Failure in Latin America

...In the morning it was discovered that these were parachutists, trained by the United States in fighting "internal aggressipn," who were staging a mock attack...

...Undoubtedly the most ominous political price imposed by U.S...

...In Argentina, for instance, USIA distributes press releases in Spanish every day to thirteen newspapers in Buenos Aires alone, and "periodic releases" to 200 other journals and thirty magazines...

...If these additional costs, plus the relatively higher fees of U.S...

...and the military is U.S.-trained, U.S.-supplied, and, except in rare cases, U.S.-dominated...

...It is also an undeniable fact that without American military training, supplies, and blessings the Juan Bosch regime could not have been overthrown in the Dominican Republic in 1963...

...Embassy and AID are supposed to take all measures necessary to further private U.S...

...Whatever this kind of program may mean in the United States, the non-Communist nationalists do not consider it Communist or Marxist...

...Embassy official, costs the nineteen republics a billion dollars a year, and the repatriation of profits drains away a similar sum (it was $11 billion for the decade from 1950 to 1960...

...All AID loans, both program and project," it tells us, "are tied to U.S...

...A favela is a slum area, usually on a hill, which has been "invaded" by homeless families, who then erect a myriad of improvised huts for which they pay no rent...

...But both together—a billion dollars—are only half what private American entrepreneurs take out of Latin America each year...

...It distributes books with an American slant, stocks a library, provides eighteen bi-national centers where English is taught and cultural events take place...

...Each project is then written up in minute detail—the road, for instance, will be so many kilometers long, use so many tons of cement, be completed at such and such a time, cost a specified sum of money...

...I was reminded of the Rio flood 'not long thereafter when I had a conversation with a prominent American who supports U.S...

...I've been having intermittent talks with an intelligent Marxist here," he said, "and until a week or two ago I really wasn't sure in my own mind...

...not long thereafter General Rene Barrientos and the army overthrew the Paz government...

...In Chile they are being castigated by some socialist allies as having sold out...

...The military in Latin America is the main ruling force, exercising a real veto power...

...The only true friends the United States can count on in Latin America are the dictators, Castelo Branco, Stroess-ner, and Somoza of Nicaragua—whose rule would founder without American military aid...

...There are the Christian unions, which are doing more to organize the peasants in the villages than all other forces—including the Communists and friends of the AFL-CIO—combined...

...What the loans generate, in good part, are U.S...

...They are caught in a net, constantly pleading for more loans and more investments just to keep up with where they were yesterday...

...All materials and equipment required for the various projects must be bought in the United States, even if they can be purchased for much less in Japan or England or elsewhere...

...In assessing the change of course that would benefit Latin America most, the model of the Brazilian flood which generated cooperative popular action is more appealing than the individualistic model...

...Thus the U.S...

...Nationalist elements in Latin America, though they differ sternly on tactics, are united on a number of fundamental planks: One—A full scale land reform based on seizing the holdings of the landed oligarchy, establishing cooperatives, and pumping large credits and technical know-how into the rural areas...

...Not even the loans provided by the Alliance for Progress have given the United States such a stranglehold over Latin America as this form of "assistance," which runs between $55 and $95 million a year...

...This would destroy the political power of the village oligarchy and give peasants purchasing power they now do not have, thus stimulating industrial and other growth...

...State Department policy and has lived in this part of the world for some time...

...investment...

...support...

...Though the State Department has won significant "victories" in the last few years—from its viewpoint—for the long run its policies must be reckoned a failure...

...What they mean by "friendship" is co-existence...

...businessmen take out $2 billion in cash...

...companies...

...By similar haphazard popular efforts, and with the aid of American supplies that came in later, the situation was eased...

...Three hundred thousand housing units built with U.S...

...It must be noted to begin with that aid by the Alliance for Progress is not a gift—except for a small part in technical aid and Food for Peace—but a loan...

...It is a paternalistic bribe to hold Latin America in the U.S...

...Throughout the city several hundred died as the waters flooded and many thousands were left without shelter...

...But North American relations with Latin America go much further than that, shaping the nineteen republics into its own mold...

...Bolivians point out that Barrientos was a friend and protege of General Curtis LeMay, that prior to the coup the U.S...

...exports to the borrowing nation and local currency loans to U.S...

...Lleras, since he was elected earlier this year, for instance, has been seeking an alliance of five or six countries to bargain more effectively with the United States...

...In Bolivia, the United States for years pressured former President Victor Paz Estenssoro to liquidate the workers and peasant militias in favor of an enlarged regular army...

...In Ecuador tens of thousands of Indian huasinpungeros were living on thirty cents a day plus an acre or two of land on which to grow corn...

...Embassy in Chile lists "benefits of U.S...

...procurement of goods and services . . ." (emphasis added...

...The "aid" is only "candy" to compensate for the further loss of independence...

...Naturally, as under any paternalistic system, some of it trickles down to the great mass and leaves a beneficial residue...

...State Department policies...

...military backing, nor would General Juan Carlos Ongania of Argentina have made his "revolution" earlier this year...

...Neither the city, the state, nor the federal government seemed to find the energy to relieve their plight...

...The Alliance for Progress, in a report issued in May, 1966, listed expenditures of $2.3 billion in the last five years...

...There are the left wings of traditional parties all over the continent—dozens of them...

...To put American aid in proper perspective it must be considered in conjunction with two other phenomena, terms of trade and repatriation of profits...

...The dictatorship of General Stroessner in Paraguay could not survive a month without U.S...

...In the light of this background, I asked the American, did he not feel that what the region needed was a crash program, similar to what people are forced into during a flood...

...Lens is a widely published author whose articles have appeared in many publications in this country and abroad...

...The Ecuadorean military would have been unable to toss out the Arosemena regime in July, 1963...

...Two—Nationalization of credit facilities—such as banks and insurance companies—to control the development of the economy, rather than leaving it to haphazard investment by private businessmen and foreigners...

...For public consumption, U.S...

...Such tactics did not have to be used when the army made its coup d'etat in April, 1964, but American training and aid were a vital factor in strengthening the military forces for its reactionary role...

...According to a United Nations report Latin America is the slowest growing area, economically, of any in the world—only 1.7 per cent per capita annually from 1960 to 1965...

...If any recipient government should expropriate an American corporation without what the United States considers "fair" payment, all loans are cancelled...

...Every major decision they take, in domestic as well as foreign affairs, is related to decisions made in Washington...

...As Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admitted in June, 1963, the Latin American armies are being built up not because there is any "threat of significant overt external aggression" but to improve "internal security capabilities for use against Communist-inspired subversion or overt aggression...

...The United States gives Latin America in loans and grants about a half-billion dollars a year...

...The dams, roads, electrical facilities, university laboratories, schools, distribution of some land to landless peasants, improved collection of taxes, are all good in themselves...

...How can you ask people to vote when they know the military has the final word...

...help are better than none, though in the same period five million new families were added to Latin America's population...

...There are hundreds of radical priests and nuns who are linked to the leftist Social Christians...

...They are not, these nineteen republics, mindless robots, following the dictates of the U.S...

...Thus, a brochure on aid to Peru tells us that "AID seeks to increase investment by United States private enterprise in the economies of less-developed countries by guaranteeing investors against certain political and business risks...

...In the relationship between the weak and the strong, it is understandable that the strong will have greater leverage, more bargaining power...

...aid ends up not in greater independence of the Latin countries but in greater dependence of the Latin republics on the United States...

...A mimeographed sheet put out by the U.S...

...Nor are the Mao-ist or Fidelista Communists a real problem for Washington or its southern allies...

...investments and trade...

...Another half-billion, again in round figures, comes in loans from such agencies as the Export-Import Bank of the Intra-American Bank of Development...

...There is nothing underhanded about this—by law the U.S...

...There are even nationalist segments in the military forces—in the Dominican Republic, in the Brazilian navy, in the Argentine army...

...In reality, it confronts more enemies—neutralist and nationalist—than before the Alliance for Progress went into operation five years ago...

...they are to be repaid...

...With modern equipment (not necessarily as good as that of Japan or the United States) half as many families could produce twice as much food...

...all are waiting for the day when their countries can become independent, in fact as in name...

...The United States trains thousands of Latin American officers in Panama and at home in "counter-insurgency...

...private investment— or go without...

...It helped train 160,000 teachers, provided fourteen million text books, protected 100 million people from malaria...

...It shows movies to almost half the population of the country each year, and "places nearly 600 hours per month of program material on a non-fee basis" with the radio stations...

...The $140 million that was scheduled as "aid" for Chile this year, for instance, breaks down into a $100 million loan, a $20 million sale of agricultural commodities (why this is called "aid" is not clear), and $3.5 million in technical assistance grants...

...Though they reject the American way, they neither can nor want to follow the Cuban model...

...Nor is the Cuban economic model one that Latin Americans want to follow in specific detail, particularly since it must lean so heavily on the Soviets...

...This subtle process is not easily visible because, except for the Dominican intervention last year, the United States has been using a sheathed sword rather than an overt military approach...

...But it is, for them, a shotgun marriage, not a love match...

...There are other conditions...

...ships, at much higher rates than ships of other countries charge...

...As a humanist I have to opt for freedom...

...Cooley' loans," we are informed, "are escudo [local currency] loans to Chilean subsidiaries of U.S...

...There is the very significant Peronista movement in Argentina which controls far and away the largest genuine trade union force of the entire area...

...aid" is in the military field...

...In Latin America the Moscow-line Communists—by far the largest of the three Communist wings—are in fact more moderate than the neutralists...

...construction firms are included, the "low" interest rates are no longer low...

...One man told me how he and his friends battered in the door of a school to put up a number of homeless families...

...There are many new youth groups such as Popular Action in Brazil, far more radical than the Communists but basing themselves on purist Christian doctrine...

...To Americans, "our way" conjures up the attractive image of a great, friendly power generously helping its poor neighbors...

...The present Alliance for Progress, however generous it may seem superficially, is, as one Social Christian unionist in Huacho, Peru, put it to me, only "candy...

...Nationalism is churning in Latin America and reaching the boiling point precisely because the "American way" has not worked there...

...and Chilean private sectors under the Alliance for Progress...

...Groups of people using their own initiative began helping the helpless after a newspaperman wrote a column calling on interested citizens to take matters into their own hands...

...They exist in virtually all the large cities of Latin America...

...Yet, in recent days I've come around to the idea that in our way, although it is slower, there is the greater hope of freedom, even if it takes much longer...

...Finally Paz yielded, increasing the military from 4,000 to 20,000 men...

...None of them looks on the United States as a permanent friend...

...It waits until that Latin nation's businessmen import that much goods from the United States, and, with the dollars thus earned, the American government deposits the loan in an American bank, to be doled out in $5 million "slices" as used...

...Four—National planning...

...If the project is approved by Washington—which has the final say—the money is still not made available immediately...

...He is the author of a number of books on significant issues, including The Futile Crusade, and Radicalism in America...

...Yet from another viewpoint, it must be realized that for the nineteen Latin American nations—excluding Cuba— the United States is the overriding and decisive factor in their existence...

...At the Formiga favela that I visited in Rio recently, conditions had stabilized to the point where there was electricity in most huts and outdoor pipes from which inhabitants, waiting their turn, drew water in tin cans...

...the government and AID officials jointly work out a plan for that year's development...

...help is presented as a boon to unfortunate "less-developed" nations, helping them appease their people's wants, and staving off "Communism...

...The guerrillas, who have suspended activity in Peru, are decimated and inactive...

...In less publicized documents, however, it is clear that there are other, equally important, goals...

...The loans have low interest rates—often only one per cent the first ten years and 2.5 per cent thereafter—but they are not donations...

...JHere, last January, during the big trains, 300 homes were washed away, leaving 2,000 persons homeless...

...orbit and shape its economies to conform to Washington's purposes...

...They take many steps, hesitantly and haltingly, to loosen the bonds of dependence...

...But what is insidious is the assumption that Latin America must follow a course favorable to U.S...

...At the moment the only formidable guerrilla force is that in Guatemala—and it is a long way from political power...

...Frei has "Chileanized" the copper industry...

...mold, tailored to the pattern cut out by the United States...

...In the Dominican Republic last year—largely because of the social turmoil—the gross national product fell by fully fifteen per cent, one-third of the population is unemployed, and one-fifth is subsisting on food packages from non-governmental North American agencies...

...These democratic-minded leaders are afraid to take on two enemies at one time—the oligarchy at home and the United States abroad...

...I know of course that the illiterate Ecuadorean peasant you've been telling me about neither has the right to vote nor can he do very much about free speech and free assembly in his present poverty...

...Elsewhere there is talk of guerrilla action, but none on the horizon...

...The real challenge to the "American Way" comes from a much broader, though amorphous and ill-defined, movement of nationalists...

...If the sword is in its sheath, however, that does not mean that the United States has no purpose in Latin America other than beneficence...

...Within thirty-four years the twenty republics (including Cuba) will have a population of 600 million, as against 220 or 240 million today...

...One day, four years ago, watchmen at the San Francisco hydroelectric plant in Brazil were overpowered and handcuffed by armed men who then proceeded to cut telephone wires and occupy the facilities...

...In other words, one of AID's functions is to assure American firms against losses if there should be a revolution or if a government does not permit them to send their profits back home...

...The Editors TTidden from the lovely tourist beaches of Rio de Janeiro's Co-pacabana are some 300 favelas which house fully one-third of the population of the city...

...Yet even if the capital were available for this transformation, there is no place under present conditions to employ one million superfluous agricultural breadwinners...

...That mold is designed not to advance the republics into the Twentieth Century so much as to offer a safe conduit for U.S...

...We cannot expect any more situations," a Colombian politician told me, "where guerrillas are led by nationalists who are not Communists, where they have the support of The New York Times, and where the United States fails to send in the Marines against them...

...Moreover, the recipient countries must meet certain conditions...

...They hope, therefore, to co-exist with the United States and somehow, through some miracle, to build up their economies so that they can achieve independence...

...Adverse terms of trade, according to an estimate by a U.S...

...They are in disarray in Venezuela, having been deserted by large segments of the left...

...The entire mechanism of U.S...

...This includes, first of all, the left-wing Social Christians of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay—some of whom have strength, some of whom are weak...

...Latin America, I pointed out to him, was very much like the favelas in flood time...

...The Cuban model has few supporters in Latin America...

...But in the final analysis they are being shaped into the U.S...

...ambassador, friendly to Paz, was replaced by another one who had been in his youth associated with the Bolivian oligarchy, and that a certain Colonel Fox, an expert in anti-guerrilla warfare, was dispatched to the country...

...The borrowing nation must accept Washington-approved plans for development and submit to stern supervision...

...The United States Information Agency inundates their countries with subtle American propaganda...

...firms...

...Three—A neutralist foreign policy, so that Latin America can achieve a certain economic flexibility...

...In Colombia, where two million agricultural families exist in misery, farm laborers pick the best coffee in the world for six or seven cents an hour...

...This amount provided the capital for 300,000 housing units, 22,400 kilometers of new and repaired roads, 1,170 potable water systems, 1,200 hospitals, health centers, and sanitary systems...

...The plan must conform to AID's ideas of "fiscal responsibility" and other criteria...

...It adds up, to them, as an American-made coup...

...The process of "Americanization" is pursued with full vigor...

...They discuss, they dispute, they disagree...

...and nationalization of key American corporations, for the same purpose...

...Similarly, the coup d'etat in Brazil was made with U.S...

...Lens' recent intensive survey of conditions in Central and South America...

...To my surprise this American said that he had been brooding for many months over this problem...

...Inevitably they pay political prices for "aid...

...Here at home, in the shadow of the cold war, we have persuaded ourselves that it is only the Communists who oppose U.S...

...public puts in $1 billion, mostly in loans, and private U.S...

...The crash program, I had to admit, does get things done, but it is accompanied by a loss of freedom...

...It is no wonder that former President Arturo U. Illia of Argentina told a New York Times reporter in September that "Argentine elections are a farce, a mockery...

...the United States' model has even fewer...

...Leoni is working feverishly to convert his country to a degree of industrial independence...

...But this is a Time-variety fiction...

...assistance to the U.S...

...The money is not deposited in the bank for the Latin nation...

...Half of what is bought must be shipped in U.S...

...Publicly, men like Raul Leoni of Venezuela, Fernando Belaunde of Peru, Julio Cesar Men-dez Montenegro of Guatemala, Carlos Lleras of Colombia, and Eduardo Frei of Chile may refer piously to their friendship with Washington...

...In Venezuela they have turned their backs on the guerrilla movement—which is disintegrating—in favor of legal agitation...

...State Department with cheery precision...