1973-09-27

This is The Latin American Press Review, a weekly program of news and analysis of Latin America compiled from leading world newspapers with emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. Comments and suggestions are welcome and can be sent to us at 2205 San Antonio Street, Austin, Texas. 

Two weeks after the beginning of the military coup in Chile, events there dominate the news. Although members of the Junta have made repeated claims of normalcy, and US newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have characterized the military as mild and also claimed a return to normalcy, at the time this program is being produced, the Asia Information News Service monitoring wire services from Latin America reports that the Junta has just announced a state of internal war. 

In reverberations elsewhere in South America, Excélsior reports that in Uruguay the military government has shut down opposition papers, including the Christian Democrat-oriented La Hora. La Nación of Peru reports that the head of the Uruguayan government as saying that the articles on Chile would foment unrest. Also, the Brazilian military government has prohibited its newspapers from publishing or disseminating information about activities in Chile. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Bolivian military government has announced a move to arrest at least 70 leading labor leaders who were fomenting difficulties. 

Information other than official or censored reports from inside Chile are still difficult to obtain. Excélsior of Mexico City reports that Chilean Christian Democrats are still divided. Former President Eduardo Frei, implicated as early as 1970 in the ITT strategy memoranda as participating in efforts to induce economic collapse and a military intervention in Chile is reported to be supporting the Junta. While the previous Christian Democratic presidential candidate, Radomiro Tomic, is reported under house arrest. 

The English paper The Manchester Guardian noted continuing divisions in the military. The three highest ranking officers in Santiago as well as the head of the National Police did not support the coup. 

The Excélsior of Mexico reported an interview with Hugo Vigorena, the Chilean ambassador to Mexico, who resigned when his government was overthrown. The former ambassador said his government had documents and information on a CIA State plan senator, but had received the information too late to neutralize the plan. The New York Times reported that Mr. Kubisch, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, claimed the documents were spurious and being peddled by a known felon. He refused further public comments offering to appear in a secret session. 

The degree of difficulties inside Chile is still unknown with any precision. The official announcements of the Junta vary, beginning with a claim of 61 dead moving most recently to an admission of perhaps 250 persons killed. However, various international news agencies reported such items as that within the first 40 hours of the beginning of the coup, a Santiago hospital log indicated 500 bodies stacked in the hospital because the morgue was full and refused to accept further bodies. 

Inter Press, the Chilean news agency, which was forced to move its transmission facilities to Argentina following the beginning of the coup, reported requests from Chilean hospitals for medical supplies. Santiago hospitals were reported to be out of most medical supplies. 

The Asian News Service carried an interview from Argentina with the director of the Brazilian soccer team, which left Chile after the beginning of the coup. He reported upwards of 10,000 dead within the first three days. The Dutch newspaper Allgemeine Tagblatt reported on a telephone interview with a Dutch diplomat in Chile who reported in the initial days that the Junta was treating resisters with unimaginable violence and estimated casualties in Santiago alone at 6,000. 

Le Monde from Paris reported an interview with two Chileans held in the national soccer stadium, but released because they were the son and nephew of high-ranking military officers. They reported tortures, clubbing and executions of major proportions. British papers carried reports by two British subjects who said much of the same. 

In interviews with the US press, two American citizens, Adam and Patricia Schesch, released from the stadium after a considerable telephone and telegram campaign by citizens of their home state of Wisconsin, also noted that in the first days of the coup they saw numerous prisoners beaten to death and estimated that they directly saw 400 to 500 persons executed. Asia News Service estimated 20,000 to 30,000 dead within the first week. 

In Caracas, Venezuela, the daily paper Últimas Noticias reported an interview with a Venezuelan journalist who had been held in the national stadium for three days before being allowed to leave. He reported that he had been arrested because there were some magazines in his home published by Quimantú, the government publishing house. The Venezuelan journalist said that he could hear the cries of people being executed in the eastern grandstand of the stadium, that the blood was hosed down each morning, that survivors could see piles of shoes belonging to the previous night's victims and that the bodies were removed and blue canvas bags loaded into armed military trucks. 

A number of embassies in Chile are reported surrounded and in effect under siege to prevent persons from seeking asylum. The Guardian reports that the governments of Sweden, Finland, and Holland have announced that all aid destined for the Allende government would be frozen and not given to the Junta. Also, in a number of countries, including Mexico, Venezuela, Switzerland and Sweden, the Chilean ambassadors and diplomatic personnel have resigned rather than serve the Junta. 

Excélsior reports that the Chilean ambassador to the US is in Chile and is alive but under arrest. He has been replaced in the US by a naval officer. In London, the naval attaché has taken over the embassy there and locked out the ambassador. 

Diplomatic recognition of the Junta was initially accorded by Brazil and the two regime of South Vietnam, and the Junta claimed recognition by 17 countries as of the 22nd of September. However, according to Excélsior, that list includes Austria, Denmark, and Mexico, whereas Austria and Denmark have issued denials and Mexico announced that it would apply the Estrada Doctrine of maintaining officials at the embassy in Chile, but not extending actual recognition. 

Another reaction. La Opinión of Buenos Aires, Argentina, reported that the commander-in-chief of the Argentinian army has asked the government to immediately put an end to the US military missions in Argentina. He said that the recent events in Chile strengthened the conviction that, "the presence of North American missions in Argentina is not convenient for us."

Excélsior reported that the Chilean Junta, after outlawing the five political parties that had formed the Popular Unity Coalition and after informing the remaining parties to enter a recess, disbanding the Chilean legislature, has announced the writing of a new constitution. General Lei of the Air Force indicated that the new constitution would prevent the re-establishment of Marxism and would allow major participation by the armed forces in the political life of Chile, including in the future parliament. 

Excélsior continued that the new constitution would be actually edited by a yet-to-be-constituted jury commission and would be a corporate-type constitution in the style of the system instituted by Mussolini in Italy. That from the Mexican daily Excélsior. 

In commenting on developments in Chile, the English paper The Manchester Guardian reviewed the ITT memoranda that spoke of the need to induce sufficient economic chaos and violence into Chile to create the conditions for a military coup. The Manchester Guardian also quoted Henry Kissinger as having said, "I don't think we should delude ourselves that an Allende takeover in Chile would not present massive problems for us." 

The Manchester Guardian also referred to a meeting in October of 1971 between William Rogers, the Secretary of State, and representatives of corporations with investments in Chile, in which Rodgers made it perfectly clear that the Nixon Administration was a business administration and its mission was to protect business. 

Also, Murray Rossant, president of the 20th Century Fund, wrote in The New York Times of October 10th, 1971, that the government policy towards Chile was being formulated and that the Secretary of Treasury, John Connally, and other hard liners insist that Chile must be punished to keep other countries in check and favor a Bolivian-type solution of providing overt or covert support for anti Allende military men. That from The New York Times. 

In the most recent economic news from Chile, the black market, which was the primary cause of food shortages during the Allende period and which had been a major method of creating economic difficulties for the Allende government, has finally been outlawed. Although congressional opponents to Allende had prevented any legal moves against the black market during Allende's government, Excélsior reports that the military Junta has declared an end to black market activities. 

According to Excélsior, the Junta has also announced that gains made under Allende will not be rolled back, although all illegal worker takeovers of means of production will be cancelled and the illegally-taken-over factories, machines, and land will be returned to private entrepreneurs. Also, foreign corporations will be asked first for assistance and soon will be asked to invest and resume involvement in previously nationalized sectors. 

Excélsior also reports that the Junta has announced the formation of a Man of Public Relations composed of leading businessmen to travel internationally to explain the coup, discuss the reentry of foreign capital, and to improve Chile's new image. Already, according to the recent Junta announcements carried by the major wire services, the reported book burnings and cleaning of bookstores was carried out by overzealous persons and that at any rate the military was not against ideas and did not think that the burning of books would kill ideas. The Junta's only intention was to rid the country of alien ideas. 

The most recent information available is that despite disclaimers by the Junta, the cleaning of bookstores and the burning of books continues. The French Press Agency reports that the house of poet Pablo Neruda was vandalized by soldiers who conducted an exhaustive search, tored open beds, and burned posters, magazines, and books. 

The US government confirmed that it had granted diplomatic recognition to the Junta and the Junta declared what it called internal war, firing the mayors of all large villages and cities, the governors of all the provinces, and the presidents of the universities, replacing them with military personnel, and announced a review of all university faculty appointments. That from the Asian Information Service's compilation of wire service reports from Latin America. 

The following summary of Perón's triumph in Argentina is compiled from Excélsior. Juan Perón regained the presidency of Argentina on Sunday after an absence of 18 years. The 77-year-old Perón received almost 62% of the vote in a landslide victory. His wife Isabel was elected vice president. Perón's victory statement, according to the Associated Press, read, "I cannot say anything because the people have done it all. Now is the time for me to speak, but the time for me to act." Perón stated that he might soon make realistic changes in Argentina's economy, but the first order of business is political. After the political situation is settled, the economy will arrange itself. 

The closest runner-up in the election, Ricardo Balbín of the Radical Civic Union, received 24% of the vote. The member of the Popular Federalist Alliance, a center-right coalition, got 12% of the vote, while the Socialist Worker Party received less than 2%. 

When Perón is inaugurated October 12, he will regain the office that he lost to a military Junta in 1955. Perón came to power as part of the military coup in 1943 and was elected president of Argentina in 1946. Under his administration, workers and trade unions prospered. Workers received substantial wage increases and gained more benefits, such as paid vacations. 

The present Peronist movement is an amorphous coalition of conservatives, including the old-line trade unionists and bureaucrats, and leftists, particularly the leftist Peronist youth. This is an uneasy coalition at best, so it is no surprise that signs of a split between the two groups is already apparent. A violent confrontation occurred between the two factions in June, when Perón returned to Argentina from Spain. Shooting broke out between the Peronist youth and right-wing trade unionists, killing 20 people and causing the huge airport reception for Perón to be cancelled. 

The choice of Perón's third wife, Isabel, as the vice presidential candidate was designed to avoid factional strife, sure to result if one of the other two factions was represented in the choice of the vice presidential candidate. 

This from Excélsior of Mexico City.

You are listening to The Latin American Press Review, a weekly program of news and analysis of Latin America, compiled from leading world newspapers and with emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by The Latin American Policies Alternatives Group. Comments and suggestions are welcome and can be sent to us at 2205 San Antonio Street, Austin, Texas.

This week's feature is on Puerto Rico.

Hundreds of Puerto Ricans, organized by the Puerto Rican independence movement, demonstrated in front of the United Nations last week, demanding freedom from what they called colonial domination by the United States. While Puerto Rico is officially an American protectorate, many feel that the United States' political and economic control over the Caribbean island gives an effective colonial status. In fact, the United Nations Committee on Decolonialization recently condemned the United States for possessing a colony. 

Our feature this week is an analysis taken from Ramparts magazine, in which Michael Meyerson deals with the colonial status of Puerto Rico and political movements striving to attain independence. 

For Puerto Ricans, colonial status is nothing new. They have spent the last five centuries under the rule of one western country or another. Puerto Rico came close to achieving independence in the late 1800s, winning an autonomous constitution from Spain, only to lose it a year later when the island was ceded to the United States as part of the spoils of victory in the Spanish-American War. 

Ruled first by the US military, then by presidential appointees, and only recently by an elected governor, Puerto Ricans have had little power over the fate of their island. They were even made US citizens over the objection of their one elected body. Today, the island's legislature's powers are limited to traffic regulations and the like. Real political power resides in the US House Committee on Insular Affairs and the Senate Committee on Territorial and Insular Affairs, both of which meet in Washington, DC, some 1,500 miles from San Juan. 

Appeals from Puerto Rican courts are decided in Boston and final jurisdiction rests with the US Supreme Court. US federal agencies control the country's foreign relations, customs, immigration, post office system, communications, radio, television, commerce, transportation, maritime laws, military service, social security, banks, currency, and defense. All of this without the people of Puerto Rico having a vote in US elections. 

The extent of US military control of the country is particularly striking. One cannot drive five miles in any direction without running into an army base, nuclear site, or tracking station. Green berets were recently discovered in the famed El Yunque National Rainforest, presumably using the island as a training ground. The Pentagon controls 13% of Puerto Rico's land and has five atomic bases, including Ramey Air Base. A major base for strategic air command, Ramey includes in its confines everything from guided missiles to radio jamming stations, which prevent Radio Havana from reaching Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo. 

In addition to the major bases, there are about 100 medium and small military installations, training camps, and radar and radio stations. In the late 1940s, Puerto Rico became the target of Operation Bootstrap. Hailed as an economic new deal for the island, Bootstrap bore the kind of name that encourages Americans to believe unquestioningly in their country's selfless generosity to other peoples. In truth, the new program was a textbook, perfect example of imperialism, guaranteeing tax-free investment to US firms, developing the island as a market for US goods. 

As The Wall Street Journal put it, "Two million potential customers live on Puerto Rico, but the hopeful industrial planners use it as a shopping center for the entire Caribbean population of 13 million." 

Ramparts states that while it fed American sense of self-righteousness and brought profits to US investors, Operation Bootstrap left untouched the misery of the majority of Puerto Rico's 2.5 million inhabitants. In fact, by limiting the development of the island's economy and forcing continual dependence on the US, Operation Bootstrap deepened the cycle of poverty in Puerto Rico. Four out of every five Puerto Rican families earn less than $3,000 per year. One-half receive less than $1,000 annually. 

Oscar Lewis puts unemployment at 14%. Knowledgeable Puerto Ricans insist that a figure as high as 30% is more realistic. That is a permanent condition twice as bad as the depths of the Great Depression in this country. Per capita income in Mississippi, our poorest state, was 81% higher than in Puerto Rico in 1960. Whereas wages are a fraction of those on the mainland, the cost of living on the island is higher. Most statistics place island costs at 25% higher than those in New York City, Chicago, or Boston. 

If it does little to improve the luck of the poor, Bootstrap has by any standards been a bargain for investors, offering US firms cheap labor and tax holidays of 10 to 17 years. Bootstrap was hailed by Hubert Humphrey as the miracle of the Caribbean. As the colonial government reports, manufacturers averaged 30% on their investment, thanks to the productivity of Puerto Rico's three-quarter million willing, able workers. 

Profits in electronics run 10.8 times those of the mainland industry's average. Every dollar invested has brought a profit of ¢30 during the first year. US investments in Puerto Rico are the highest after Venezuela in all of Latin America. For every dollar produced in the island's industrial system, only ¢17 is left in Puerto Rico. Only Britain, Canada, Japan, and West Germany import more US goods. This solid of less than 3 million people buys more from us than do Spain, Portugal, Austria, Ireland, and the four Scandinavian nations combined. 

Sugar and petroleum account for most of the country's industry. The sugar industry is controlled by three US companies and accounts for half of the island's agricultural income, a fact determined not by the agricultural needs of the island, but by the US sugar quota. Impoverished Puerto Rican plantation workers drop the cane for tax for US companies, ship the raw product to the United States where is refined, packaged, and taxed, and then buy back the finished product at its opening prices. 

Only the petrochemical industry has seen a bigger growth in Puerto Rico, with heavy investments from every major US petroleum corporations, including Phillips, Union Carbide, Texaco and Standard. Virtually bringing the Caribbean coast of the island in search of oil, they have caused severe pollution in some of the best fishing waters in the world. 

This together with the fact that the Federal Government prohibits Puerto Ricans from maintaining its own fishing crates, has resulted in the island being forced to import 95% of the fish it consumes. 

Since Meyerson's article, in Ramparts was published, it has been announced that large international oil companies intend to construct in the country a deep seaport, or super port, for the receiving, storing, transferring and refining of great quantities of petroleum. The proposed super port, with a capacity of over 300 million tons annually, would initially be accompanied by two to four refineries, each with a capacity of sent 250,000 barrels daily. These would begin operating in late year of 1977. 

Plans also call for linking to the super port a refining capacity of sent 6 million barrels daily of crude oil for the decade of 1980. The new refineries would then be accompanied by new and expanded petrochemical plants. The super port refinery petrochemical plant complex would come to occupy some 33,750 acres of the western coast of the country before the year 2000. Estimates indicate that the industrial complex would triple US investment in Puerto Rico, which already totals $6.8 billion. 

Many Puerto Rican nationalists fear that this would only tighten the grip of the US business interests over the island, and would constitute a formidable obstacle to the application of the United Nations resolutions on colonialism to Puerto Rico. 

In addition to these fears of political and economic control, opponents of the super port project have serious concerns about the effect of the project on the ecology of Puerto Rico. First, according to a study made by the US Army Corp of Engineers, the super port and accompanying developments will require about one billion gallons of fresh water per day by the year 2000. This would exhaust all the water sources and damage them permanently by the introduction of sailing compounds from underground reserves. 

Environmentalists also point out that waters used to cool the complex would reach a total of 30 million gallons of sea water per minute, roughly 12 times the total water discharge by the island's rivers. These salt waters, after going through the machines of the industrial complex, would be returned to the coastline some 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit about normal, seriously affecting the marine life in the area. 

Finally, it is pointed out that the US Army Corp of Engineers study concluded that the discharge of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and particularized matter would be 1,323,000 tons by the year 2000. 

Large as the result of the super port controversy, certain Puerto Rican political groups and newspapers have been denouncing what they call environmental colonialism. These political-economic phenomena, they say, consists of using the land, air, and water of the colonized as receptacles for the poisons and other pollutants that the large industries of the colonized have produced. 

In this manner, the colonizer exports pollution and the cost of combating it outside of his territory, thereby ensuring that a large port of the residue of those industries have no adverse effect on their own economy, public health, and landing environments. While the Meyerson article is published too early to comment on the super port plans, it does deal with the operations of large copper companies. 

Earlier in the 1950s, huge copper deposits were discovered in the interior. American Metal Climax and Kennecott Copper, operating through its auxiliaries, moved in, taking exclusive rights to the deposits. Comparable in size to the largest deposits in this country, the ore value was higher than any in the United States. The deposits are worth at least 1.5 billion. American Metal Climax paid Puerto Rico just $10 for an exploration permit. 

News of the deposits and of the negotiations between the two companies and the government was kept secret, until a pro-independence movement people got hold of word of the talks and began a public campaign. 

Through picketing, diplomatic protests, and local organizing, the Independistas have for four years successfully prevented the companies from starting production. Although the contract has not been signed yet, speculation is that with the 64-year-old millionaire industrious Luis Ferré as the new governor, the signing is imminent. 

Fairly more, Ramparts continues, that Washington propaganda has always held that Puerto Rico has no riches, that it needs the United States; hence, independence is unreasonable. Now Japan has offered the country a better deal on its copper than have a US companies. But its colonial position prohibits Puerto Rico from engaging foreign trade. Undoubtedly, its oil, sugar, tobacco, and coffee could also trade to better prices if offered competitively. 

"There seems no way to check or reverse the depletion of Puerto Rico's riches," says Meyerson, "other than independence." The major argument against independence, aside from lack of natural wealth, has been the size of the country, but Puerto Rico has more people than eight Latin American countries.

In recent years, several groups have appeared which see foreign investors as their principal enemies and have taken extreme actions to combat them. Since New Year's Eve of 1967, at least 75 fires, aimed at North American properties, have caused damages ranging in estimates from $25 to $75 million. No one has been caught, no evidence has been found, and no witnesses have come forth, but a group calling itself the Armed Comandos for Liberation, the CAL, has taken credit for the action. 

To the chagrin of the proper deed, no one can prove who belongs to the CAL. Although the press has attempted to tie the group with the Movement for Puerto Rican Independence. Police have even arrested local members of the Movement for Political Independence in connection with the bombings, but they were forced to release them for lack of anything resembling evidence. 

The island, already blanketed by CIA and FBI agents, has practically suffocated with the massive invasions of reinforcements from those two agencies. "The goal", says the Liberation Movement, "is to make it so costly to stay in Puerto Rico that the corporations will leave. We are in the first stage of operations, our leader said, and in this phase we intend to cause $100 million worth of damage to US concerns. Our idea is to inflict such heavy losses on these enterprises that the insurance companies will have to pay more money in indemnity than they have received in payment, thus upsetting the economy." 

Leading the drive for independence from US domination, the Pro Independence Movement, or MPI, insists that social gestures and independence will not be achieved through the established electoral process, for whatever laws are passed in San Juan are subject to approval by Washington. 

This week's feature was based on the article published in Ramparts magazine, by Michael Meyerson, and augmented by research material provided by the Puerto Rican newspaper, Claridad. 

You have been listening to The Latin American Press Review, our weekly program of news and analysis of Latin America, compiled from leading world newspapers with emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by The Latin American Policies Alternative Group. Comments and suggestions are welcome and can be sent to us at 2205 San Antonio Street, Austin, Texas. This program is distributed by Communication Center, University of Texas at Austin.