Latin America

ON THE WORLD TODAY

EARLY in July, the new Director General of the Pan American Union, Dr. Lleras Camargo, made it clear, through a series of questionnaires to the Governing Board, what the chief issues were likely to be at the Petropolis Conference. In effect, the questions were these: —

1.In case of an armed attack on an American power, should the republics agreeing to a mutual defense treaty be obligated to come immediately and directly to the attacked power’s assistance?

2.Should each treaty power remain free to choose the means by which its assistance would be extended?

3.In consultations among the treaty powers on defense methods against an aggressive attack, should decisions be made unanimously, or by a twothirds vote, or by a simple majority?

4.Should such decisions, by a two-thirds vote or otherwise, be binding on republics that vote against them or abstain from voting?

The republics voted solidly for extending direct aid to a nation under attack. But endorsement of the principle of mutual assistance was whittled down sharply from then on.

The State Department’s spokesman on the Pan American Union’s Governing Board, William Sanders, declared that agreeing on the other questions beforehand did not “seem practical.”

Besides these prominent issues at Petropolis, Dr. Lleras Camargo’s polling operations revealed some of the State Department’s basic embarrassments in Latin America. The State Department insisted on rushing through the Petropolis show as soon as it had succeeded in dropping Spruille Braden — long-time foe of a general inter-American defensive military alliance that would include Perón’s Argentina. The Department went to Petropolis anxious to set up the alliance as quickly as possible. It was backed in this aim by plenty of eager military advisers.

But the Department’s policy-makers did not care to risk rigid commitments, which the Senate might not ratify, to support some Latin American republic in a war with an overseas power, if the republic should proclaim itself as attacked by an aggressor.

Similarly, it could not risk a commitment to be bound by a two-thirds vote of Latin American republics to carry out a consultation decision on Hemisphere defense measures which the United States had opposed. The United States could not, in practical effect, agree to be bound by a two-thirds or any other majority. Although nobody could say so, the distinguished delegation which Washington sent to Petropolis stood with Argentina for the unanimity rule.

The delegation also went to its labors under two further handicaps. The bill which President Truman has twice recommended for doling out arms and standardized military training to the Latin republics at bargain basement rates failed to come through the legislative log jam of the Eightieth Congress. And because the Petropolis plenipotentiaries from Washington came without low-cost arms to dicker with, they were peculiarly open to blackmailing operations from less than simpatico Latin American caudillos, like Perón, on Hemisphere defense “principles.”

The Perón-Franco axis

No signs have appeared that the State Department’s recent deference to Perón has accomplished anything. One of the minor questions in the Petropolis preliminaries, for instance, was whether Nicaragua should be invited. The current government there was installed in June by a military coup of the former dictator, Anastasio Somoza, who within a few days of his inauguration ousted a new president, apparently for refusing to be a Somoza stooge. The other American republics, including the United States, at once refused diplomatic recognition to the de facto regime, pending consultations on its title to office.

But in spite of this purposeful move, Argentina, backed by Honduras and the Dominican Republic, the two most truculent small dictatorships left in the Hemisphere, began a pressure movement to get Somoza-land invited to Petropolis.

One factor in this campaign is a fairly obvious byproduct of the activities of two Argentine trade commissions in Nicaragua within a little more than a year. Argentine-Nicaraguan trade, a small fraction in world commerce at best, has been only sketchily increased by these visitations. But Dictator Somoza and his strong-arm lieutenants, feeling the end of Washington’s favor approaching, have suddenly discovered a new enthusiasm for Spanish Falangism and Argentine neo-Fascism.

Within two hours’ flight of the Panama Canal, in other words, the tentative Perón-Franco, Buenos Aires-Madrid axis has started to set up a focus of Caribbean infection.

Furthermore, President Perón has been busy recently trying to solidify the Buenos Aires-Madrid axis. A steady stream of propaganda has issued from Argentine government sources, urging the formation of a third international bloc — presumably to occupy some limbo between the current East-West division. Manifestly, this coalition is to be composed of Spain, Portugal, and such Latin American powers as Perón can coax into a new and specialized orbit.

In a world broadcast on July 6, President Perón suggested what Argentina and its proposed third coalition might be up to. “The work to be carried out to obtain international peace,” he said, “must consist in the eradication of capitalistic and totalitarian extremism,” beginning with “appropriate political, economic, and social action by the state.”

Only after appropriate state action has created “a world conscience which places men above systems and ideologies,” General Perón explained, can “the destruction of humanity in the holocaust of hegemonies” be rendered “unacceptable.” Or, in free translation, world peace and security are best to be attained by following old Spanish and Argentine authoritarian customs.

Mission to Madrid

Shortly after his old antagonist, Mr. Braden, had been dropped in Washington, President Perón sent Argentina’s first lady, Señora Evita Perón, on a mission to Madrid.

Before her host, Caudillo Francisco Franco, and several hundred thousand Madrileños, Señora Evita proceeded to make a speech proclaiming that the common or garden brand of democracy, such as exists in the United States, is finished, and praising the “true distributive democracies” of Franco Spain and Argentina. And then she capped melodrama by giving Franco the Fascist salute.

The first lady’s performance may or may not have represented the exact shadings of Peron foreign policy of the moment. Señora Evita was neither disavowed nor recalled. She went on to Rome, where she received a Vatican decoration.

From Italy she swept on to Paris to replenish an already eye-staggering wardrobe. Only a subtle chill emanating from London checked her from descending, with more or less sartorial equivalents of Philip of Spain’s Armada, upon England.

Nothing in the Argentine first lady’s act, however, seemed to unsettle the State Department. Not even Señora Evita’s plain efforts at Caudillo Franco’s court to promote “distributive democracies” against the U.S.A. brand shook the determination to go ahead with the arming. For all the State Department seemed to care about the Franco show, the big girl from the pampas might have been only a naughty little madcap trying to shock Henry Agard Wallace.

Letting bad enough alone

The first session of the Eightieth Congress struck drastically at United States information and cultural programs all over the world. But nowhere did its economies bear down harder than on the Latin American potential military allies and Good Neighbors.

Out of 122 jobs authorized for cultural and information activities in the Latin American countries in the budget for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1947, only 28 were continued for the year ending June 30, 1948. In Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and El Salvador — countries which could use “American way” indoctrination — cultural and information staffs at the embassies were liquidated. In other countries the staffs were cut in half. In every republic, nationals who have been invaluable employees of the cultural and information staffs have been cut from 60 to 70 per cent.

Ambassador Claude G. Bowers cabled from Chile that “with the British doubling, the French tripling, and the Russians going out aggressively in a big way” in their information and propaganda programs, the time was anything but favorable for drastic economies. Numerous United States Chambers of Commerce in the Latin American republics seconded his judgment, and so did the State Department.