Latin America Ousts Dictators
JAMES, DANIEL
Only three remain after fall of Jimenez in Venezuela LATIN AMERICA OUSTS DICTATORS By Daniel James Mexico City The overthrow of Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, and the mounting...
...In the meantime, a military junta rules...
...There was no semblance of freedom in police-ruled Venezuela...
...in 1957, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of Colombia and Paul Magloire of Haiti...
...In Cuba, the guerrilla war that Fidel Castro and his youthful band have been waging from the Sierra Maestra for more than a year is finally taking its toll on Batista...
...Interestingly, two forces traditionally regarded as reactionary in Latin America —-the Army and the Church—have overthrown three dictators, Peron, Rojas Pinilla and Perez Jimenez...
...Revenue from the steadily expanding oil industry has soared into the billions in recent years...
...Most of the people in the world's third-largest oil-producing country still live in squalor...
...Now, several provisional governments later, Haiti has acquired an apparently popular, honest President in Dr...
...But last fall an uprising took place at the Cienfuegos naval base, and since then there has been serious discontent in the Army...
...Instead, Perez Jimenez squandered hundreds of millions on lavish buildings—the Caracas officers' club is more ostentatious than Miami's Hotel Fontainebleau—while doing little to raise living standards...
...Batista has been kept in power since March 1952 by the military and Cuba's prosperous, sugar-based economy...
...Disaffection in the armed forces did not end with the Air Force revolt...
...The Venezuelan Accion Democratica has seen its best leaders jailed, exiled or killed by Perez Jimenez, and the trade unions are divided...
...Brazilian exports to the USSR in the first half of 1957 nearly equaled those for all of 1956...
...Red votes will surely be used to swell the peronista total in this month's election in an effort to strike a death blow at hard-pressed Argentine democracy...
...When Venezuelan Air Force officers staged a revolt against Perez Jimenez on New Year's Day, the Church hierarchy called for a "front against the dictatorship...
...Batista has promised Presidential elections for June, in which he himself will not take part...
...Colombia's rudimentary trade unions played no part at all...
...Even the conservative Catholic party, Copei, was virtually outlawed...
...In 1956, too, dictator Manuel Odria of Peru stepped down voluntarily and permitted free elections to choose a successor...
...Yet, the overthrow of dictatorships does not always usher in perfect democracy and public order...
...She has just sent a new commercial mission behind the Iron Curtain...
...At the same time, the liberal and leftist groups have accomplished little...
...Argentina's Communist party is almost as strong as Brazil's and has been steadily gaining adherents from the left-wing peronistas since Peron's overthrow...
...But he continued to face a rising tide of opposition from students, professional people, and other civilian groups—climaxed by the successful revolution last week...
...The young, democratic-minded junta which succeeded him has held relatively free elections and permitted the victor, Ramon Villeda Morales, a genuine liberal, to take office as President...
...The Colombian Liberal party, whose disunity brought on their country's tragedy, had little to do with the eventual fall of Rojas Pinilla...
...Unfortunately, Trujillo seems in no immediate danger...
...The fall of Rojas Pinilla last June brought an immediate improvement in political and economic conditions in Colombia...
...It should be clear by now that Tio Sam, as the Latin Americans call our uncle, had better start looking south...
...In Argentina, the trade unions were completely in Peron's camp...
...Brazil, with half the population and territory of South America, also has the largest Communist party in the hemisphere, with an estimated 100,000 members and wide influence among labor unions, intellectuals and, especially, the armed forces...
...Only three remain after fall of Jimenez in Venezuela LATIN AMERICA OUSTS DICTATORS By Daniel James Mexico City The overthrow of Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, and the mounting struggle against Cuban strong man Fulgencio Batista, reflect a general trend against dictatorship throughout Latin America...
...Yet, even Trujillo's public-relations experts have been unable to persuade public opinion throughout this hemisphere that he did not murder two men: Jesus de Galindez, Columbia University scholar and author of the definitive The Era of Trujillo, who disappeared two years ago and is widely believed to have been kidnaped and killed by Trujillo agents...
...The Communists are also working overtime in other Latin American countries—Mexico and Guatemala, in particular...
...Of the other two dictators in Latin America, only Trujillo is worth extended comment...
...Big, burly Paul Magloire had ruled the Negro republic of Haiti for some five years when he was deposed by almost unanimous consent...
...Perez Jimenez jailed Jesus Hernandez Capellin, editor of the Catholic newspaper La Religion, for refusing to publish a Government-dictated editorial condemning the revolt...
...These two disappearances have done more to stir indignation against Trujillo than any of his previous crimes...
...Since the fall of Argentina's Juan Peron in September 1955, four dictators have followed him: in 1956, Julio Lozano of Honduras and Anas-tasio Somoza of Nicaragua...
...The rival Liberal and Conservative parties seem to have agreed on a Presidential candidate and the distribution of Government posts, but diehards on both sides may yet dash hopes of holding an election...
...In Honduras, the Army was decisive in ending the dictatorship of Julio Lozano...
...In like manner, the death of dictator Anastasio Somoza failed to bring democracy and order to Nicaragua...
...Castro's campaign to burn the sugar crop— "either a harvest without Batista, or Batista without a harvest"—has hurt sugar production somewhat...
...This was a direct thrust at the United States, which has refused aid to Brazil because she nationalized her oil industry and will not permit private foreign companies to exploit her resources...
...The question is whether he can hold power until February 1959, when he is scheduled to retire...
...In recent months, Moscow has launched a new offensive, aimed chiefly at Brazil and Argentina...
...Shrewder and more ruthless than his compeers, he has used murder as an instrument of policy, and has hired the best available brains—American as well as Dominican—to defend his bloody regime...
...By all odds the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela has more than enough money to feed, clothe, house and educate every one of her 6 million citizens...
...With old-line dictatorship on the way out, Latin America now faces another threat: Communism...
...and, while the armed forces are determined to prevent the dictator's return, his followers have been causing trouble with strikes and minor uprisings, and they may show real strength in this month's Presidential election...
...Fidel Castro and his "26th of July Movement" are, of course, sparking the fight, but no one seems to know what they stand for other than Batista's overthrow...
...and the American pilot Gerald Murphy, who was apparently done away with because he knew too much about the Galindez case...
...The Latin American struggle against dictatorship is linked by no common program or ideology other than opposition to dictators...
...Yet, the country is still far from the level of democracy achieved before nine years of civil war and dictatorship commenced in 1948...
...Argentina (like Uruguay and Mexico) has always maintained diplomatic relations with Moscow, and she has traded with the Soviet bloc for some time...
...The dean of all living dictators, he has ruled the Dominican Republic since May 1930 as though it were his feudal hacienda...
...He also offered to aid Brazilian and Argentine industrialization in general and, without attaching political strings, expressed willingness to take coffee, cocoa, hides, sugar and similar South American products in return...
...So far, Brazil has refused to renew diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, which were broken off a decade ago...
...Perez Jimenez bounced back from a quasi-coup three weeks ago, when a group of Army officers forced him to oust and exile two of the most hated members of his cabinet...
...Frangois Duvalier...
...Post-Peron Argentina has yet to achieve political and economic stability...
...Toward the end of 1957, Castro seemed to have struck at the dictator's two vulnerable spots: the armed forces and the sugar industry...
...He has so effectively eliminated opposition that few are left in the Dominican Republic with the heart or the ability to organize a revolt...
...Somoza fell victim to an assassin's bullet rather than a popular uprising, and his death was followed by the removal of many of his old foes...
...In Venezuela, extremes of wealth and poverty finally bred revolt...
...If Batista shares the fate of Perez Jimenez, that will leave only two "strong men" in all Latin America: General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay and Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina of the Dominican Republic...
...Khrushchev made a similar offer to Argentina, whose situation is much like Brazil's...
...Daniel James, author of Red Design for the Americas, is now completing a book called The Mexicans and Us...
...The anti-Batista forces in Cuba are so numerous and divided that few Cubans can make any sense of them...
...But Duvalier, the victor in a legitimate election, must deal with ambitious General Antonio Kebreau, who as Army chief held de facto power up to the election...
...But trade relations are expanding...
...His two sons, Luis and Anastasio Jr., who rule now, are less dictatorial than their father, but Nicaragua still lacks a popular movement capable of installing a regime more responsive to the nation's needs...
...Last November 28, Soviet Party chief Nikita Khrushchev granted an interview to the Rio de Janeiro daily Imprensa Popular, in which he offered Brazil machinery and know-how to develop her oil industry...
...Most savagely persecuted of all were trade-unionists and members of Accion Democratica, the liberal party which governed Venezuela until 1948...
Vol. 41 • February 1958 • No. 5
