Latin America Afire

...Of late Batista has added to government lawlessness by sanctioning strong-armed thugs, similar to Peron's shirtless brigades and the army street-claques of Generals Cantave and Kebreau in Haiti...

...Private homes and hotel rooms were invaded by the soldiery...

...There is no chance for the election controlled by the army to be honest or free, and the imposition of an army puppet would bring no peace...

...Colombia, despite tragic political events, and Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia have been making more use of the great inner Amazon areas...

...The cry is for order, but military gangsterism masquerading as government is merely disorder briefly frozen behind guns...

...Urban growth is already an explosive characteristic of Latin American life...

...Army (a touching reminder of our mutal defense contributions...

...This in itself scarcely converted him into a democratic ruler...

...So is the struggle of the rising middle-class, labor, peasants, new industrialists and technicians for their place in the sun, often against the old inefficient landed proprietors, the army, and ecclesiastical rigidities and privileges...

...The dictator's flight to Spain climaxed ten years of terrorism during which more people were killed than American soldiers were killed in Korea...

...The southern end of the continent, it appears, will not be long in achieving a free-trade economic integration similar to that planned in Europe...

...What required centuries in Europe is being accomplished in decades, with greater resources to sustain the development...

...The foregoing provides only one side of the picture of Latin America —as unfair as holding up such benighted states as Arkansas, Georgia, or Mississippi as bona fide symbols of the whole United States...

...All bona fide labor leaders have been purged...

...Toward the end of 1956, Anastasio Somoza, another marine-occupation product, who had ruled Nicaragua for thirty years by murder, terrorism, and theft, was killed in Leon...

...At least fifteen thousand Cubans are in exile...

...For the past year, this violence has been supplemented by the sustained Fidel Castro revolt in the Oriente mountains— the July 26 movement—and by uprisings in which naval and army elements were involved...

...That nation has the second largest movie industry in the world...

...Naturally the more rapid changes in Latin America are occasioning almost unbearable stresses in the old feudal super-state structure...

...But the Cuban Army, aware that it is now universally detested by the Cuban people, holds on to its power desperately and brutally...

...has surpassed the United States in number of inhabitants and promises to have about 300,000,000 people shortly after 1975...

...In some ways Haiti is a sadder picture than Cuba, for it enjoys no prosperity...

...Similar developments are taking place on the great inland plateau empire of Mato Grosso in Brazil...

...Yet changes to the south may affect our very existence on this planet...

...Coffee, which once represented more than 70 per cent of the national production, is now less than 20 per cent...

...Luis staged a mock conspiracy trial of opposing party leaders, charged with the assassination...

...The resounding dictator downfall has been in Colombia where General Rojas Pinilla has dissolved Congress, murdered workers, peasants, students, and Protestant missionaries, and suppressed newspapers...

...Castillo wiped out all political parties except a small Catholic group, which also was persecuted, nearly all civic organizations, including the Masons, the teachers' federation, the Peasant Confederation (not one of whose executive committee, according to the State Department White Paper, was a Communist), the Labor Confederation (of which 16 of 41 executive officials were Communists...

...The suicide of Getulio Vargas in Brazil some years ago resulted in greater political moderation...

...But while large areas are still submerged in primitive poverty, the new diversified Mexico—agriculture, mining, and industry—is a far cry from the time seventy per cent of production, exports, and revenues came from oil...

...Whether this one-party set-up will provide a stable solution remains to be seen...

...At mid-year, a palace guard killed President Castillo Armas of Guatemala...

...The leaders of the principal opposition party were in prison till they managed to take refuge in the Argentine Embassy...

...Inflation is a cancer nearly everywhere...

...Apparently Washington is still fearful of all governments which espouse the rights of the people or turn to modern methods...

...After more than ten years insistence and broken U.S...

...United States policies do not square with our preachments...

...Perhaps the blackest character in the Free World, though fulsomely praised by Congressmen presumably devoted to democracy, is Rafael Leonidas Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, a marine-occupation protege, who has murdered and tortured —and promoted fine public works and much new industry, nearly all owned by his family and relatives...

...Two presidents of the student federation have been killed...

...Land given the peasants under previous land-reforms were taken away, some of it stolen by favorites...

...Last year all but three per cent of new capital investment came from within Mexico...

...promises, the Latin American countries succeeded in holding a joint conference with the United States in Buenos Aires during August...

...For six months thereafter, the people valiantly endeavored to establish stable civilian government, but each administration in turn was betrayed by the army and its armed street ruffians...

...Many areas are still trapped in backward inertia...

...Mexico continues to be transformed by its upswing of peace, progress, and prosperity...

...Theaters are empty because of the fear of bombs...

...As elsewhere, governmental procedures and thinking—here rooted in the duality of the medieval Spanish ecclesiastic super-state versus the never matured ideas of the French and American revolutions—jog along in the Roman chariot era...

...The State Department, pressured by the scandal and the exposure of the forged documents presented by the Dominican government, asked for the extradition for grand jury purposes of General Espaillet, former New York consul, now a member of Trujillo's cabinet...

...Social injustice is still the rule in most countries, and this contrast between the possibilities of the good life and its failure to arrive has been the cause of much disorder...

...The basic threat in Latin America to the Free World is not Communism, which finds little favor except when pricked to life by injustices, but the persistence of ruthless backward dictators, however much they may go in for showy public works...

...Most Latin American dark spots have been in the Caribbean area, though Costa Rica has clung to its progressive democratic role, and in Salvador, General Lemus, expected to be a typical dictator, has upheld democratic procedure in many areas...

...After five years of disorder and violence, his rule has provoked a counter-terrorist movement of bombings, arson, and murder that has gripped even the smallest communities, causing millions of dollars of property loss...

...No cities in history have grown faster...

...A little man with a Hitler moustache who always kept a picture of Hitler on his desk when he headed the military academy, Castillo staged mass executions, stripped the suffrage from seventy per cent of the population, and had himself elected by the Army without secret ballot...

...In Brazil, similar diversification in mining, farming, and industry has lifted that country out of the "one-crop" category which is always a breeder of dictatorship...

...Actually all Latin America is engulfed, in one way or another, in a vast civil war, which has precious little to do with Communism, but a great deal to do with the new industrialization and the thirst for political and economic freedom...

...He imposed his order of death by Army, police, and secret-service assassinations...

...The suppression of political expression, labor unions, and land-reform movements creates deep, resentful unrest that often takes perverted forms...

...mi To examine all economic and political changes in Latin America with an anti-Communist microscope is absurd...

...In Peru a mild military regime has been succeeded by the freely elected Manuel Prado, who thus far has kept his promises regarding political freedom and civil rights, though late in October he sent the army to suppress a strike in a new American copper enterprise...

...Ten per cent of the population participated...

...Cities on the Argentine pampas—strangled for a century by the British railroad monopoly and treaties forbidding the building of highways or industries competing with British wares—were freed during the Peron period and are now pushing toward the million level with the gusto of an earlier Chicago...

...Some new words will have to be coined, for neither the terminology nor the governing machinery match the actuality...

...Late in 1956, a general strike of workers, peasants, business elements, banks, stores, professional men, even priests, succeeded in throwing out the ruthless dictator Paul Magliore, who has enjoyed such fulsome praise in Time and other American publications, though he left a looted country, the banana industry devoured, the smallest coffee crop in decades, the main streets of the capital almost impassable for autos, the telephone service ruined...

...Production has increased twice as fast as the rapidly growing population...

...The problems are rooted in the need for domestic reform and rehabilitation...

...This was the so-called plebiscite that NBC radio broadcasts at the time of his assassination termed "the first honest election in Guatemalan history...

...These changes represent a great tide inundating dictatorships and democracies alike, sweeping all classes before them and drowning out conventional mythologies such as free enterprise, capitalism, communism, socialism...

...The pro-Indian efforts of the previous regimes—schools, language newspapers, radio and books—were done away with...

...From Patagonia in Chile and Argentina to the Straits of Magellan and beyond, new towns, roads, oil fields, railroads, coal mines, and textile mills have opened up...

...Unfortunately rural conditions have not kept pace, though for the first time in a century Mexico produces nearly its entire food supply...

...It is doubtful that the elections can even be held, or that the results would be accepted by the people, since all but the official parties have been suppressed, the leaders imprisoned, driven abroad or murdered, with no public assemblage or freedom of expression allowed...

...Kebreau has already received the blessing of our State Department, and in October staged the customary bayonet elections for the army stooge, Francois Duvalier, who now acts as president...

...It has been estimated that if the general level of Latin American income could be raised as little as a dollar a day, it would create an annual demand for fifty billion dollars worth of American goods—more than could possibly be supplied in the foreseeable future...

...His troops were driven out, and war was averted, at least temporarily, by the prompt action of the Organization of the American States, which has set up an international border patrol...

...In Argentina, too, twice as many people are employed in industry as in agriculture, though economic conditions are now bad, owing to unsettled conditions and Dictator General Aramburu's favoritism toward the feudal elements and the large wheat and meat producers...

...His last putsch was in March, 1950, a week before scheduled elections when he saw he had no chance to be elected...

...However, the leaders of APRA or Popular Party, outlawed for ten years, have been able to return to the country...

...The military junta that has taken over has promised elections, and the Liberals and Conservatives, whose selfish machinations have been to blame, have now joined forces amicably promising a restoration of the constitution, orderly government, and freedom...

...The stresses in Latin American society are tremendous...

...As a result of such brutal policies, there are growing indications that Communist sentiment has increased beyond the eight per cent of the vote previously attained— although the Communist Party has been outlawed...

...The ability to understand this, even if proper knowledge were available in our publications, is largely lacking in an America torn between smug nationalism and a prosperity complex on the one hand and terror of the atomic age and Communism on the other...

...His regime assassinated more Haitians, who had infiltrated across the border, than the number of Hungarians killed in the 1956 revolt...

...One Conservative editor escaped to Costa Rica, the rest were sentenced to fifteen years, and the decks were thus cleared for Luis to win the election for president "by a landslide...

...This, of course, not only blocks the proper development of the continent and injures the United States' own trade prospects, but promotes more Communism, as in Guatemala...

...The Communists spread the word abroad and have succeeded in convincing an increasing portion of the southern continent that the United States has some deep-dyed plot to prevent industrialization for fear of competition...

...Fortunately, in some countries the time-span for such dictatorships, though they are usually supported by the United States (as for instance the $90 million dollar credits to bolster up the illegal and bloody dictatorship of Castillo Armas in Guatemala), grows briefer...

...These are led by the prominent former Communist leader, Rolando Masferrer...

...gift trucks...

...The basic menace is the continued failure of the peoples to obtain political and economic freedom...

...Estimates run to more than 100,000...

...This changeover, with its upsurge of population, cost Europe and ourselves several hundred years of revolutions, civil wars, and political upheavals...

...The bodies were carted off to be buried on the plain in new U.S...

...Today corn is more profitable than coffee, and twice as many Brazilians are now employed in industry and industrial processing than in agriculture...

...With one of the fastest population growths in history—double that in any other continent—Latin America, for the first time since our Civil War, CARtETON BEALS, one of the nation's foremost authorities on Latin America, is the author of many books on that area, including "America South," "The Coming Struggle in Latin America," "Dawn Over the Amazon," and "Rio Grande to Cape Horn...

...At least four Dominican political opponents have been murdered in New York (crimes still unsolved by the police, though Dominican exiles are constantly harassed), and lately Trujillo has been caught in the labyrinth of the disappearance of Nearing the End Dr...

...To head off revolt he staged an attack on Honduras, seizing territory awarded that country by 1907 international arbitration...

...Where maguey and cornfields and thatched huts were yesterday, today stretch magnificent garden boulevards lined with homes, schoolhouses, apartment buildings, and skyscrapers...

...The dictatorships usually label all opponents "Communists" though at one time or another nearly all the dictators have made undercover deals with the Communists: as Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Benavides in Peru, and various Venezuelan dictators...

...Jesus Galindez, Columbia University professor (who was about to publish an expose) and the murder of G. B. Murphy, an American pilot in Trujillo's secret police, presumably involved in Galindez's disappearance...

...In May President Daniel Fig-nole, the outstanding popular leader, was seized and exiled by General Antonio Kebreau, who then cemented his peace of death with the mass-slaughter of unarmed demonstrators by soldiers bearing knapsacks labeled U.S...

...Nearly all the Latin American embassies are crowded with refugees (the United States offers no sanctuary), and some have had to set up long lines of army cots to care for them...

...The jails are full, hunger strikes and prison assassinations frequent...

...Most public works have had to be stopped because the Army is consuming everything, with resultant unemployment and unrest...

...The minimum wage of about a dollar a day was ended, and wages pushed back toward the fifteen-cent-a-day level...

...But this brought no immedate relief, for the government was taken over by his son, Luis Somoza (arms agent for the Castillo Armas revolt in Guatemala), and his brother, head of the Army (National Guard...

...Latin America is bursting at the seams from a belated but speeded-up industrial revolution, upon which is superimposed the newer revolution in electronics...

...delegates...

...In Venezuela, new iron mines, railroads, and ports have begun to open up rich iron mines in the Orinoco...

...Batista has promised to get out after an election in February...

...Help in money, arms, and technical assistance is poured out lavishly for the more unsavory dictatorships...

...The political forms to channel all this new productive power do not exist...

...But Latin America for the most part has been moving ahead, opening up new frontiers...

...Nowhere have the contradictions of rapid material progress and arbitrary rule been clearer than in Cuba, where Fulgencio Batista for a quarter century, following his 1933 "showerbath" revolt, betrayed his followers and subjected his country to repeated military lawlessness in the name of order...

...Having overthrown, with outside aid, the elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz (which had refused to outlaw the Communist Party), Castillo was lauded as a hero of anti-Communism...

...But all practical proposals regarding wheat and cotton dumping, lowered tariffs, readjustment of monopoly shipping rates, and the hoped-for creation of a new World Bank were black-balled by the U.S...

...The hanging of General Gualberto Vil-laroel, president of Bolivia, to a plaza lamp-post by an outraged populace, has Drought more respect for popular aspirations...

...A new four hundred mile railroad has opened up rich new manganese deposits north of the Amazon...

...Yet compared to Europe or the United States, the mass of the population has yet to reap the benefits of this growth...

...Death has also tempered dictatorship...

...This has been refused...

...New conferences have been called by the southern countries to begin putting into effect some of the desired program on a regional basis...

...In the chief centers, more material construction has been carried on in the past decade or so than during the previous four hundred years...

...Mexico City is now past the four million mark...

...The picture is mixed in Honduras, but the military junta there has staged what appears to be an honest national election...

...La Paz, Bolivia, only yesterday a dirty overgrown Indian village, now has soaring office-buildings and apartment houses, plus a skyscraper university...

...When stress becomes too great, the Army takes over, occasionally as a liberating force, but mostly to cram society back into old molds, thus distorting the pattern of growth and preparing more tragic disorders...