Trading With Latin America
ALBA, VICTOR
Moscow's twin aims: key materials, political advantage TRADING WITH LATIN AMERICA By Victor Alba Mexico City Soviet Premier Bulganin has produced a sensation with his offer to provide technical...
...The USSR has found certain Latin American regimes, notably Peron's, prepared to make useful commercial deals: The Latin American country sells the Russians raw materials which Moscow needs...
...in 1955, but the upward trend is striking...
...The amount of oil and coal shipped under the 1954 pact with Peron...
...There is another factor...
...The Communists, for their part, frequently stated that there was no "essential difference" between Bolshevism and Peron's "justicialism...
...Since the indispensable condition for any large-scale undertaking is an understanding with Washington, the dictators often make use of the Communists in order to blackmail the United States?and the maneuver rarely fails...
...The case of Argentina is typical of this blackmail...
...The more dictatorial a Latin American government is and the more its relations with Washington rest on a degree of obsequiousness rather than an equal footing, the more inclined it is to reach an understanding with the local Communists and, right now, the more apt it is to take advantage of Bulganin's offer...
...He signed two successive trade pacts with Moscow, permitted one of the first Soviet industrial expositions outside of the Soviet bloc to be held last year in Buenos Aires, and named a "dissident" Communist, Rodolfo Puiggros, adviser to the President of the Republic...
...while dictator Somoza of Nicaragua permitted disguised Communists to launch an attack last year from his territory against democratic Costa Rica...
...Moscow's twin aims: key materials, political advantage TRADING WITH LATIN AMERICA By Victor Alba Mexico City Soviet Premier Bulganin has produced a sensation with his offer to provide technical aid to the Latin American countries and increase trade and travel between Soviet Russia and Latin America...
...They fail to note, for example, that Soviet-Latin American trade amounted to only $250 million in 1954 and a mere $70 million in 1953...
...A Paraguayan dictator, Mola, appointed the first Communist police chief in the Western Hemisphere...
...Where could Latin American products be sold in a market saturated with U. S. surpluses...
...The dictators profit from this collaboration at the same time that they are tricked by it, for wherever there is a dictatorship the Communist party splits in two...
...for example, was only 20 per cent of that stipulated...
...Last year's $500 million is still very small compared with the $7 billion between Latin America and the U.S...
...in return, the dictator receives local Communist support...
...There are numerous examples: In Peru, the Communists are loyal allies of dictator Odria, and the same is true of Perez Jimenez in Venezuela and Batista in Cuba...
...The announcement that United States farm surpluses are to be put on the world market has caused great alarm in Latin American business circles...
...fixed in the agreement...
...For the sake of appearances, Moscow sends the country a small part of the capital goods, oil, coal, etc...
...Bulganin's offer could not have come at a more favorable time for Communist propaganda...
...However, these optimistic comments are based largely on ignorance of Latin American realities...
...Latin America is potentially a good customer for the Russians, and the conditions are present which can make her one in actual fact...
...One group works with the dictator, while the other goes into opposition and sends members abroad in the effort-thus far fairly successful?to infiltrate the ranks of the democratic exiles...
...Vision, a Spanish-language New York magazine in response to whose questions Bulganin made his proposal, cannot be suspected of sympathy for Communism...
...However, the person who prepared the questions appears to have known very little about Communism and its methods, for he failed to ask a number of important questions, including one which would have deflated fellow-traveling propaganda at the very outset...
...Thus, the local Communist parties pay off in political coin the Soviet Union's commercial debt in Latin America...
...Besides, Soviet-Latin American trade totals less than half a billion dollars annually in both directions...
...Peron established commercial contacts with the USSR as early as 1943, when he was still in the pay of the Nazi espionage service...
...All this makes sense if one knows the mentality of Latin American militarists and conservative politicians...
...Where would the dollars come from to purchase oil, machinery and manufactured goods...
...The Latin American governments, it is felt, will never accept the Soviet offer because they are too much afraid of Communism...
...Despite the importance of these political factors, the economic aspect of Bulganin's maneuver is more than a pretext for Soviet infiltration of Latin America...
...Those conditions are not merely concern over U.S...
...The Soviet leader would have found it most embarrassing to provide exact figures on the present balance of trade between the USSR and Argentina, the Latin American nation with which Moscow has had the most active commercial relations...
...surpluses and the perpetual uncertainty under which Latin American producers labor because of price fluctuations on the world market...
...And who would be willing to make barter agreements exchanging capital goods for raw materials ? Most press comment has greeted Bulganin's move with a shrug...
...Power, for them, is not a matter of ideology but of defending personal and group interests, and any means is justified to achieve their ends...
...This would bring a decline in the Latin American countries' dollar sales and thus reduce their imports, seriously imperiling the standard of living...
...Uruguayan wheat, Mexican cotton, Argentine beef, as well as sugar, coffee and other products which form the basis of the Latin American economy, may drop in price at any time...
...Domestically, moreover, the Communists are very useful instruments for destroying the opposition forces: the free trade unions, democratic parties and liberal intelligentsia...
...The most extraordinary part of all this is that Washington is doubly duped each time-by the dictator and by the Communists-and still has not caught on...
Vol. 39 • February 1956 • No. 6
