Gaullism in the Hemisphere

...They feel that the United States' involvement in Latin America is no more than an understandable but foolish attempt to keep someone else's cows out of its own pastures, whereas de Gaulle is pointing out that trade and culture and non-intervention really make the wheels go round...

...Perhaps we should take advantage of the new directions that de Gaulle's trip opens up to us and, for a while at least, enjoy the joys of discretion, the pleasures of silence, of leisure and even, as a means of making friends and developing unity, of the contemplation of culture and history...

...All over Latin America, the young seek ways out of the traditional political alignments...

...The battleground has been shifted from a fictitious dichotomy which obliged the working class to metamorphose its specific economic demands into a parlimentary formalism that was invented by the bourgeosie in its own defense, to a unity of form and substance which has obliged politics to reveal itself as economy and economy to reveal itself as politics...

...In its insistence on "sovereignty" and on national independence this sort of authority naturally touches on one of the key sentiments of almost all Latin Americans...

...All of these moves are considered to be underlined by de Gaulle's defiant maintenance of his freedom of action vis-à-vis the United States and all are supposedly against the U.S.'s interest if supported by Latin America...

...It has been policy, that is, to the extent that Latin American governments have a foreign policy (and very few do) and to the extent that they dare to put their feet into the water of the future and respond to the pressures of the societies which they govern...

...Keith Botsford, our regular Latin American correspondent, is the author of a novel, The March-Man, to be published by Viking in April...

...Many intelligent Latin Americans believe that de Gaulle is saving the United States against its own will...

...aware-beyond the temporal preoccupations with Communism that keep U.S...

...Anyone aware of the jumbled patterns of Latin American development, of the violent movements in the private sector and the corruption in the public, will appreciate the attractiveness of a guarantee of stability, consistent policy and honesty provided by a leader on the pattern of de Gaulle...

...The streets were decorated with bunting, the lamp-posts with flowers, the monuments with wreaths and-the welfare programs of First Ladies being an occupational hazard of the children of the poor -the usual drove of orphans suffered several hours of expectation and a final flourish of folklore: le jour de gloire est arriv...

...The kind of authority de Gaulle represents is particularly admired in Latin America because, in addition to breaking through the traditional stalemates of politics and creating a national unity of purpose, it is also vigorously nationalistic and sets an example of a pragmatic search after national position, status and advantage...

...and his granting of credits to Cuba...

...Second, he was admired for being able, after a disastrous start, to make what everyone in Latin America is convinced was a secret agreement with Cuba...

...Alas, they also disdain the more direct interference that is implied in the Alliance by the appointment of "czars" for Latin American policy (particularly when the choice of personnel was, to Latin Americans, singularly unfortunate), and by the monodie note of anti-Castroism...

...And Fuentes continued his argument as follows: The downfall of the Fourth Republic was due to its attempt to maintain the appearances of formal democracy while, in reality, the development of economic relations transferred the internal and external life of capitalism to other centers of decision...

...policy in an infantile defensiveness-of all the contradictions and pressures around one, and of the "solutions" proposed by those who fear that if not X, then Y; and if one felt, as most Latin Americans are now beginning to feel for the first time, that he has his destiny in his own hands -then perhaps one would approve the silence, the tact, the reserve, the flexibility and undogmatic aspects of current Gaullist policy...

...to the application of what is most admired by the Latin American Left in de Gaulle's policy, the FrenchAlgerian type of accord...

...The argument is, as Fuentes wrote, that the levers of political power have shifted and now lie, as the French example demonstrates, in the hands of the "directors" of the economy: the state and the technicians of the neo-capitalist enterprises...

...By this the press meant that Charles de Gaulle spoke his words in Spanish...

...This shift also requires authority and, at least temporarily, authority embodied in the person of one man...

...FUNDAMENTAL to the SUCCeSS of the move to planning is the depoliticization of the mass, and the meeting of its demands through means other than class struggle...

...But this hardly means that Latin America does not stand on "our" side...

...The Alliance, the President said, must look to its "great unfinished business," whose basic principles are "not only the right path, they are the only path," which must be protected against the "efforts of Communism to tear down all that we are building...

...They eschew the shrill voice of cajoling and imprecation...

...A man of Charles de Gaulle's intelligence and sense of history must rejoice in the irony that makes him, a Maurrasian graduate of Saint Cyr, into the joy of the palace and the pride of the Left at one and the same time...

...To be sure the terrain was fertile, Latin American culture having oriented itself toward France, which responded with sympathy and receptivity...

...For these aspects of French policy involve no Use-sovereignty...

...IT is worth remembering that Kennedy's prestige in Latin America, which stood higher than de Gaulle's will for a long time to come, was based on two factors: First, he was appreciated for his recognition that the period of rigid U.S.-USSR opposition was past and that the two societies were slowly drifting toward one another...

...This argument appeals to a Latin America in various stages of economic underdevelopment, of mixed colonial status where investment and commodity prices are concerned, and of entrepreneurial chaos where economic laissez-faire has been practiced...

...Therefore, the state must make a corresponding shift, from politics to something usually called "planning...

...a way to by-pass the stalemates which are due to its form of representative government, which he has wisely abolished...

...The American "liberators" of the early 19th century derived from the same inspiration and arrived at a similar disgust...

...Finally, there is the extremely delicate and complex question of the "third force...

...Actually, he was using the Latin Americans' language in a far more important sense: the words themselves-Nation, Honor, Independence-were the key commodities of Hemisphere politics...

...by a France which offers small, efficient embassies and cultural services with consular officers of long residence in each country, men who welcome rather than exclude visits from intellectuals of various persuasions...

...Hence the great interest in de Gaulle's efforts to create around himself a national "movement," one which would balance the tensions of the society without disturbing its traditional structure and culture...

...or his reassuring declaration that FrancoLatin American amity "will hurt no one...

...And the U.S...

...Latin Americans are attracted by a France which in a journal like L'Express created a kind of bible for the young, and in France Presse, the only respectable source of news...

...In one form or other, uncommittedness to the struggle of the mammoths is the order of the day...

...The portents of this are supposedly to be seen in de Gaulle's efforts to restore the hegemony of Europe, East and West...

...Similarly, in a series of three highly intelligent and prejudiced articles in Siempre, the quicksilver novelist Carlos Fuentes noted that: The political diversity introduced by de Gaulle in response to economic necessity, brings with it a basic reality: peaceful co-existence between nations of diverse political systems, and a fundamental corollary: the multiplication of interests to assure the unity of peace...

...by a France, in other words, in which Latin Americans feel at home and with which they have a natural community of culture...

...The Roi Soleil tendencies were satisfied and meanwhile, on the other side of the street, in drabber fashion, a bedroom-slipper Socialist like Norman Birnbaum was writing, in the Correspondent, that: "He [de Gaulle] is no Jacksonian, but he has done much to prepare the way for a Europe more independent of the American super power, freer to experiment with a variety of political forms for industrial life, and able to discourse on equal terms with the Soviet Union as well as America...

...The new, Gaullist France has other points of identification...

...press in general has tended to think of the Frenchman's visit in terms of a possible stimulus to anti-Americanism and, consequently, to Communism...

...The problem is that for de Gaulle as well as for those Latin Americans who follow him, our side includes all those who appreciate the status quo in the international field, if not in internal politics-and for the moment this means the Soviet Union, too...

...Indeed, de Gaulle also does, and it is surely part of his longterm intentions to make sure that Latin America does...

...his independence in European defense policy...

...Some of the differences in approach are reflected in such statements of de Gaulle's as: "No doctrine, no quarrel, no divergent interests separate us...

...The execution of the policy may be left to non-political "administrators," but there can be no rupture in the fabric of the state during the period of transition...

...It is hard to see, however, why the United States suddenly became alarmed because of de Gaulle's trip...

...Contrast this with the earnestness and obsessional need for activity revealed in President Johnson's address on March 16, on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Alliance for Progress...

...Except for the independent nuclear deterrent, the rest has been current Latin American policy where the U.S...

...From the balcony of the National Palace, a privilege never before accorded to a foreigner, the distinguished visitor, Hero of This and That, Saviour of the Other and the Third, like the apostle he is, addressed the multitude "in their own language...

...And it is further believed that this would in time have led to a resolution of the conflict...

...If one were a Latin American, troubled and anxious about one's society...

...his recognition of the government of Communist China...

...Similarly, left to themselves most Latin American governments -to the very limited degree they ever did-would probably recognize China, trade with Cuba and take a pragmatic position of national interest toward all other cold war problems...

...They also think everyone knows that the realities of the situation bind Latin America firmly to the United States and to the Western Alliance, just as Southeast Asia is "bound" to the destiny of China and Eastern Europe to that of the Soviet Union...

...Long before the United States, the French have correctly interpreted the "national" sources of the revolutionary movements in Latin America and disengaged themselves from the sterile debate about Communism...

...They see de Gaulle as offering the U.S...

...does not, to put it baldly, own the government in question...

...But this is not all...

...and the posture-vigorous, authoritative, military and above petty reality-along with the glory, is the dream of every statesman on the Continent...

...Fuentes heads one of his articles with a quotation from Time to the effect that de Gaulle offers a temptation to be antiAmerican without being pro-Communist...

...The Mexican government, obligingly providing crowds at the wave of a wand as it has done for 17 other state visits, created massive demonstrations of popular goodwill...

...The Gaullist version of France and the aspirations of Latin America coincide in a negative feeling toward the traditional political organization of Western societies: toward the "parliamentary" democracies where the economic and social pressures of the various strata of society, and the interests these represent, are expressed through political parties and popular suffrage...

...The more the United States insists on the either/or in Latin America, the greater will be its decline in influence in relation to that of France's...