulation of the press.

3. The elections of December 2 in Brazil gave an almost two to one majority to General Eurico Gaspar Dutra, the most conservative of the three candidates. But the seating of Dutra in January is regarded merely as a signal for the opening of a behind-thescenes battle as to whether a genuine conservative political democracy will be established in Brazil, or whether the Dutra regime will be utilized to restore former President Vargas’s semi-fascist controls.

Meanwhile Provisional President Linhares sought to clear the decks for a battle against the restoration of Vargasism under the Dutra administration, by outlawing censorship and by abolishing the government propaganda department. There is no guarantee that these actions will be upheld, but at least the issue of freedom of the press and of information has been raised.

4. The efforts of Chile’s vaguely liberal government to extricate the country from an apparently undrainable bog of inflation have been hopelessly snarled by multi-partisan politics in Congress. Communists at the national convention early in December used the popular distress and the government’s helplessness as an opportunity to attract followers and to perfect their organization either for establishing themselves as the strongest single force in the 1948 elections, or for action before 1948.

5. Three attempted coups and revolutionary movements in smaller Latin republics show how high the tensions are elsewhere. There was mysterious shooting against the Somoza regime in Nicaragua in midNovember, followed by the usual flock of political arrests and news suppressions practiced by dictators. A month later, Dictator Higinio Morínigo of Paraguay blocked an ostensible coup by alleged Communists, labor leaders, and discontented national police and Army officers. Whatever the merits of the leaders of these clashes, anyone trying to oust Somoza or Morínigo is bound to have democratic followers.

Late in December, in Panama, nationalistic antiAmerican followers of former President Arnulfo Arias, petty imitator of fascist Führers the year before Pearl Harbor, attacked the national police and the Army in Colón with the obvious purpose of overthrowing the government. Six died and more than a score were wounded in the shooting.

Arias, whose politics thrive on real and fancied grievances against the United States because of our administration of the Canal Zone, wound up in jail protesting that he had no connection with the rebels. There was general agreement in Panama, however, that Arias would have headed an anti-American regime if the rebels had won.

The Larreta Doctrine under fire

It now appears that the sturdy courage of Foreign Minister Rodríguez Larreta of Uruguay in tackling the intervention issue in a basically constructive proposal may block indefinitely acceptance of the principle of collective preservation of democratic liberties within the hemisphere, even in watered-down form. Except in Argentina and in the Dominican Republic, a less forthright proposal merely binding the American republics to defend democratic liberties from individual dictatorial violators might have been accepted.

Even in those Latin countries where free speech and parliamentary institutions function, any government accepting the Larreta program would immediately be subject to concentrated attack from all the opposition elements, which would take the position that the nation’s defenses had been stripped naked to Yanqui Marine bayonets by its leaders.

Furthermore, in all the republics there is a natural coalition of diverse elements opposed to the Doctrine: powerful reactionary groups anxious to maintain or restore traditional strong-arm dictatorships; Communists working to reduce or prevent extension of United States influence in Latin America; strong right-wing Catholic clerical elements fearful that American Protestantism, unopposed by liberal American Catholics, might use the Larreta Doctrine as a means of fostering separation of Church and State in the Latin republics.

In addition, domestic political issues plainly affect reactions to the Larreta proposal in most countries rejecting it. Inside political leaders in the Brazilian government are naturally unwilling to commit themselves to a program sanctioning collective action against dictators until they know how much democracy or how much veiled dictatorship will come out of the constituent assembly elected in December. Consequently, while Brazilian Foreign Minister Leão Velloso’s reply to Foreign Minister Rodríguez Larreta left the subject open, the possibility of eventual rejection must be borne in mind.

Chile’s reply was definite for equally practical reasons. The Ríos administration, trying to function in a mad squirrel cage of multi-factional politics, could hardly risk a head-on collision with the opposition over the sacred “ patriotic ” issue of “ non-intervention.” With Argentine fortifications and troop concentrations on Chile’s Andean borders, its Foreign Office, while in no sense supporting fascism, is cautious about taking on any avoidable disagreements with the larger “good” neighbor.

Colombia is disposed to take no chances because many factions there still regard the seizure of Panama in 1903 as the supreme crime of interventionism. Other rejecting countries — Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, with apparently Nicaragua and Honduras to follow — either have suffered United States military intervention in the past or have felt themselves dangerously exposed to it in more recent times.

The scales tip against us

The fact should not be overlooked that the Latin American opponents of the Doctrine have considerable ammunition to use against it. All twenty republics, for instance, ask: Why was Washington so suddenly converted to intervention as a means of preserving democracy manifestly in Argentina? They remember that both before and during the war, the United States lavished favors on the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic, and that barely a year ago the only United States Ambassador ever to lock horns with Trujillo, Ellis Briggs, now chief assistant to former Ambassador Braden in our State Department, was promptly ousted from his post through the influence of Assistant Secretary Nelson Rockefeller and Avra Warren.

Assistant Secretary Braden, in addresses at Yale and before the American Geographic Society in December, sought to answer the objectors by insisting that consultation and discussion would eventually bring about common agreement either on the Doctrine in its original form, or on other practical methods of realizing its objective. He took the position that not using the power of the United States and the collective power of the Americas to defend democracy was as much intervention in favor of dictatorships as direct pressures on totalitarian states would be in favor of democracy.

It is still too early for final judgments, but it appears that for the time being the United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the small pro-Larreta nations are losing the battle to throw the collective weight of the republics on the side of democracy in this hemisphere.