TWO REVOLUTIONS

...All foreign-owned sugar lands are being expropriated...

...The Communists are trying to encourage attacks on the principal leaders of Accion Democratica by the dissident elements recently expelled from that party, as well as by the URD...

...Foreign firms should be encouraged only in those fields which the government feels are necessary, and the state should fix the conditions of their entry...

...But during its year in power, the junta had achieved a good deal more than even this remarkable accomplishment...

...All new industries are under the Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria, and the only foreign funds used are those borrowed by the government from the countries of the Soviet bloc...

...Large landholdings which are being efficiently used by modern methods will not be touched...

...The Instituto has been given overriding control over all Cuba's agriculture...

...The contrasting paths taken by the social revolution in Venezuela and Cuba are of key importance for all Latin America...

...In conformity with this philosophy, Betancourt has opposed the idea of nationalizing the oil industry, the principal source of Venezuela's foreign exchange...

...There are many parallels between Venezuela and Cuba...

...Subsequently, the Castro regime has sought close relations with the Soviet Union...

...He returned to Venezuela convinced of the basic soundness of the kind of program his government of the 1940's had advanced...

...Economic development is the same kind of key to Castro's program as it is to Betancourt's...

...Land subject to the reform will be distributed to landless peasants and those with holdings too small to be efficient...

...The land may be distributed either directly to individual farmers, or it may be organized into cooperatives...

...The half-finished steel plant and the semi-completed petrochemical industry will remain in government hands, and there will be established a new national oil company to exploit some of the country's untapped petroleum reserves...

...The price of the expropriated land will be decided by negotiation between the National Agrarian Institute and the landholders...

...The Cuban regime has carried on an increasingly violent attack on the U.S...

...It will then specify that the land be used for that particular purpose, and extend necessary financial and technical aid to peasants who must change their type of cultivation...

...He was still a convinced democrat...

...The emphasis of Cuban social reform is on speed—in contrast with Venezuela, where careful planning is preceding each major reform move...

...One of the purposes of the law is to create an individual, independent peasantry...

...There is widespread frustration at the apparently slow progress of democratic social reform in Latin America, a frustration which has found expression in enthusiastic support of the Castro regime...

...An important step was the enactment of an agrarian reform law, based on the report of the commission established by the provisional regime...

...The junta, which conceived its basic job to be the establishment of a civilian constitutional regime, decreed a new election law, carried out a registration of all the country's voters, and presided over the election of December, 1958, in which a new president and congress as well as all state legislatures and municipal councils were chosen...

...Under the law, government land will be distributed, as will unused land of private owners, which is to be expropriated and paid for by government bonds...

...The first year of the new regime was spent laying the groundwork for the forthcoming democratic administration's program...

...Betancourt's regime faces two principal risks...

...A commercial and economic aid agreement was signed in March, 1960...

...Castro, like Betancourt, has instituted agrarian reform...

...The Venezuelan revolution may determine whether necessary social changes can be brought to Latin America while still preserving political democracy...

...It also controls all rural credit, and determines the country's industrialization effort...

...The current hero of the extreme nationalists is Fidel Castro...

...He has consistently argued that a sensible policy of nationalism should accept foreign investment—but under careful control...

...But economic development in Cuba is being carried out in a completely different fashion from that in Venezuela...

...But he was also aware of the need for an attitude of greater mutual tolerance among the political parties...

...The junta also enacted a change in the oil industry's contribution to the national treasury, through new taxes increasing from fifty per cent to sixty per cent the government's share of oil profits...

...If the democratic, slower paced, moderate Venezuelan way fails and the fast-moving, tightly controlled approach succeeds, the Cuban pattern may well be followed widely elsewhere in Latin America, to the grave detriment of all hopes for political democracy in the region, as well as to the future relations between Latin America and the United States...

...But the government welcomes efforts of private entrepreneurs, both domestic and foreign, to establish other new industries...

...An extensive planning apparatus has been established, within the President's office, to coordinate the activities of the Venezuelan Development Corporation, the government banks—Banco Central, Banco Agricola y Pecuario, and Banco Industrial—as well as various ministries working in the economic field...

...Castro and his aides have made it clear that they do not want, and do not feel they need, foreign private capital for Cuba's economic development...

...All political leaders who had fought Batista, but had not been members of the Castro 26th of July Movement and were not willing to submit to all of the policies of the regime, were either jailed, went into exile, or were forced to be silent...

...He has argued that it is more intelligent to allow foreign companies to continue to exploit oil, while seeking to gain for Venezuela the largest possible returns...

...There were two serious revolts which were thwarted by loyal segments of the armed forces, backed by general strike movements supported by both organized labor and organized employers...

...TWO REVOLUTIONS by ROBERT J. ALEXANDER The pyrotechnics of Cuban Premier Fidel Castro's running disputes with the United States have overshadowed a development which may have much greater significance for Castro's Cuba, all of Latin America, and the entire world...

...On the other hand, if the Venezuelan experiment in democratic social revolution is successful, there may still be a chance—given a new and far-sighted orientation of United States policy in the area—for a genuine new beginning in establishing a solid basis for cooperation between the two parts of the hemisphere...

...However, Betancourt realizes that foreign investors must have opportunities to make reasonable profits if Venezuela is to attract capital...

...Betancourt has sought friendship with the United States, but only on the basis of full recognition by the United States of the sovereignty, political and economic, of Venezuela...

...His administration of two and a half years and the shortlived rule of his elected successor, Romulo Gallegos (also of Accion Democratica) were outstanding in honesty and remarkable in their efforts to increase the government's oil revenues for the purpose of developing the economy and improving the people's living standards...

...The peasant may sell his land before he has completed payments, but only to someone who is entitled under the Agrarian Reform Law to receive land, and only after having first offered to sell it to the National Agrarian Institute...

...Local Cuban Communists have been given an increasingly prominent part in the operation of the regime...

...There is always the lurking danger that if one of the parties goes into opposition, it will begin to plot with discontented military men, as at least one of them did during the Action Democratica regime of the 1940's...

...It was under constant threat of subversion by military leaders who had profited from the Perez Jimenez regime and who resented the cutting off of fruitful sources of graft...

...In the first seven or eight months after Castro's ascension to power, his regime seemed to be seeking a rapprochement with the United States, but in late 1959 there was a sudden switch in policy, signaled by the launching of violent attacks on the United States...

...All of these institutions have been given extensive additional resources...

...It comes from the extreme nationalist elements, including politicians who are sincere and also those who seek to use extreme nationalism as a facile way to power...

...The Castro regime is carrying out most of the same basic reforms as those in Venezuela, though in a very different way, and in an increasingly dictatorial atmosphere...

...The other difficulty is on the civilian front...

...He used this period not only to lead from abroad his party's struggle against the tyranny, but to study deeply his country's problems...

...It has a monopoly on purchase and sale of virtually all agricultural produce...

...First is the military, which is still not only restless but reluctant to permit a civilian administration to govern...

...The provisional regime enacted emergency measures made necessary because the dictatorship had left a rifled and all but empty treasury, plus more than $100 million in debts...

...Another fundamental aspect of the Betancourt regime's program is economic development...

...At the same time, there is undoubtedly a feeling of exhilaration, adventure, and Goliath-killing in Cuba which is absent in Venezuela...

...This law, which is now in effect, is the result of many months of study and debate, and is designed not only to redistribute the country's land, but to reorganize completely the nation's agriculture...

...Pending enactment of an agrarian reform law, the provisional government reactivated the Agrarian Reform Institute, which began the distribution of land confiscated from deposed dictator Perez Jimenez and his associates, as well as other government holdings—a partial answer to the problem of returning to the land many hundreds of thousands of peasants who had migrated to Caracas in recent years...

...Although there is ample justification in past history for anti-U.S...

...The provisional government appointed an Agrarian Reform Commission, composed of peasant federation leaders, agronomists and other technicians, landowners, bankers, businessmen, trade unionists, and representatives of four political parties: Accion De-mocratica, the Catholic Social Copei, Union Republicana Democratica, and the Communists...

...They were opposed to turning government control over to an elected civilian administration...

...The two countries have exchanged visits by high-ranking officials...

...Finally, the government undertakes in the law to carry out a general agricultural survey to determine what parts of the country are best adapted to what types of production...

...This is the rivalry between the Cuban revolution and a similar rebellion in progress in Venezuela...

...The Cuban shift in foreign policy coincided with an alteration of internal policy, with a definite abandonment of whatever plans the regime first had for reestablishing democratic, constitutional government in the proximate future...

...Betancourt hopes to use both government and private capital resources in this development program...

...government and press...

...In Cuba there is an air of improvisation about everything...

...During the first six months of 1960 all freedom of press was destroyed, autonomy of the universities was suppressed, and the trade unions were submitted to virtually military control...

...Victory went to Romulo Betancourt, of the moderate leftist Accion Democratica Party, one of the most outstanding contemporary Latin American political leaders...

...This program is in conformity with Betancourt's economic philosophy...

...Betancourt spent nine years in exile after a military coup had deposed Gallegos in November, 1948...

...Much of the Union Re-publicana Democratica is found in this element, as was a faction of Betancourt's own Accion Democratica which was expelled early in April, 1960...

...The Venezuelan revolution was launched a year earlier than Cuba's with the overthrow of dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez on January 23, 1958...

...The government must be constantly on the alert for attempts to overthrow it...

...At stake is the leadership of the widespread—and growing— movement for social change throughout Latin America...

...The junta turned over the government to the constitutional authorities on February 13, 1959...

...In practice, almost all of the Cuban land has been placed in government-run so-called cooperatives, with managers named by the Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria...

...Foreign-owned industrial plants may well be next, and the three foreign oil refineries have already been seized...

...The Communist Party itself is becoming increasingly violent in its vituperation against government leaders, particularly Betancourt, a former Communist himself and its strongest adversary...

...To meet the unemployment which coincided with these problems, the government established a so-called Emergency Public Work Program, which consisted of employing some workers on actual construction and putting a larger number on a dole...

...In foreign relations, the Betancourt regime is following the policy of asserting the right of Venezuela to chart its own course...

...The U.S.-owned telephone and electric companies have been "intervened" and probably will be expropriated...

...Tariffs have been increased to encourage such investments, and the government is negotiating a revision of the existing commercial agreement with the United States to permit more extensive tariff changes...

...Land granted the peasants cannot be mortgaged or otherwise encumbered...

...Foreign private investments in Cuba are being expropriated...

...The fruit at the end of the vine is the achievement of social justice, political democracy, and economic development throughout the New World...

...Early in 1960 the planning board presented a program, which the government accepted, for economic development during the last four years of Betancourt's presidency...

...It was agreed that Accion Democratica, although the party with the greatest plurality, would have only two ministers, Copei and URD would have three each, and the remaining cabinet posts would be filled by independents...

...The progress of the Betancourt regime in Venezuela and the Castro government in Cuba is being watched carefully in many countries...

...The provisional government carROBERT J. ALEXANDER, professor of economics at Rutgers University, specializes in the study of Latin America, on which he has written for many popular and professional publications...

...Castro is also dramatizing the social revolution he is carrying out in Cuba much more effectively than are the Venezuelan leaders their own process of social transformation...

...At the same time, it is making clear that Venezuela stands basically with the West...

...Social justice, increased production, and greater diversity are its three objectives...

...Both governments are popular regimes following brutal military dictatorships...

...The latter are aided and abetted by the Communist Party...

...government feeling, and in current events for the Cuban government's resentment towards the press, there is evidence that the attacks on the United States are not just an emotional reaction but the result of a deliberate policy decision by the Castro regime...

...Both offer a broad series of reforms...

...The military menace also forces unity upon the three major parties, and intensifies the quarrels concerning matters of program, as well as questions of patronage which are inherent in a coalition government...

...He has exerted great pressure against the still existing dictatorships in Latin America...

...As in Cuba, the end of the tyranny was the beginning of a broad process of economic, social, and political change, the first stage of which was undertaken by a junta of three military men and two civilians...

...It had begun the process of social change which gained momentum after the establishment of constitutional government...

...The formula was worked out only the day before Betancourt took office...

...The new owners will get full title to the land and will pay for it over a period of twenty to thirty years, with the annual payment limited to no more than five per cent of the gross value of the crop...

...His law provides for expropriation of all landholdings over 990 acres, no exception being made for economically managed units...

...The election of December, 1958, was vigorously contested...

...But Betancourt also feels that part of the oil industry should be taken over by the government through the establishment of a government oil firm which could exploit areas not granted as concessions to foreign firms...

...From their point of view, he shines because he violently thumbs his nose at the United States...

...He supplements this approach with the idea that the income thus acquired should be invested to diversify the economy, so as to make Venezuela capable of standing on its own feet after petroleum resources have disappeared...

...ried out its job under great difficulties...

...The beneficiaries of the agrarian reform will be granted necessary credits by the government's Banco Agricola y Pecuario, whose resources are to be expanded...

...In Cuba, all private investment is discouraged, at least for the present...

...The situation was complicated almost immediately by a restriction of oil imports from Venezuela by the United States...

...Founder of Accion Democratica as spokesman for democratic social revolutionary forces, Betancourt served as provisional president after a military-civilian coup in October, 1945...

...After Betancourt's election the three major parties—Accion Democratica, Copei, and the Union Republicana Democratica—agreed on a coalition government...

...No foreign firm is to be allowed to own a sugar mill...

...This has great appeal because of the widespread dislike of the United States now current in Latin America...

...However, if groups of peasants so wish, they may establish cooperative farms...