Latin America: A Political Report
Lens, Sidney
1 The fall of Juan Peron took place in accordance with the basic rhythm of Latin American politics. The dictator is gone; the historical reasons for his emergence remain. Peron was a...
...Another position was that the U.S...
...In Argentina, U.S...
...Direct U.S...
...To some extent all the dictators of Latin America—there are at least fifteen—stoop to a bit of Peronism...
...The "normal" of Latin America is a society resting on a landed oligarchy, buttressed by foreign capital (primarily American) and defended by comic opera armies...
...Later, when he lost the opportunity for Latin American domination and when Argentina itself was in crisis, he begged for American capital from Milton Eisenhower and quietly interred the concepts of economic independence and the third position...
...in Latin American affairs, a power based on economic pressure, political manipulations and, when absolutely "necessary," military sanctions exercised through a puppet...
...On the positive side, there are Mexico and Bolivia, the Figueres regime in Costa Rica, and the many nationalist movements with socialist overtones, such as Accion Democratica in Venezuela and APRA in Peru, both of which held power briefly after the war...
...The corruption of his regime, the outright robbery, and the lack of both economic and political freedom plunged the nation towards crisis...
...The revolution is made by capitalists, workers, peasants and intellectuals...
...And in such countries as Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela there are no Socialist parties, but the nationalist movements have some sort of moderate socialist philosophy or a socialist wing...
...and second, to create a mass base other than the army...
...Seldom can it see beyond the immediate opportunity for profits, and almost never is it capable of disciplining its appetites sufficiently to participate in a planned effort to develop the nation's resources...
...The money gained from exports of minerals goes to buy foodstuffs and other basic commodities needed for sheer survival...
...Perhaps one of the basic reasons why the Latin American revolutions of the early 19th century were so conservative was the absence of a native middle class to provide leadership...
...Either increased industrialization at home will compensate for these reverses—or unemployment, depression and renewed civil wars will follow...
...But it would be a mistake to suppose that he was merely another vest-pocket despot, or that with his fall everything will return to "normal...
...IN THE LONG RUN such a policy can no longer work...
...The oligarchical structure is still there, but a thin layer of capitalism has been superimposed and keeps growing...
...Church and state have been separated, schooling speeded up, and the labor movement has grown into adulthood...
...trade, no Latin republic can survive...
...Initially, this revolt, resting on dissident members of the military and police, seemed on the verge of disintegrating, but the Bolivian working class, with a quite remarkable discipline and self-consciousness, intervened in defense of the legally elected president...
...Incapable of any long-range class perspective, it hungers for immediate profits, for quick turnovers and freedom from income tax...
...All the generals were convinced Germany would win the war and wanted to be allied with her...
...Bolivia is an exception, as is Mexico...
...The figures tell the story of a region trying to break the shackles of mono-product enslavement...
...The U.S...
...The depression of the 1930s gave an additional impetus to this process...
...A fusion of corruptors and the corrupt takes place in government, and what emerges is a system of bribery and theft that is simply beyond description...
...could stimulate the emergence of democratic life...
...Millions of peasants own no land at all, work for as little as 30 cents or 40 cents a day...
...For that he had first to industrialize, so that his military machine might be effective...
...But Peron went further...
...investments total $4.7 billions in oil, mining, manufacture, transport and agriculture...
...In the United States, because we already had an important commercial class to guide the revolution of 1776, it could achieve a freedom and depth unknown to Latin America...
...To be dependent on the army meant being beholden to the oligarchy and checking the pace of industrial change...
...BUT SERIOUS DIFFICULTIES remain...
...In Chile there are two Socialist parties: the larger one is more influential in the unions and "third camp" in political orientation, the smaller group has a popular frontist outlook...
...The working class could not be given any wage increases last year...
...By judiciously withholding aid from the reactionary Latin American governments, the U.S...
...perhaps the best way of describing its politics would be to say that it is close to the British Labor Party...
...Throughout most of the remainder of Latin America, the Stalinists are underground, but their efficient organization and the devotion of their militants makes them a significant political element in almost every country...
...Until quite recently the only capitalists in Latin America were foreigners, Britishers, Americans, Germans...
...But in the main, its policy, as elsewhere in the world, is clearly to support the right...
...So far the national revolution has been making great strides forward in Asia, lately in Africa...
...had taken a lukewarm attitude, but when it now found itself in a desperate crisis the U.S...
...aid and put the country on a firm footing...
...The contrast between rural and urban life was so great that they became eager converts to Peron's Justicialism...
...Aside from the agencies of the oligarchy, the army and various brands of Peronistas, the political forces in Latin America are made up of rather weak liberal parties such as the Argentine Radicals, Stalinist parties, nationalist parties which sometimes have socialist orientations, and Socialist parties...
...11 The significance of Peron was that he reflected and knew how to take advantage of these changing class relations...
...Result: another step toward domestic industrialization...
...Peron was lucky...
...In Argentina they are far less important than the Socialists, but strong nonetheless...
...it lagged considerably in the social field...
...The Peron and Vargas episodes, for all their Latin demagogy and waste of social energies, testify perhaps still more to the fact that fundamental changes can no longer be prevented from taking place in Latin America...
...The twenty republics manufacture more than in the past but exclusively for internal consumption...
...Except in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, the Socialist parties are small...
...It plans to develop the fertile but long-neglected Santa Cruz area, to exploit oil reserves, to electrify, and to build roads connecting with Brazil and Argentina...
...To compete with industry of advanced countries, it needs enormous state aid and long-term state projects...
...Production of goods and services went up from $281,4 billion in 1945 to $40 billion in 1952...
...by giving them the support it currently does, it has helped perpetuate the oligarchies, which means to suppress the masses of Latin America and to create the conditions in which Stalinism can thrive...
...The only possible counterweight to the army and the oligarchy was the working classi On the eve of the 1946 elections Peron decreed a thirteenth month's pay as a bonus for all workers...
...But while the continent has not shifted too far from a single product economy, it is definitely moving away from one-class domination...
...Uruguay is burdened with 40 per cent of its 1954 wool clip and 55,000 unemployed—a rather large number for so small a country...
...can thus be a force either for helping the long-aborted revolution or for propping up the oligarchy...
...More often he has a tiny patch which he is permitted to work for himself three days a week, in return for three or four days work on the land of his master...
...It is a region worth watching, not only because it is considered a U.S...
...and he fell by the very army against which he had tried so hard to erect a counterweight...
...The old generals have been sent into exile and for the time being the army remains a weakened and secondary force in Bolivian society...
...policy was two-sided and uncertain, though with the fall of Peron it has shown no interest in any further movement toward a restoration of genuine democracy...
...policy makers...
...Nonetheless industry did move forward...
...The second plan had finally to be abandoned because Guatemalan General Number One proved somewhat recalcitrant...
...Even more striking than these economic facts are the political ones...
...In Bolivia progress toward fulfilling the national revolution has been still greater...
...What does matter is that it sheds light on the continuing and enormous power of the U.S...
...Seventeen years later the number was approximately triple...
...III Peronism was an abortive national revolution, a clipped, par tial and distorted attempt to change Argentina...
...mineral exports constitute 97 per cent of its total, three-quarters of it tin...
...The bourgeoisie might offer a base for Peron but it was not large enough, nor class-conscious enough, to challenge the army...
...Sometimes he receives a daily wage and perhaps a few items of food...
...he used it...
...Perhaps in relation to the need the pace is slow, but when considered in relation to the past it is rapid enough...
...Manuel Odria in Peru permits local unions, but he does not permit them to federate into regional or national groups...
...The laborer gained "dignity," to use the term made popular by Eva Peron...
...An astute U.S...
...In the days of the Incas, the Indian farmer could live on what he produced on his communal farms, but with the Spanish conquest, and later the domination of the tin barons, he became a kind of serf, with the economy shifting from virtual self-sufficiency to utter dependence on the world market...
...It is reasonable to assume that Latin America won't be too far behind...
...In Argentina there were some 49,000 industrial firms and 600,000 workers in 1937...
...The army was defeated by this popular uprising and Paz took his post as president...
...According to Bolivians I spoke to, this should eliminate the need for U.S...
...1 The fall of Juan Peron took place in accordance with the basic rhythm of Latin American politics...
...he dreamed of building Argentina into an overlord for the continent...
...If the process of industrialization and the movement toward completing the national revolution is interrupted, there will be serious trouble...
...and more, that the state must educate the working class and free the peasant from his paralyzing dependence on the local landlord...
...By the time the Paz government took power, the fate of the nation literally depended on tin...
...Independence was won by the native landowners whose qnly aim was to replace Spanish domination with their own...
...The $1.7 billion was almost dissipated...
...The fate of the new Latin America will depend on such movements, regardless of whether they formally call themselves socialist or not...
...Unable to sell their goods abroad and consequently deprived of foreign exchange, they could not buy the manufactured items demanded by the oligarchy and middle class at home...
...In Bolivia today that clash manifests itself in schisms within the ruling party itself...
...And while land reform is still not as complete or well-conceived as it should be, the power of the land oligarchy has been decisively decreased...
...Only four years earlier Indians had been prohibited from walking the main streets of La Paz in their native clothes, so inferior had their status been...
...Upon this conflict the national revolution founders...
...The new industrialist class chafed under innumerable trade restrictions...
...The more urbanized worker remained hostile or neutral, but the peasant-turned-worker, or the unskilled man who was upgraded as a result of industrialization, became a Peronista...
...For the first two decades the change was primarily political...
...But that is precisely what the nouveau riche of Bolivia, like its counterpart in Mexico, so bitterly resists...
...Whether all the details of this report are exact I cannot say, nor in this context does it very much matter...
...Living standards went up only slightly...
...and investment from $3.3 billion in 1946 to $6.4 billion in 1952...
...On occasion he shares the crop, paying a rent in kind of 50 per cent...
...With the "counterweight" inactive, a segment of the military again took over...
...had no genuine alternative...
...Like all revolutions in backward countries, the Bolivian revolution has run into two severe problems: 1. The paralyzing limitations of a one-commodity economy...
...Every Latin American country has a welfare program similar to that of Argentina, pensions (usually 100 per cent of the regular wage) , high severance pay (usually one month for each year of service) , vacations, limitations on the right to discharge workers, free medical care, and large subsidies to governmentcontrolled "unions...
...He set rules so that the landlords were required to provide showers, to pay certain minimum wages and the like...
...Ultimately Peron's strategy misfired...
...Getulio Vargas in Brazil can be said to have been a forerunner of Justicialism, also combining demagogy, reform, and appeal to the working class in an attempt to build a base other than the oligarchy...
...Brazil was unable to sell millions of bags of coffee in 1954...
...In Brazil, though illegal, they are a major force, publishing at least two dailies, many weeklies and commanding the only organized factions in the trade unions...
...IV Held in check now for 125 years, the Latin American revolution bursts out here in authentic and there in distorted forms—but it bursts out...
...UNLIKE MOST OTHER Latin American dictators, Peron did not serve the feudal class: But he did not serve the working class either...
...Get rid of the Communists, it told Arbenz, and we will help you...
...In Peru the Socialist Party, "third camp" in outlook, boasts of the only opposition members in parliament who resist the Odria dictatorship...
...ought to impose an economic blockade on the regime, simultaneously choking off its life blood and conforming, as Dulles so dearly wishes, to "international law...
...A prominent Guatemalan told me the story—I have every reason to trust his honesty and knowledge—of the Castillo Armas "revolution" in 1954: At first the State Department made overtures to the Arbenz regime...
...2. The emergence of a nouveau riche stratum which corrupts the revolution from within...
...In Chile inflation is forcing the labor movement to call one strike after another...
...Because he had quite a bit of capital to play with, $1.7 billion in foreign exchange, he could "bribe" the working class with little difficulty...
...Three to four thousand men gave up their lives in this struggle, for when the miners descended on La Paz they came armed with nothing but dynamite...
...sneezes, Latin America catches pneumonia...
...A right wing has developed which demands that the "revolution come to a halt," there be no more nationalization and employers be freed from restrictions and given larger subsidies...
...His real political and social milieu was the small strata of new robber barons whom his politics enriched, men like Jorge Antonio and Eva Peron's brother, Duarte...
...Unlike the typical palace revolution of Latin America, this one brought about deep changes in the social life of the nation...
...It corrupts government officials and penetrates the government bureaucracy, demoralizing the more devoted partisan followers of Bolivian nationalism...
...The third position was to utilize Castillo Armas for a military invasion from Honduras...
...Where there are no dictators, as in Uruguay or Chile, it sympathizes with and indirectly helps the men of the right, seldom the anti-Communist left...
...Many of the Italian immigrants who flocked to Brazil worked first as peddlers, then as small businessmen, later as large factory owners, and finally invested some of their profits in landed estates which the old aristocracy had been forced to mortgage or sell...
...Most Latin Americans of the left who think of U.S...
...But the men who fought for land reform or for political unity in the Spanish colonies, were quickly pushed into the background...
...As a result, the Bolivian regime commands a dynamism that the oligarchical governments lack, and labor plays a role in national life that is greater than in any other American country...
...In self-defense the twenty republics began to industrialize...
...Failure to aid a moderate nationalist like Paz might have led to a further stage in the Bolivian revolution, very likely a government of the left...
...embassy which has given considerable material aid to Bolivia, has yet dared challenge it...
...As the Latins say: any time the U.S...
...for the skilled workers they actually went down...
...And the bureaucracy itself was rent with dissension as a result of Peronista favoritism...
...But whether its future destiny is violent and thorny, or whether it will be peaceful and solid, will depend to a considerable extent on what Socialists and liberals do in the United States both to encourage kindred spirits south of the border, and to stay the hand of the State Department in supporting oligarchies...
...Peron himself gained a vast fortune...
...The Mexican social revolution began in 1910 and has been proceeding at a sort of stop-and-go tempo ever since...
...Undoubtedly, the Bolivian Trotskyist group played a decisive role at this point...
...THE LATIN AMERICAN OLIGARCHY had already received some heavy blows by the time Peron consolidated his power in 1943-46...
...And even those dictators who still serve the oligarchy cater to some extent to labor...
...Foreign companies have lost their oil holdings and the state itself now operates this resource...
...But the truth is that the U.S...
...But at this very moment, unfortunately, the price of tin fell sharply...
...The same can be said of the Uruguayan party...
...provided economic support...
...should try to "buy" the generals in the Arbenz regime for a typical Latin American coup...
...If the peasant does rebel it is purely on a local basis, which means that there is .little chance of success...
...When he first became minister of labor, after the 1943 coup, he was under the illusion that he would one day serve as Nazi gauleiter of the hemisphere...
...Most of the republics, however, have not yet reached even this stage...
...The Stalinists, because of their outside support, are particularly strong...
...To that end he talked of "economic independence," he bought up the big utilities and railroads owned by British and other foreign capital, and he even put forth the idea of "a third position" against both Capitalism and Communism...
...Tin still makes for 57 per cent I94 of the national income of Bolivia, oil 70 per cent of the national income of Venezuela, copper and nitrates 27 per cent of the income of Chile...
...Though small, it had been active among the tin miners in Potosi and when the civil war broke out it helped provide an ideological stimulus for the activity of the Bolivian workers...
...You have to see this semi-feudal oligarchy, in life itself, as I recently have, in order to realize how enervating and slothful it is...
...A lawyer in Rio de Janeiro may also own a fazenda in the interior, which is operated by an overseer...
...Finally, Castillo was set free to march, General Number One decided he had to yield, and Arbenz fled...
...Today a large portion of land belonging to the landlords has been distributed among the Indian peasants who till it...
...But now the situation is changing...
...Tin is the export in Bolivia, wool and meat in Uruguay and Argentina, coffee in Brazil and Guatemala, bananas in Honduras, sugar in Cuba, copper and nitrates in Chile, oil in Venezuela...
...The clash between the ambitions of the nouveau riche and the interests of the population becomes intensified once the government of national revolution has consolidated its position...
...If it wants to, the U.S...
...In Argentina the Socialist Party, fifty years old and with a long tradition behind it, is militant in action though more moderate ideologically than the Chilean party...
...For the "normal" of Latin America is itself abnormal: twenty republics that began their national revolution in the first quarter of the nineteenth century have been unable through the intervening hundred and twenty-five years to complete it...
...We buy 43 per cent of what Latin America exports, and sell more than 50 per cent of what she buys...
...bailiwick, but because it is so close to our borders and so tied in with our economy that a full-flowered national revolution there will have great repercussions within our own forty-eight states as well...
...His village is a mere string of mudhuts, sometimes whitewashed, seldom electrified...
...At the beginning of the Paz regime, the U.S...
...When there was a move in Congress last year to limit the import of Venezuelan oil into the U.S., the Venezuelan regime immediately began to shiver...
...Mexico and Bolivia point to the future of all Latin America...
...So strong is this concept of an armed people that no one, not even the U.S...
...The Chilean peso fell from 400 to the dollar to 700 in one year...
...The nature and quality of these changes depend very considerably on the attitude the United States takes toward them...
...Now a native capitalist class has emerged and is growing...
...The Boliviano fell in value to the point where 4,000 were worth no more than an American dollar...
...A left wing demands nationalization of ineffective industries, higher wages, lower prices, vigorous measures against profiteering and inflation...
...which means, in turn, that the state must build roads, railroads and electrify the countryside...
...Neither the peasant nor the landlord has much incentive to improve production, the peasant because he has no interest in land which doesn't belong to him and which he may not be permitted to work next year, the landlord because he lives in a backward milieu, dependent on government export policies and lacking both a home market and the competitive incentives that stimulate capitalism...
...Without the lifeline of U.S...
...Bolivian economy rests entirely on mining...
...In 1947, for thq first time in history, the production of manufactured goods in Latin America was greater than agricultural production...
...For the first time in Argentine history labor unions had grievance machinery, and in the early years a worker invariably won his grievance...
...When Arbenz procrastinated, three different positions were advanced among top U.S...
...Where the old legitimate unions, under Socialist and Anarchist leadership, had 300,000 members, the Peronista Confederation of Labor, including agricultural workers, numbered 51 2 million...
...There were still many more people employed in the villages, but mainly because agriculture was far less efficient...
...Many of Peron's claims were of course fraudulent...
...One, presumably the Dulles view, was that the U.S...
...In 1952, for the first time on this hemisphere, the working class was in the forefront of a revolution...
...Latin America is being wounded by what economists call "unfavorable terms of trade...
...But what is both new and significant is that even the most hard-bitten dictator attempts to create some kind of labor following...
...When the Bolivian army refused to permit Paz Estonssoro to take his seat as president, even though he had been democratically elected, the nationalist movement (the MNR) organized an uprising against the militarists...
...When Mexico refused to agree to a blockade, the first plan had to be abandoned, since with oil coming in from Mexico, Guatemala could have withstood a blockade for a long time...
...consumption from $24 billion to $33 billion...
...Once the working class became politically neutralized last year, Peron's end was in sight...
...policy as unvarnished imperialism, cannot understand why the State Department sent Paz millions of dollars in foodstuffs—$20 million in 1955 alone...
...ambassador, somewhat keener in comprehending the basic tendencies of modern politics than most of his colleagues, explained all this to Washington, and the State Department decided, shrewdly for once, to support the Paz regime in the hope that by doing so it could be persuaded to take a more "moderate" course...
...In Cuba the export situation was so bad that sugar production decreased by 5 per cent, over and above a 30 per cent decrease the year before...
...The peasants are armed with rifles, and at least 50,000 workers carry arms and belong to an organized labor militia...
...If we were to cut imports of coffee from Brazil and increase them from Colombia and Guatemala, that would radically affect the internal politics of all three nations...
...The country manifests all the symptoms of industrial growth: roads, irrigation, electrification...
...hundreds of thousands of peasants in backward areas flocked to the city to become urban proletarians— and the backbone of Peron's following...
...Since 1953, in fact, there has been a tapering off of the rate of industrialization...
...Without leadership from classes other than the landed oligarchy, the Latin American revolution was one of the most sterile in history...
...But at least two coun tries have started a genuine national revolution and are currently try ing to complete it...
...How many hundreds or thousands are incarcerated throughout Latin America is hard to say...
...This meant that the import of foodstuffs had correspondingly to be decreased, and that with the shortage of goods, prices would zoom...
...But after the advent of Cardenas in 1934 the new regimes have been stable and have instituted a certain amount of social reform...
...The oligarchy has lost its land, and plots have been divided among the peasantry...
...Discharge became next to impossible...
...Increased industrialization means that new classes are emerging, classes with needs entirely different from those of the landed oligarchy...
...exports are still limited to raw materials even in such industrialized countries as Brazil and Argentina...
...The tensions and contradictions that spewed him into political being continue to operate—and with increasing force...
...The second danger I have mentioned—the emergence of a nouveau riche stratum that is corrupt, mercenary and cowardly—is perhaps inevitable in revolutions occurring in underdeveloped countries that rest upon an uneasy alliance between the working class and various elements of the "liberal" bourgeoisie...
...In many instances the oligarchy blends with the new capitalist class...
...The Paz government has nationalized the major mines belonging to the rosca, i.e., Patino, Hochschild, Aramayo, and has instituted a long range program for diversifying the economy...
...Until now, and with only a very few exceptions, the State Department's role has been unambiguous: it is the friend of the dictators, the comfort of reaction...
...can make or break any government in Latin America, except perhaps the Argentinian...
...He promulgated a welfare program that is considerably more extensive than that in the United States—free medical care, vacations of 10 to 30 days per year, pensions at 60 after 25 years of work, etc...
...By 1952 factories were producing $11 billion as against agriculture's $8 billion...
...Society staggers under the weight of changelessness...
...Peron was a stop-gap, a shrewd schemer who by suppressing the problems of his country created the illusion of having solved them...
...His primary orientation was toward domination of the whole region...
...Always a raw-material producing area—exporting coffee, tin, copper, sugar, wheat, beef, and similar commodities in exchange for finished goods— Latin America found itself in a crisis during World War I when the advanced countries were unable to supply it with manufactured goods...
...Minerals which in 1951 had brought Bolivia $145 million now yielded only $109 million...
...Nonetheless, the national revolution, though it can still be tripped and slowed, can no longer be stopped...
...All this, however, is impossible without high taxes and capital accumulation, that is to say, without severe limitations of profits...
...In the end he had to lean on the very "Yankee Imperialism" he had started to oppose...
...Peron thus was able to create a mass base...
...and any unionists who get out of line find their way into his over crowded prisons...
...Though it has no armies on the continent and no longer intervenes as openly as once it did, the United States exerts a control as forceful as if it did have armies stationed in the capitals of the republics...
...By 1957, it is hoped, the economy can produce an additional $10 million a year in food, thus cutting the amount that it imports, and also earn an additional $11 million a year through the export of oil...
...but the social horizon of the bourgeoisie, particularly the kind that is spawned in Latin America, is severely limited...
...In Brazil the Socialist party is weak, not even publishing its own newspaper...
...Illiterate, incapable of any independent action, the Latin American peasant still lives in bondage to his landlord...
Vol. 3 • April 1956 • No. 2
