OUR NOT-SO-GOOD NEIGHBORS
Estabrook, Robert H.
Report on Laitn America Our Not-So-Good Neighbors By Robert H. Estabrook Rabart H. Eaiabrook It a apactaliai in Latin-American attain. In addition Jo toachlny at tha Unirariity of Maryland,...
...In fact, the Rio treaty is now being talked of as a model for the new Atlantic pact between the United States, Canada and the countries of western Europe...
...In this connection the wave of militarism has had one salutary effect in the United States...
...By the same token, however, it would be foolish to overlook the plight in which our southern neighbors are languishing because of the sudden break in the wartime dollar bonanza...
...Actually, while attention has been focused on the diplomatic front, much of Latin America has been thrown into internal turmoil...
...Alberto Lleros Camargo, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, what is needed most is loans to governments...
...When it was propounded as the keystone of the Good Neighbor policy early in the Roosevelt administration, it was at first viewed with suspicion and then accepted avidly by the countries south of the Rio Grande...
...What has changed is the extent to which military cliques have risen to assert their superiority over elected governments...
...Bolivia has been fretful since the murder of the bloody dictator, Villaroel, in 1946...
...The first requirement for any workable policy is a thorough reexamination of the whole theory of nonintervention...
...For In much of Latin America a sort of state capitalism prevails because no individual entreprtneur is equipped to tandertaka the necessary works...
...Latin armies...
...It could take many forms, from qualified recognition to economic sanctions and restricted trade...
...The organization has met its first test promptly and effectively by quashing the freebooters' fracas between Nicaragua and Costa Rica...
...If a Marshall Plan for Latin America is out of the question, there are other methods of extending necessary help...
...What the Latins realy fear is unilateral intervention...
...OBVIOUSLY THE UNITED STATES cannot give unrestricted economic aid simultaneously to every country that needs it...
...But the move was significant in that it recognized the importance of collective rather than individual action...
...Actually Article 35 is permissive rather than mandatory, and it does not require automatic recognition...
...Popularly-elected government, which never has been an overly vigorous plant in the countries to the south, is being blighted by virulent diseases from which it may never recover...
...But the United States already has given evidence of its good faith by consulting with its neighbors on collective measures to quarantine the menace...
...The danger is that while the »wo purport to serve different masters, their aims in Latin America to a large extent coincide...
...At the conference in Bogota last spring, the hemisphere defense alliance was formalized into the Organization of American States, the first regional security body under the United Nations...
...One example of this awareness is the talks just initiated by the State Department with other governments on possible collective measures to keep the contagion from spreading...
...In Nicaragua, Gen...
...Even when applied on a broad scale lis effectiveness may be doubted...
...And without some such restraint the danger is that the fine principles of Bogota will be reduced to nothing but paper before our eyes...
...If they are as important to our security as we say, then they deserve to be taken into our confidence...
...It Matt scarcely help serving as a bul' WBat for constitutional methods—and hence as a safeguard for individual /laMMes...
...Although Ecuador now has an elected president, the election was preceded by an army-initiated revolt in the summer of 1947...
...There is a good- deal to be said for maintaining * some sort of diplomatic contact with new governments...
...Their techniques are the same—a sjslssnatlc liquidation of the domocrade ahmiiiiis that stand is* orderly change) wtfiin the framework of individual llbesitM...
...The notes transmitted by United States embassies were not so definitive as might have been wished, principally because no clearcut means is at hand for counteracting the threat...
...Certainly the same argument per•tains to the proposed Atlantic pact...
...K___I WHEN THE WESTERN hemisphere defense treaty was - signed at Rio de Janeiro a year ago last September, it was hailed as a new milestone in collective security...
...urn ol credit would the in...
...jdillions of people who heretofore have been political automatons are beginning to assert their rights...
...We have talked a good line about the need for a unified hemisphere community...
...Repression is snowballing, and those nations where the efforts to promote liberal democracy have not succumbed to army coups are resting uneasily as they watch their neighbors fall...
...The same ..holds for protection against economic aggression—a question ducked at Rio ' de Janeiro and Bogota despite some ' pretty damning evidence against the gjbrernment of Peron...
...The most logical vehicle is the Export-Import Bank...
...Anastasio Somoza continues his domination as war minister although the country nominally has one of his henchmen as president...
...The Estrada formula held that recognition of new governments should be automatic...
...Although some of the leaders of the military juntas profess friendship for this country, perhaps the most virulent specimen of anti-Americanism is to be found in Peron...
...Since the advent of the Rio pact, miitary elements have participated in the forcible overthrow of five Latin governments—Paraguay, Costa Rica, Peru, Venezuela and El Salvador...
...Too many instances can be shown in which nonintervention—neutrality, as it is euphemistically called—in actuality is intervention on the side of the oppressor...
...An example of the combination may be seen in Argentina...
...In only one of these countries—Paraguay --can such measures be considered as more or less the normal course of events...
...Army governments in Latin America, of course, have been more the rule than the exception...
...The fact is, however, that any move In the direction of collective intervenshe* on the political score would have - Mh> implications in other fields...
...if in'W wealth and puiciitfjiUb ^>j„li winch woulu result in new markets...
...But a profound effort to attain political maturity has been ^n progress in recent years...
...Whatever the dubious advantages to hemisphere security, they would be more than outweighed by the additional power modern arms would place at the disposal of...
...This last provision has been regarded as an adaptation of the so-called Estrada doctrine debated extensively at the Chapultepec Conference in 1945...
...The common detMpjsJaator of the twin movements tgejaot free government is anti-Amerkamsrn...
...eyond this, the United States has an mm is spar interest in what is going on in Latin America...
...Not only does a reversion to army rule destroy the attempts of Latin governments to broaden the base of representation in response to the needs of their peoples, but it also makes a mockery of the ideals of popular government to which these countries have repeatedly subscribed...
...en THERE IS A SCHOOL of thought in Latin America which'would go even further and would call for intervention whenever the liberties of citizens were curtailed by aefs of individual governments...
...One other advantage has accrued from the wave of Latin American army revolts: the increasing awareness in the United States of the seriousness of this trend as it affects our own interests...
...NONINTERVENTION as applied to Latin affairs is particularly the monument of Sumner Welles...
...When the new president of Cuba, Carlos Prio Socarrcs, visited the United States in December, he took the precaution of bringing the chief of staff of the army along with him...
...The very possibility of Collective intervention would serve as a healthy restraint on the ambitions of potential dictators...
...But the extent of military influence in Latin America cannot be measured merely by the countries in which uprisings have 'recently succeeded...
...In addition Jo toachlny at tha Unirariity of Maryland, ha to an adilortai writer for tb«\Wa»hinglon tout...
...A great deal of support could have been had at little cost, for example, by taking the Latin nations in as partners in the Marshall Plan and making it a hemisphere proposition from the start...
...The same obtains in the case of Latin militarism today...
...But whatever its desirability, pthere would be many difficulties in esrtaJabRhing practical means of implementing this concept now...
...The military rule in Argentina is legion...
...One of the incidental benefits would have been an understanding of the economic problem of trying to resuscitate Europe...
...As pointed out by Dr...
...Let us,make no m-krtake about it What la at issue is noshing leaf than human lreedam...
...Superficially the purposes of the Rio treaty have been advanced...
...The desire for change will be channeled one of two ways—either our way, if we can demonstrate that our system holds material and-spiritual hop*, or the way of totalitarianism...
...What is happening is in reality a tremendous social revolution...
...Even in Mexico, there are dark reports that former President Lazero Cardenas is plotting to regain control of the government...
...The armybacked regime of President Juan Domingo Peron has eroded away at the liberties of Argentines, and most of the liberal elements are either in exile or operating undercover...
...This suggestion has been broached seriously in Washington and talks have been initiated with Latin governments, but so far there has been no formal move to include them in the discussions...
...The 21 American republics were bound to go to each other's aid in the event of external attack and to use peaceful means to setlle disputes among themselves...
...Hence the job of those who are attempting to devise an effective formula for dealing with the military threat in Latin America is to persuade the legitimate governments' that what is needed is not unilateral, but collective intervention...
...One prerequisite for more meaningful bonds with Latin America is an end to the double standard of talk and action...
...With two strikes already slipped past us, it's time for our team to start batting...
...Article 35 in effect asserts that continuity of diplomatic relations is a good idea, that recognition or nonrecognition should not be employed to gain individual advantage, and that recognition itself does not imply approval of the regime recognized...
...THE THREAT COMES from two directions—from the Communists and from the militarists...
...If roads, railroads and new TYAi are to be built to accompany the significant work already done in literacy and public health with American in 1, eit.-oenb, v. . have t> hmld Me'ti idn «•.•;„, o>.> of the benefit-, oi evtcn...
...Apparently the Colossus of the North was changing its ways and renouncing the privileges it had assumed of dispatching American Marines to keep order and eolect debts...
...But too often we have acted without much thought for the feelings of our Latin neighbors...
...The foundations of good neighborliness are being gnawed away from the inside...
...Although the Communist combine in Latin America is extensive, its tactics are familiar and it is not a particularly new throat...
...Yankee-phobia has been exploited energetically by the Communists—whose line in Cuba, for instance, is to blame all poverty on the United States...
...IN CONFORMANCE with Article 35 of the Bogota charter setting up the Organization of American) States, the State Department deelarat/ion did not favor the mere withholding of diplomatic recognition of the military juntas...
...But like nonrecognition, nonintervention also amounts to no policy at all...
...WHATEVER THE REASONS for these putsches (there are too many cases to discuss details here), the net effect has been to set up military juntas as superior to the will of the people...
...Communism and reaction are combining to effect the liquidation of the middle...
...It appears to have killed the efforts of the army to promote a hemisphere arms exchange pact...
...For example, the United Nations decision to withhold ambassadors from Franco Spain—although perhaps not a full test of nonrecognition—seems to have had only the result of strengthening Franco's hand...
...More often than not, this power would be used for the repression of the people...
...Witness, for example, the cause of the Spanish Loyalists, or before that, Ethiopia...
...The important thing is that any action taken be for the totality taf American nations...
...There could be no better catalyst of responsibility than to include the Latin nations from the inception...
...What is necessary above all in any reorientation of our approach to Latin America is to recognize that it is coming of age...
...As a goal, some sort of court to which aggrieved citizens could appeal might be desirable—in fact, it is imBptied in the covenant to follow the BUnited Nations Declaration of Human P Rights...
...For one thing, it is important to keep a. steady flow* of information, and this is impossible without representatives on the spot, What this all boils down to 1b that nonrecognition by itself is no policy at all...
...But if noiirecopnition alone will not serve, then what other measures can be employed to halt the undermining of popular government...
...In Panama former President Arnulfo Arias, who played along with the Nazis, threatens a comeback...
...Collective intervention in the event of the illegal overthrow of a government is not specifically sanctioned by the Bogota charter, but neither is it forbidden...
...The end of this movement is a happy event...
...The Latin Americans would have been less miffed at our apparent lack of consideration of their own problems...
...But the evidence of solidarity which Stems from external forms can be deceiving...
...But Peron has been curiously diffident about cracking down on the Communists...
...They continue to operate—almost to flourish...
...Our foes axe united—the Comnuuujsts in an attempt to pervert the yearnisgs of the people to their own dismal ends and the military juntas which are trying to stultify progress...
...As a result, nonintervention has become almost synonymous with the Good Neighbor policy in the minds of many persons...
...Admittedly, this will take some doing because of the psychological-emotional block that has been built up...
...The Dominican Republic is under the thumb of one of the most ironclad of the military dictators, President Rafael Trujillo...
...It was a cynical doctrine, and the thought that it is implied in Article 35 at least partially justifies the criticism made by members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that it is an invitation to adventurers to overthrow existing governments...
Vol. 32 • March 1949 • No. 10
