1974-02-13

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. 

According to the British news weekly Latin America, more than 20 Latin American foreign ministers will meet in Mexico City on February 21st with United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The foreign ministers plan to raise a number of issues which they feel must be resolved in order to open the new dialogue promised by Kissinger. One of the major questions will be the role of US multinational corporations. There are serious problems, states one agenda point, with the transnationals, which interfere in the internal affairs of countries where they operate, and which tried to remain outside the scope of the law and jurisdiction of national courts. 

Another issue will be the perpetuation of Latin America's dependence on the United States for technological know-how. Mexico, for example, estimates it pays $180 million annually just to acquire patents and technical know-how developed by the United States. Latin American countries want the United States to help create an organization which can put technological knowledge in the hands of the developing countries to reduce the price of technology and to increase aid and credits to acquire it.

The restoration of Panama's sovereignty over the canal zone is also high on the agenda. Pressure will likely be placed on the United States to move ahead on a treaty based on the principle signed by Panama and the United States on February the 7th, and Kissinger is also likely to be pressed, at least privately, to lift the US embargo of Cuba.

There has been a flurry of press speculation that Cuba is changing its attitude towards the United States. A routine statement of Cuba's conditions for talks by its ambassador to Mexico was widely reported as a softening of the Cuban position, and Leonid Brezhnev's visit to Cuba, coupled with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko's trip to Washington has been portrayed as further pressure on Fidel Castro to seek détente with United States.

In anticipation of Kissinger's trip to Mexico on February 21st for the Latin American Foreign Ministers Conference, several major newspapers, including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have endorsed a change in US policy toward Cuba. The Nixon administration is reportedly split on the question, and Kissinger says that the US would re-examine its policy only if Cuba changes its attitude towards the United States.

The Cuban foreign ministry has emphatically denied any change in its attitude toward the United States. In a statement refuting the claim that the ambassador's statement in Mexico signaled a Cuban initiative for detente. The foreign ministry said Cuba will not take the first step in restoring diplomatic ties, and that the United States must first unconditionally lift its embargo and acknowledge that it has no right to intervene directly or indirectly in matters concerning the sovereignty of Latin American countries. Cuba also insists on its sovereignty over Guantanamo, where the United States maintains a naval base. 

Among the statesmen who have commented recently on United States Cuban relations was Argentine president Juan Perón, who expressed his opinion that the United States should definitely lift the economic blockade imposed on Cuba, and also declared that the Caribbean country should be integrated into the Latin American continent as it was before the blockade. The Mexico City daily, Excélsior, quoted Perón, who said he thought Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's recent visit to Cuba was positive if this visit helps to reduce the tension between a Latin American country and the United States. 

Referring to the economic blockade, Perón said that it constituted a tragic error of North American policy. All of what has occurred between the two countries since the imposition of the blockade in 1961, said Perón, has been the direct result of this tragic policy. Perón emphasized, it is necessary that Cuba once again becomes what it always was, a country integrated into the Latin American continent.

Of course, Cuba has an economic system different from our own, but haven't we maintained for almost a century the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of another country? The Argentine government last year awarded Cuba $200 million in credits to buy Argentine manufacturing goods and other trade contracts have been signed between the two countries since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations in May of last year.

Excélsior of Mexico City reports that Senator Edward Kennedy proposed a four-point plan to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States and other Latin American countries. As a first step, Kennedy suggested that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the next foreign minister's meeting, support any initiative which will give the OAS member the liberty to act independently in its relations with Havana. If such a resolution is approved, the commercial and economic blockade of Cuba imposed by the OAS in 1964 would be annulled. 

Excélsior went on to say that Kennedy, in addition, proposed the renewal of air service between the US and Cuba as a means to reunite Cuban families and added that the Nixon administration should encourage an interchange of people and ideas between both countries. Finally, Kennedy said that the United States should take advantage of the reduction of antagonisms that would follow the previous steps in order to initiate a process of official diplomatic normalization that would include the opening of consular offices. 

The Senator, according to Excélsior, put in doubt the state department's declaration that the Cuban policy of exporting revolution is a threat to the peace and liberty of the continent. He cited in contrast Pentagon experts who said that Cuban help to subversive groups is actually minimal. Kennedy underlined the fact that Soviet leader Brezhnev, in his visit to Cuba last week, stated that the communists do not support the exportation of revolution. He added that it is doubtful that Latin American nations would imitate Cuba since this island suffers great economic difficulties, depends enormously on the Soviet Union and maintains a closed political system. 

Diplomat John Rarick expressed his opposition to Kennedy and blamed Cuba for what he called an increase in communist activity in Mexico and Bolivia. For his part, senator Byrd speaking in Congress, reiterated his appeal to normalize relations between Havana and Washington. He said that to renew relations with Cuba does not signify that the United States has to adopt their policies. In the same way, it doesn't signify such to have relations with the Soviet Union. 

This report taken from Excélsior of Mexico City and Latin America, a British economic and political weekly. 

Opinião of Brazil forecast that the United States has decided from appearances to break the economic blockade of Cuba after 15 years. The American government seems disposed to authorize the giant car manufacturers that have subsidiaries in Argentina for Chrysler and General Motors to export their products to Cuba. It seems strange that the American government determines who its multinationals should sell to. In the first place, American corporations located in that country are subject to Argentine laws. In second place, Argentina, since Perón's rise to power maintains diplomatic relations with Cuba. 

The commercial restrictions to which the multinationals in Argentina are subject have begun to cause problems with the government of that country. Recently, Argentina conceded $200 million worth of credit to Cuba to buy automobiles, trucks and tractors. Since the manufacturers of these products are, in large part, American enterprises and impasse was created, how to sell them to Cuba if the American government does not permit the foreign subsidiaries of its enterprises to export to Cuba. This episode reveals not only how the American government through its large corporations intervenes in the internal affairs of other countries, but also that in reality American multinationals are subject to the directives of their nation of origin. 

But if the adjective multinational seems inadequate to characterize these enterprises, it does reveal the dependency of these corporations on their foreign profits. Opinião reports, for example, that Burroughs, a large manufacturer of computers earns 41% of its profit abroad. Coca-Cola, 55%. Dow Chemical, 48%. And IBM, 54%. Clearly, says Opinião, an important portion of these prophets are from underdeveloped nations. 

The British News weekly Latin America reports that hardly had President Velasco of Peru called for the elimination of "unnecessary military expenditure" when the Brazilian press announced massive and prolonged military maneuvers on its northern and western frontiers. These maneuvers cover Brazil's so-called Amazonian frontier. Observers have compared these operations with those that took place last year on the frontiers with Argentina and Uruguay, which at the time were widely interpreted as a show of strength to Brazil's southern neighbors. At the same time, Venezuelan sources alleged that Brazil is creating a powerful fifth army for the control of its Amazonian frontiers. 

The news of the military operations came at a time when complaints by Brazil's neighbors about peaceful infiltration of frontier areas by Brazilian settlers have swelled into a veritable chorus. In Paraguay, the opposition has alleged that in one area, some 37,000 Brazilian families have installed themselves on Paraguayan soil. 

The main criticism of Brazil, however, has come from Venezuelan sources. The spearhead of this attack has been the Caracas evening paper, El Mundo, which claimed to have discovered a secret Brazilian plan to invade neighboring countries if any of their governments go communist. According to El Mundo, the first objective of Brazilian expansionist plans is Bolivia, where Brazilian landowners in the Abuna River area are alleged to be a bridgehead for further Brazilian incursions. 

The paper declared the immediate objective to be iron ore deposits, but added that if the Bolivian government showed a nationalist or left-wing line, Brazil would support a secessionist movement in the Bolivian state of Santa Cruz, which borders Brazil. El Mundo said warnings about Brazilian incursions on the frontier with Venezuela itself had already been made in secret reports by the Venezuela military to the government. 

Some support for the El Mundo story has come from a report by a military specialist, Hermann Hauser, who said Brazil has been establishing heavily armed military posts along the border with road links to major military bases in the state of Rio Branco. Venezuelan's forces in the area, according to Hauser, consists of a mere handful of national guards. One member of the Venezuelan Congress alleged a plot supported by the Pentagon for Brazil and Colombia to create a territorial crisis with Venezuela, and he demanded that the Venezuelan government should set up an inquiry into the extent of Brazilian penetration of Venezuelan territory. 

The Brazilian government has, so far, made no official denial of these allegations, and the Brazilian press in general has made no comment, possibly because of fears of censorship. However, the Rio de Janeiro daily, Jornal do Brasil, has come out with the spirited defense of the newly announced military operations. It said every nation had the right to carry out military operations on its own territory and that only the bad faith of speculative commentators could attribute expansionist designs to perfectly normal military maneuvers. 

These operations it said were also in the interests of Brazil's neighbors, since the frontier areas were notoriously under policed and so open to illegal paramilitary operations against those countries as much as against Brazil itself. The papers said the allegations of Brazilian expansionism were being made by those who "seek a pretext to divide South America into two, Spanish America and Portuguese America." 

This from the liberal 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.

Our feature this week is an analysis of the recent turbulent events in Argentina taken from the Cuban, Prensa Latina and the Mexico City daily, Excélsior. 

Juan Perón is probably the best known political figure in Latin America since his appearance on the Argentine political scene in 1943 when he came to power in a military coup. He solidified his power base by building a huge political party whose main program was the support of this one man. At the same time, he took advantage of workers' unrest and constructed a huge trade union bureaucracy, also under his control. 

But these institutions were not the only factors which kept Perón in power. Immediately after World War II, world beef prices were high in a booming world economy and Argentine beef was bringing big export earnings for that country. Perón forced cattle raisers to sell their beef to a state corporation at a low price, and the government used the export earnings to begin industrializing the country and also to construct a welfare state apparatus to maintain Perón's political base. By the early fifties, though, world beef prices had begun to fall from the post-war boom. Also, Perón's manipulation of the cattle-raising industry had seriously damaged this important sector of the economy. As a result, Perón's almost hysterical support among Argentine masses fell off slightly. 

There was still another factor which undermined Perón. Perón had always maintained a nationalistic foreign policy and was particularly unfriendly to the United States. By the early fifties, many United States investors were interested in establishing operations in Argentina and no doubt would not have objected to a change in government. 

Finally, in 1955, Perón was overthrown in a right-wing military coup. In the following years, the military allowed some elections to take place, but the Peronist party was always banned from participating. The Peronists, however, always managed to show their strength by casting blank votes in the elections. 

These elections always showed that, whether in Argentina or not, Perón was still the strongest political figure in Argentine politics. Throughout the long years of Perón's absence, the Peronist party came to include many diverse political tendencies. The trade union movement came under the control of the more conservative wing of the party, and as a result has been somewhat passive and pressing for workers' demands. Meanwhile, the more leftist elements of the party, led primarily by the Peronist Youth Group, agitated strongly for Perón's return, and early this year, the military consented. After 17 years of exile, Perón was once again allowed to return to Argentina. 

Last September, Perón ran for president and won by a landslide. Yet his return has not turned Argentina into a sunny paradise. Social conflict has sharpened tremendously. Nor has Perón been able to maintain his position as the unchallenged leader of the Argentine masses. While most of the older trade union officials remain loyal to Perón's dictates, the sharpening economic and political crisis of the past few years has produced new political forces, rooted in an important section of the industrial working class who owe Perón little and put worker demands ahead of the aging politician's almost mystical personal appeal. 

When the military dictatorship headed by general Alejandro Lanusse last year invited Perón to return to the helm of Argentine politics after 17 years of Spanish exile, they were confessing their inability to cope with an increasingly revolutionary situation. The worsening economic crisis together with the junta's brutal and ineffective repression gave rise to over 500 strikes involving more than 5 million workers, a high tide in workers' struggle. While urban guerrilla organizations continued raids and kidnappings with virtual impunity. The Lanusse regime viewed Perón as the only political figure who, they hoped, could stabilize the situation. 

In terms of the class forces within Argentina today, says Cuban Prensa Latina, the invitation extended to Perón represented an attempt at a compromise by big property owners whose careers and fortunes are tied to the United States. About a third of Argentina's foreign debt, the largest single portion, is owed to US banks, while nearly another fifth is held by international institutions and banking syndicates such as the World Bank and the Paris Club, in which the US plays a dominant role. The pro-US group, while it makes up probably the biggest sector of the Argentine business community as a whole, is probably also the one with the narrowest popular base, due to the general unpopularity of US business interest in Argentina. 

Unable under Lanusse to keep its grip on the Argentine situation, this section of the business and industrial community, by inviting Perón to return, offered to share power with other sectors of the Argentine business community who have a Yankee nationalist orientation. There are actually two main sections of this community in Argentina today. The first, led by Perón, prefers to build economic relations with Western Europe and Japan as well as China, while restricting relations with the United States.

It sees both the US and the USSR as superpowers threatening to Argentina's independence, also influential, but still weaker than the first is a pro-Soviet sector of businessmen centering around a number of Argentine corporations with Soviet affinities and controlling the newspaper El Mundo and a television channel in Buenos Aires. The current economics minister, José Gelbard, is a representative of this group.

While the precise concessions to be made by the pro-US elements to other interests are the objects of a continuing struggle, the role and vision for Perón has been made amply clear. While attacking Yankee imperialism, he is to engineer a social truth to bring the workers' movement under control so as to raise the profits and rescue the power of Argentine industrialists as a whole. 

Has Perón kept his part of the bargain? A series of purges directed against the left-wing of the Peronist movement soon after Perón's return, using the assassination of a rightist leader by an urban guerrilla group as provocation, together with a series of anti-democratic regulations within the trade union machinery have identified Perón as allied with the right-wing faction in the party. The right-Peronist trade union hierarchy appears to have the green light to control or suppress the left. 

Nevertheless, despite measures of repression bearing Perón's signature, the aged leader's image is so tied up in Argentine eyes with popular and national aspirations that his return has been taken by the majority of the employed workers, the semi-employed poor, and peasants as a signal to redouble their struggle. The focus has turned from urban terrorism to mass organization in the factories. 

While the 62 national unions and the General Confederation of Workers are still controlled by the old line rightist Peronist hierarchy, millions of workers within these organizations have become involved in a struggle to democratize them and make them responsive to the rank and file. Agitation among agricultural proletarians in the plantations and of poor peasants has also accelerated. In the enormous ghettos of misery of the cities, the fight for a better life and decent conditions has grown into an important mass movement. Not least the students have been reorganizing and their movement expanding. 

Since his return to the helm of Argentine politics last year, Perón has been repeatedly threatened by the Argentine rightists whose inclinations toward a military coup are well-known. Whether or not Perón and more generally Perónism can stay in power, depends greatly on his ability to convince these men that he alone retains the overwhelming support of the masses of Argentine people. 

Crucial in this endeavor is the Peronist trade union hierarchy, which constitutes Perón's most important permanent organizational underpinning. This machinery, however, long ago forfeited claims to representing the material demands of the massive workers, which it once could boast of. It is an increasingly goon-ridden apparatus whose operations alienate the rank and file of the unions more than they attract them. It is no wonder, therefore, that the new left-wing organizations which arose during the military dictatorships prior to Perón have not merged themselves unconditionally into the Peronist movement since Perón's return, but have rather maintained their independence. 

The most important of the relatively new forces on the scene is the Revolutionary Communist Party, CPR, created in a split from the Communist Party in 1967. The CPR spent its first five years in illegality and has grown considerably in the past year. In the student movement in Cordoba to cite one example, they grew in a year from 40 members to 300. Their newspaper, New Hour, has been appearing regularly for six years. 

There are also at least five urban guerrilla groups in Argentina. Despite the fact that guerrilla groups made a temporary peace with Perón, recent events may bring about drastic changes in the situation. Excélsior of Mexico City recently reported that a strong guerrilla attack on the Army has brought relations between Juan Perón and much of the Argentine left to the breaking point this month. About 70 members of the People's Revolutionary Army, ERP, dressed in government military uniforms, and traveling in stolen army trucks entered the garrison at Azul, 125 miles south of Buenos Aires, January 20th, and held the command post for seven hours.

The attackers killed the commander of the 2000 man tank regiment, his wife, and a sentry before fleeing, taking the deputy commander as hostage, two guerrillas were killed. Thirteen suspected participants in the raid were arrested a few days later for questioning. It was the first large scale attack by a guerrilla group on elements of the Argentine government as distinct from targets belonging to foreign corporations, which have been frequent targets for several armed groups.

The raid provoked an immediate and furious reply by President Perón appearing on nationwide television in his general's uniform. Perón equated the attack on the garrison with an attack on himself. He appealed to the trade unions, the youth movement, and all other organizations to cooperate with police and army forces in the fight against the guerrillas. To annihilate as soon as possible this criminal terrorism is a task to which everyone must commit himself, he said. It is time to stop shouting Perón and to defend him. 

One of Perón's first steps in the anti-guerrilla campaign was to sack the governor of Buenos Aires province, Oscar Bidegain, who was considered a progressive by the Peronist left wing. Three or four other provincial governors of a similar character are also expected to be fired. It has become evident from the purges that the raid on the Azul garrison is being used by the Perón government as a provocation to further suppress the Argentine left, whether sympathetic to the ERP or not.

Another step in the repression was the police confiscation and burning of an edition of El Mundo, the left Peronist newspaper in Buenos Aires. Perón, reversing the liberalization moves enacted when he first returned to power, has also pushed through the Argentine parliament a stiff anti-terrorist law, which would virtually suspend civil liberties. This action aroused the opposition of nearly the entire left, Peronist or not.

It is quite possible that the guerrillas hoped to drive Perón into the arms of the hard line military, thus exposing him as the right-winger they have always said he is, leaving no room for leftists within Perónism. Such a situation would seriously alter the balance of power in Argentina. 

This report on Argentina was taken from the Cuban, Prensa Latina, and the Mexico City daily, Excelsior. 

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.