1974-02-07

This is the Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection and analysis of news and events in Latin America as seen by leading world news sources, with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group of Austin, Texas. 

In anticipation of Henry Kissinger's upcoming visit to Latin America, several Latin American political figures and diplomats have been speaking out on US-Latin American relations, especially economic ties. One thing which has sparked commentary is newly released figures on Mexican trade in the first 11 months of 1973. The Mexico City daily, Excélsior, reports that the bright side of the story is that Mexican exports increased by more than 6 billion pesos to a high of 27 billion pesos. However, overall, the trade picture worsened.

While money coming into the country from these exports increased by that same 6 billion pesos, money going out of the country for imports increased by some 13 billion pesos, leaving an increase in the country's trade deficit by 7 billion pesos. Excélsior concludes that if Mexico's foreign commerce did grow in 1973, its commercial imbalance grew even more. 

While from Caracas, Excélsior reports that Venezuelan president-elect Carlos Andres Perez recently revealed that his coming administration will propose a conference of Latin American countries to plan a protectionist strategy for the continent's raw materials. Perez noted, while meeting with Central American economic ministers, that, "The developed countries have been exercising an economic totalitarianism that more and more oppresses our economies and our development possibilities." The Venezuelan president-elect added that it is imperative that the developed countries pay a just price for their natural resources. That will be the only way of compensating for the prices which the underdeveloped countries have to pay for the manufactured goods and the costly technology which they are sold. 

And on the same subject, the Mexican ambassador to the United States, speaking at Johns Hopkins University near Baltimore, reported that the Latin American trade deficit in 1973 paid for some two thirds of the US balance of payment surplus. The ambassador, after pointing out that he was working with data supplied by the US Department of Commerce, noted that in 1973, the US exported to Latin America goods valued at eight million and one quarter dollars, while it imported from that region less than $7 billion worth of products. These figures indicate that Latin America contributed at least $1 billion to the US trade surplus, which was 1.7 billion in 1973. 

The ambassador went on to say that the situation is worsening. In 1960, Latin America had a deficit of $49 million. But while the price of raw materials only rose 8% in the last decade, that of North American finished goods climbed 22%. He condemned the monopoly or virtual monopoly position of capital and technology that the industrialized countries enjoy. The ambassador warned that economic coercion can produce an opposite reaction from that intended, giving as an example the disruption caused by the increase in petroleum prices. In the same statement, the ambassador analyzed in general terms North American aid to Latin America, and he emphasized that 60% of US aid must be repaid. That is, it is called aid, but actually amounts to loans of money at commercial interest rates. 

The Mexican ambassador concluded by commenting that the coming visit of Latin American ministers with Henry Kissinger, "Will be an excellent opportunity to open a continuing dialogue on the problems that the Latin American countries face." The meeting with Kissinger to which the Mexican ambassador referred is the Conference of Ministers of the Organization of American States, scheduled to be held in Mexico City at the end of the month. On its agenda will be included cooperation for development, protection and trade embargoes, solution to the Panama Canal question, restructuring of the inter-American system, international trade, the world monetary system, and the operations of multinational corporations. 

According to Latin America, Kissinger's aim is to stabilize the situation in Latin America, as he has attempted to do in other parts of the world. Traditionally, the continent has provided the United States with primary products and raw materials at relatively low cost. Now, prices on the world market are soaring, to the extent that the United States is thinking officially of endorsing long-term agreements between producer and consumer organizations. Since Kissinger took over at the State Department, Venezuela has begun to develop a petroleum policy which makes a distinction and a difference in price between the industrialized countries and the countries of Latin America. In 1973, the world price of sugar and coffee, let alone other products, broke all previous records. 

Latin America says that in spite of regional rivalries and local crises, there does exist a common philosophy among political leaders in Latin America toward the United States. However wide the political gulf that has separated past and present Latin American leaders, all agreed on a number of fundamental points. First, that the problem of US intervention, call it imperialist or paternalist, is perennial. Secondly, that Washington's policy towards Latin America has generally been aimed at securing the interests of US business. 

Thirdly, the countries of Latin America ought to take protectionist measures, regulating the repatriation of profits, taxing luxury imports, selecting the areas for foreign investment, and increasing in volume and price the export of primary products and manufactured goods. Finally, local armed forces, or part of them, have been systematically used as instruments of the foreign policy of the United States in Latin America ever since the beginning of the Cold War. Military assistance, the conferences and exchange programs and the training programs have all helped to overthrow constitutional parliamentary governments and to replace them by militarist or Bonapartist regimes. 

In diplomatic and political circles in Latin America, there is a sense of considerable expectation with regard to Kissinger. The impression of Latin American diplomats is that Kissinger now speaks for a consensus of Congress, Vice President Gerald Ford and of President Nixon himself. Add to this the fact that Kissinger can count on the support of the Soviet Union, the Chinese, and is respected, if not loved, by Europe and Japan, and it is not surprising that, in the words of a Brazilian diplomat, he should now be seen in the role of a planetary [inaudible 00:07:06]. This report has been compiled from Excélsior, The Mexico City Daily, and the British weekly and economic and political journal, Latin America. 

According to the Mexico City daily, Excélsior, more than 10,000 Bolivian peasants blockading a highway near Cochabamba were attacked last week by government tanks and mortar fire. A dozen people were killed and many more were wounded. The peasants, who were rebelling against drastic price increases and food shortages, had taken as hostage General Perez Tapia, who was sent to negotiate with them. The nation's strongman, General Hugo Banzer, announced that the troops were dispatched to rescue the captured general. Perez Tapia himself, however, told a different story. He said that after fruitful dialogue, the peasants released him with a message that they would lift the blockade as soon as Banzer came to negotiate with them. Instead, Banzer sent the troops. 

According to the Christian Science Monitor, some observers in Bolivia say that General Banzer's current troubles are so serious that they could signal the beginning of the end for his government. In chronically unstable Bolivia, governments have a way of coming in and going out in rapid succession. Actually, General Banzer has been in power longer than the average. His government, when he came into office, was the 187th in Bolivia's 148 years of independence.

During his tenure, General Banzer has faced a series of tests, but his rightist-oriented government has managed to stay in office through a combination of military muscle and moderate political support. In recent months, there has been growing evidence of military divisions. Leftist-leaning military officers who supported the government of General Juan Jose Torres, whom General Banzer deposed, have long been unhappy about the conservative political and economic direction of the Banzer government. 

Now they're being supported by a growing political opposition, sparked by the withdrawal of the MNR, a leading political party from the civilian-military coalition supporting General Banzer. MNR leader and former president Victor Paz Estenssoro was exiled in the wake of the MNR's withdrawal, and this in turn has caused further bitterness on the part of many Bolivians. In addition, the MNR has strong ties with elements in the peasantry, including the well-organized peasant forces in the Cochabamba area where the current wave of peasant unrest began. It is presumed that the MNR's troubles with the Banzer government are a factor in the current peasant revolt. At the same time, however, the revolts erupted last week largely because the government imposed 100% increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs. 

The government justified the increases on the basis of a need to keep food from being smuggled out to Bolivia to neighboring countries, where higher prices are being paid. But the peasants, who live an impoverished existence, rejected this argument. They were also supported by industrial workers in La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, who staged a series of one-day strikes last week to protest the price hikes. As the strikes, revolts, and unrest mounted, General Banzer imposed a state of siege throughout the country. Just a step short of full martial law, the state of siege permits the government to ban rallies and demonstrations, and allows the police to make arrests and carry out searches without warrants. 

Excélsior reports that Banzer has blamed the recent troubles on communist agitators. He charged that the peasant rebellion was organized in Paris by the noted French Marxist Regis Debray and former Bolivian official Antonio Arguedas, with the support of Fidel Castro. Banzer declared that agitators got 10,000 peasants drunk on chicha, a local whiskey, and paid them huge sums of money to revolt. He called on citizens to kill all extremists and communists, and promised that if the citizens did not do so, the government would. This report on peasant unrest and reprisal is taken from Mexico City's daily Excélsior and the Christian Science Monitor. 

Latin America reports from Chile that the conservative newspaper El Mercurio said recently, "Those who thought that military rule would be sufficient to bring new investment and price stability to Chile were very far from the truth. Since that is exactly what this leading Chilean newspaper did think last September," says Latin America, "it was courageous of it to admit its mistake." But there was a more objective reason for its change of heart. The military censor has now moved into the heart of the conservative Edwards Publishing empire, and the previous week, its more popular evening paper, La Segunda, was closed for a day after the military accused it of causing public alarm. The editor, Mario Careño, said they had taken exception to a story accusing shopkeepers of hoarding cigarettes while awaiting a price rise.

Careño, who was one of the most tenacious opponents of the Allende government, lost some of his early enthusiasm for the junta after being taken to identify the tortured body of one of his relatives in a ditch. In the first months of military rule, newspapers of the Edwards chain were merely expected to send a copy of the first edition along to the local garrison commander. Now the army clearly feels that self-restraint is not enough. With the definitive closure last month of Tribuna, the vehicle for the right wing views of the National Party, the Chilean press is no longer able to fulfill its traditional role of revealing the differences that exist within the political elite. The left-wing press was of course closed immediately after the coup. 

But with or without newspapers to publicize these differences, there is no doubt that the contradictions between the various groups that support the junta are growing, as indeed are those within the armed forces. 

But the junta still appears inwardly solid and outwardly in control. On Monday, the formal decree was published declaring the remaining political parties in recess, which effectively debars them from playing any political role for the indefinite future. The parties must supply the military authorities with a list of their members, and any change in their officers must have military approval. They may not engage in political activity in the guise of the pursuit of cultural, sports or humanitarian ends, nor may they interfere ideologically in labor, student or community organizations. In these circumstances, says Latin America, it is not surprising that the junta's honeymoon with the Chilean middle class is now coming to an end, perhaps more rapidly than expected. This report on recent developments in Chile is taken from the British news weekly, Latin America. 

You are listening to the Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection and analysis of news and events in Latin America as seen by leading world news sources, with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. Comments and suggestions are welcome and may be sent to the group at 2205 San Antonio Street, Austin, Texas. This program is distributed by Communication Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

The views expressed are solely those of the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group and its sources, and should not be considered as being endorsed by UT Austin or this station. 

David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the outstanding painters of the Mexican Muralist movement, died on January 6th, 1974. On today's feature, we will hear from Dr. Hunter Ingalls of the University of Texas Art Department, a specialist in 20th century art, and Dr. Damián Bayón of Argentina, a visiting professor in the University of Texas Art Department. Siqueiros's career began as a night student at the National School of Fine Arts in Mexico in 1911, where his political involvement soon led him to participate in a student strike and the formation of an independent school.

Siqueiros the Marxist practiced in his art and life his political beliefs, which led him to jail and exile on many occasions. At the time of his death, he was a persona non grata in the United States, unable to enter this country. Beginning in 1926, he spent almost five years working to organize mine workers in Jalisco. 

He fought in the Spanish Civil War with the Republicans. He painted murals in the United States, Chile and Cuba, as well as in his native Mexico, where his most famous works appear in the Palace of Fine Arts and the Polyforum. He was jailed in Mexico for his political activities from 1960 to 1964. In 1967, he received the Lenin Peace Prize, and his last major work, "The March of Humanity in Latin America", was dedicated in 1971. Dr. Ingalls, do you consider Siqueiros a significant painter of the 20th century? 

Well, I'd say he's very significant. However, I feel that the context of his significance is not one that we're yet giving sufficient consideration to as we study art history. I think it's very easy to study—be told that you have learned of 20th century art, of significant 20th century art, without having the name Siqueiros ever mentioned, and also without having the Mexican mural movement, or any recognition of work in this hemisphere south of our own borders taken into account at all. 

So I think he is significant, and I think we have some learning to do in terms of what we think of as significant these days. Of course, that is my opinion and it's formed in part in what I feel to be the deficiencies in my own education as I was made aware of the area of my interest. I've personally had to definitely go out on my own rather than find available courses at Columbia University to learn about this man. 

Why do you think that Siqueiros is not recognized in this country? 

Because the recognition of art in this country, I feel, is very much under the influence of certain economic factors. And Siqueiros insisted on painting in what he thought of as a revolutionary style, which meant painting murals, which meant painting murals he hoped in places where more and more people could see them. And this is simply something that can't be bartered and traded in the marketplace. The easel painting can be. And the energy of focus, I think it's happening, it's snowballing. I think in the thirties, Siqueiros and the other Mexican muralists were written about, were taken into serious consideration in this country. And now, no, because the only people in the past that are looked on, with respect, I think are those that can be sold. 

Dr. Bayón, how do you see Siqueiros? 

Well, I have just written a book on Latin American contemporary art, which is printed now in Mexico. And I'm sorry to say that I treated Siqueiros rather badly. I say I'm prevented because he died after, but my ideas are the same, I'm seriously speaking. I think that the mural movement, the three great Mexican painters, as they call them, Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, the really two great or important painters are the first two, that is to say Rivera and Orozco. And I have my good reasons to that, because the idea of painting murals was not their own. It was Vasconcelos, who was the minister of education in the 1920s, after the revolution, who got the idea of painting the revolution on the walls of Mexico. And he found those two first artists I was referring to, Rivera and Orozco, who were young and having a wonderful career. 

Rivera was in Europe, painting in Cubist style, and he was really a very great artist. And he renounced everything to go to Mexico, and he started that discovery. Siqueiros is a different case. He came later. He was a political man. He was a born leader, he was a man of action who had a very great idea of himself. And I think that he used his power of action and his power on the other people through painting. That is a different problem. I say of the others, for instance of Orozco, that he was a born painter and he wasn't able to express himself in another way. Siqueiros, I'm sure that could, and he wrote manifestos and very shocking, revolutionary things. He was really a man of action, and at the same time, being very curious, he just—with the new materials and the new ways of painting, he was in a way, a precursor. 

I mean, he started using dripping for instance. That doesn't mean that Pollock is not the real inventor of the dripping technique. And he used light and masonite to paint on. He was really an interesting man, trying many things. For instance, the three-volume paintings, murals with a third dimension as he did in the University of Mexico, that for me are completely... He failed completely in those murals. But anyhow, it's interesting, as the idea goes. I mean, to paint a mural that gets out of the wall. So I don't consider him very much in the universal history of painting, but I consider in our Latin American—I'm speaking as a Latin American context, as an important artist to be compared with four or five Brazilian, Argentinian, Chilean painters of this century as really important artists, and merit to be well-known here in the United States or in Europe. 

Do you think that his political beliefs interfered in his painting? That he was too concerned with— 

No, I think he was perfectly honest with himself. His ideas, he wrote very much. He wrote several books and manifestos and little booklets and little leaflets and things. Very provocative. They have been published in Mexico and in Venezuela. Each time that he traveled—he went to Poland and to India and to all Latin America. He was giving lectures, and those lectures were to take the side of social realism. Finally, he was much more free than in the communist countries, in Russia or Poland of today. He was very avant-garde for those people. I don't know if he was enough avant-garde for us. I saw the Polyforum because I was living in Mexico at that time, and for me, it's a complete failure. It's completely out of the question in 1971, as the date. Muralism had a sense in the twenties and forties. I don't think it has any sense even in Mexico in 1970, and the young people of Mexico think the same. 

I have to give a second thought to that question of the politics, do you think the politics had a detrimental effect? Because it brings up the very basic issue that many people, as they look at the art of Picasso and Braque and that sort of modernism, which is sort of considered to be the mainstream. I'm not saying my colleague has this attitude, but there very definitely is an attitude about the politics and art don't mix. I would like to refer that approach to the very contemporary attitude among many artists that they want to paint conceptually. We are now in an age where many, many artists are seeking a conceptual approach to their art. 

Now, the concepts that these artists use are totally within the realm of aesthetics. Is it not just as viable to draw concepts from history, from social history, political history? And then in order for us to get in touch with that, I think we have to go back and study the whole history of Mexican Revolution and to recognize what tremendous power and force there was, not just in terms of the contemporary events, but these artists linking those events with the mythical things of the past. 

The Mural Movement did create quite a stir in the art world in the 1930s. Do you see any future impact for this sort of popular art, or do you think that it has died out completely? 

I have an answer. I am very much interested by the Cuban posters, meaning Cuba in 1970. And at the same time there was a great national annual exhibition of painting and sculpture. I was not interested or impressed by anything I saw there. It was copied off Europe and the States through magazines. And I was very much impressed with the beautiful posters, enormous, covering the whole building, that they are making. Very much inspired in pop art, in art of everything that is Western. But anyhow, I think that is the poster goes to the public. The public has to go to the murals. That is the effect. That's my answer. 

Well, the one rough thing that pops into my mind with that question is the Chicago wall painting people, painting walls under the supervision of master artists. I've written and asked for slides of some of this material and haven't gotten them. It's sort of an underground art movement. There is an interest in this country in this kind of thing. Even in our own city of Austin, we have just in the last year seen murals springing up on all sorts of walls. I'm not certain that murals are out of fashion or dead. And specifically, it's interesting now that people think of the exterior wall, not the interior wall. Not the wall in the chamber that's only visited by the government officials, but to throw the wall at everybody passes up into sharp relief. 

There, I think, there is still importance. As I was reviewing some reading about Siqueiros, two words popped into my mind. I like to play with words, and maybe that's part of the reason for these two. But the supercharge and the demiurge. The supercharge with its reference to mechanics and machines and high power. The demiurge, which refers to emotional power and the physical, muscular human being, but also the mythological figure.

And Siqueiros is very much interested, I think, in merging these two powers, and in doing so in such a manner as to activate the spaces and the interiors of buildings. And personally, I wish I had a greater opportunity to be in those spaces, to experience those spaces. I definitely feel I've got to reserve my own opinion until such time as I can get in there and see how it works. I think spatially as well as thematically, he does some very interesting things. 

Thank you both very much for being with us today. Our guests today have been Dr. Hunter Ingalls of the University of Texas Art Department and Dr. Damián Bayón of Argentina, a visiting professor at the University of Texas. 

You have been listening to the Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection and analysis of news and events in Latin America, as seen by leading world news sources with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. Comments and suggestions are welcome and may be sent to the Group at 2205 San Antonio Street, Austin, Texas. This program is distributed by Communication Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

The views expressed are solely those of the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group and its sources, and should not be considered as being endorsed by UT Austin or this station.