GOOD NEIGHBORS DON'T WEAR BRASS KNUCKLES
BEALS, CARLETON
Good Neighbors Dont Wear Brass Knuckles By CARLETON BEALS THE blather and bother policy has been revived for Argentina. Just before stepping out of the State Department, Nelson Rockefeller,...
...Now he is safe in God's country...
...Let us therefore return to the inter-American system and the Good Neighbor policy...
...Now that Mr...
...Braden's voice all this time never been raised against the bloody dictatorship of Morinigo in Paraguay, whom we showered with millions of dollars and large quantities of Lend-Lease, some of which has since been used to murder democratic Paraguayans...
...There is no wartime urgency now that obliges us to compromise, to support one set of dictators while grousing about another...
...We thought this pretty silly, and quite a few Argentineans thought Mr...
...Braden, in beating the war-drums all over again and raising anew the Germany bogey, has not told us of any behind the scenes bickering over oil, over American public utilities, over attempts to seize Argentina's internal air-lines in .America's current drive for world-wide air monopoly...
...Braden been silent about th,e brutal dictatorships now in control of Nicaragua and Honduras, and until recently in Guatemala and Salvador...
...Braden's attempts to Mikado-them pretty silly, too...
...Nor am I particularly impressed by the little political climbers who sneak through the side-doors of the American Embassy, hoping to use the United States and its ambassador for their own petty will to power...
...Braden have struck harsh blows at the inter-American system, have returned to unilateral meddling and brow-beating, and this sudden reversal once more in our policy will shake continental confidence in our sincerity, in our ability to cooperate, and in our intentions for decades to come...
...Does a dictatorship become democratic when it can be bought up like a sack of beans ? Is it undemocratic only when it can't be bought up...
...If the Argentineans don't like their government, let them throw it out...
...Spruille Braden, now in charge of Latin American affairs for the State Department, is not noted for his sense of humor nor has it apparently ever occurred to him that Argentina is supposedly a sovereign and equal nation, one of the United Nations, and also part of the inter-American system...
...Braden, as ambassador, has been busily galloping over the Pampas with the so-called "democratic" enemies of the present government there, he lost his stirrups pretty badly when a little Nacionalista sheet copied a report from Chile that Mr...
...The Latin Americans are not childish dupes, and they know what is going on and why, even though the American public may not be informed by our own great free press...
...Why has Mr...
...No one dislikes the upstart Colonel's regime of Buenos Aires more than I do...
...Braden has been derricked upstairs in Washington, he can drop his spleen bombs, scarcely of atomic dimensions, without endangering his very life...
...Some time ago, Mr...
...Now, Mr...
...The mask came off when, without regard to our neighbors, we began coercing various governments without joint consultation, began trying to force them to let us keep military bases permanently though we solemnly declared we'd get out right after the war, and so on...
...Mr...
...Why did we give such ardent support to murderous Dictator Penarranda of Bolivia, puppet of the tin-cartel, and later refuse to recognize a more popular regime which wished to fight the cartel and restore civic and labor liberties...
...let us cherish it and strengthen it now...
...Those great lovers of universal democracy, the Soviets, apparently lost the day at Frisco, but to judge by the new twist and twinkle of our obese strip-tease diplomacy, they had the last say at Potsdam...
...But unilateral bickering and browbeating on our part is actually doing the cause of democracy and free government in Argentina and elsewhere a real disservice...
...Just before stepping out of the State Department, Nelson Rockefeller, exponent of expedient wartime good-will, let down his bra and spurted an inky verbal blitz over the Pampas bad boys, who haven't behaved at all nicely toward Standard Oil...
...This decay in our Good Neighbor Policy was checked somewhat by our recognition of the Bolivian popular government after many months of harrassment and after pressure was exerted by neighbor countries to have us do so by the Chapultepec Conference, and by...
...Isn't the American public entitled to know such things ? Or must it be content with a lot of ballyhoo and smear words and humpty-dumpty crusading which hide the real purpose ? * * * MANY Latin Americans feared that the Good Neighbor Policy was merely a wartime expediency and wouldn't last...
...I hold very strong reservations regarding the noisy Junta in exile in Montevideo, which is dominated by Communist Rodolfo Ghioldi and a clique of left-wing Socialists, posing as democratic...
...Farrel and Peron, or the peoples of the continent as a whole, believe there is any basic honesty in our present bottleneck of spleen against Argentina...
...It actually strengthens that shaky regime...
...Now we have thrown that aside to play a petty game of power politics, dividing the continent, and introducing international anarchy again...
...In times past, in other Latin American countries, our representatives, especially the fat-cat, campaign-fund variety, usually with big-business tie-ups, have intrigued with such elements, and it has usually occurred that when boosted into power in some puppet regime, such elements have turned out to be either dunderheads or really bad-egg dictators...
...The perfume sprayed on at San Francisco was all wasted...
...What is worse, it strikes a body blow at the whole inter-American system and the Good-Neighbor Policy and it throws overboard any orderly consultive approach toward Latin American problems...
...I can't feel too sorry about the meat and wheat barons who have ruled Argentina for a century and who helped put Col...
...BUT when a foreign ambassador meddles in the internal affairs of the country to which he is accredited, he is, in the case of strong nations, declared persona non grata...
...Braden was a scion of one of the great copper and mining empires of Latin America and that he and his passionate love for democracy were more than a little tinctured with imperialistic designs...
...IF anything my sympathy leans toward the outs fighting the Peron-Farrel regime, at least toward a few of them...
...But it is now clear that our doing so was quite, insincere, just a clever ruse to get the Latin American countries to back the United States for a world organization discriminating against small countries...
...the recognition of the Farrel government of Argentina, and the admission of that country to the San Francisco Conference...
...Argentina has BO again—but definitely...
...This, too, was done at the demand of the other countries of the continent, who felt that it was more important to preserve the inter-American system of joint action and conference, which the United States was ignoring...
...We have little right to criticize either Russia or England for their high-handed and unilateral actions in various spheres, * * * THIS renewed flustiferous verbal dive-bombing of Argentina is no policy for it is directed at only one semi-dictatorial government in Latin America and not the worst of such by any means...
...In fact, it is no policy at all...
...Braden found no fault with improper popular demonstrations on foreign soil staged to acclaim him and embarrass the authorities, but he didn't like those which shouted against him...
...Even before the war was over, more and more of the Good Neighbor Policy and our commitments under the inter-American system were being junked^ Good-feeling was souring down south...
...We outlawed intervention and meddling and coercion...
...We gave in on the matter in order to get solid continental backing at San Francisco...
...in weaker nations, inevitably he becomes the object of frenetic demonstrations...
...that sooner or later the United States would come back to big-stickism, meddling, and intervention...
...In fact this former loan-merchant of the scandalous lush years of the '20s, this busy high-powered corporation "reorganizer" who so ably looks after some American interests in Argentina, imagined, when he was showered with hostile leaflets, that his very life was in danger...
...Why has Mr...
...Instead of laughing this off as all in the day's work, and quite beneath his dignity to notice (besides such attacks being the normal privilege of free democratic expression) Mr...
...His successor, as head of Latin American affairs in the State Department, Spruille Braden, immediately began throwing his 300 pounds of diplomatic banquets around and splashed the British wheat and beef colony with the soapy suds of ill-manned spleen...
...It would have carried far more weight, particularly in Argentina, if at the same time official pressure were not being used behind the scenes to deprive Argentina of needed raw materials and oil and to prevent her from reducing the high-binder public utility rates maintained by an American corporation notorious for causing international complications...
...During the war, Dictator Vargas, who received so many fantastic millions from the United States taxpayers, kept some 30,000 political prisoners in jail, some of them prominent persons who had fought to persuade Vargas to support the United Nations"at a time when the dictator was still flirting with Hitler and the Japanese...
...We play ball with you whenever we want something, but afterwards, a nice Bronx cheer...
...No one has bothered to tell us that interested American parties have been trying to move into key economic positions vacated by confiscation of German property in Argentina...
...Braden made a great issue of it with the government and helped provoke riotous demonstrations about his royal personage...
...He^ becomes a pivot of conflicting partisan interests...
...That objective gained, we turn again on Argentina, and in so many words tell the other Latin Americans: "Boys, you are a bunch of easy marks...
...for they certainly are not going to like any government brought into power by American pressure that will be branded "Made in the U. S. A." and which under no circumstances would be a bona fide democratic expression...
...In the face of such things can Messrs...
...it is just big-stick and brass knuckles, power politics and a valiant contribution to international anarchy...
...Such meddling by us has often cost us prolonged headaches and in certain instances has provoked endless years of civil war and bloodshed...
...Some years ago the ambassador of the Mikado in Washington made an ass of himself when he protested the publication of a cartoon that showed disrespect for his divine personage...
...Of course a fat oil concession was secured in the shadow of those patriotic efforts...
...MORE than 10 years ago, for the first time in our history, we attempted to establish an inter-American system based on law, order, consultation and equality...
...Rockefeller and Mr...
...In Argentina, where Mr...
...Braden went to Argentina with a chip on his shoulder, and even before he got there, he let out an unfriendly statement, which could hardly have made his going smooth, and which inevitably drew all the little schemers to his ear...
...Juan Peron into power and whose noses are now so sadly out of joint, largely because of his concessions to labor and his attempts to pry loose the Anglo-American economic-stranglehold on his country...
...Hull, who was the first to start throwing overboard the Good Neighbor Policy, let out a blast at Argentina...
Vol. 9 • September 1945 • No. 38
