Annotations for Countries: Japan

The ecology movement has recently captured the public's attention in industrialized countries. As the deterioration of the environment becomes more evident and the scientific evidence on the dangers of pollution accumulates, it is to be hope that Western Europe, Japan, and the United States will begin to implement policies to protect the ecosystem, but the programs proposed while popular at home are being seen as a threat to development in many parts of the world.

Some underdeveloped countries view ecological concerns as yet another obstacle created by the developed countries to their economic growth and are refusing to defer their dreams of industrialization because of the dangers to the ecology. The conflict between industrialized nations and the Third World over ecology is in its early stages, but important political, legal and moral questions have been raised, and these questions are of such a fundamental nature that there is some doubt as to whether they can be solved peacefully. Today we will describe the position Brazil took at the United Nations Conference on the human environment in Stockholm last year and then discuss some of the implications of their position. Though we feel that the issues advanced are of extreme importance, ironically, it seems to us that it will not be Brazil, but other poorer countries that will find themselves immersed in these conflicts.

Brazil's position in Latin America is most unique. Brazil has neither been resigned to the status of a non-developing satellite of the developed world, but neither is it moving in the direction of attaining development according to socialist models, nor is it moving towards an economics of cooperation with other underdeveloped nations. Instead, Brazil's governing military group is attempting rapid growth in industrialization similar to the developed mental methods followed by Western capitalist countries earlier in their histories. Brazil is one of the few Third World countries, perhaps the last, that has a chance of making it into the ranks of the so-called developed countries under this model of western, i.e. Capitalist development. Brazil's development seems to look favorably upon by the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, and it will presumably assume a place alongside these economically, politically and militarily.

We do, however, in the more general case, agree strongly with these articles' concerns over impending conflicts between developed and undeveloped nations over the usage of world resources. For given the disproportionately enormous resource usage patterns of the developed capitalist countries, it is reasonable to speculate that the development of most of the Third World will indeed be opposed by the economic elites of the developed nations as these powerful nations vie for control of limited resources. The following then is the Brazilian administration's arguments for its right to develop without regard to ecological considerations. The arguments are those developed in a series of articles from Brazil's daily Journal do Brazil, and it's weekly, Realidad.

The Brazilians were unusually blunt in Stockholm, arguing that the worst form of pollution was human poverty and that the industrial nation's concerns about the quality of air and water were luxuries the poor countries could not afford. Brazil's Minister of the Interior told the Assembly on Environment that quote, "For the majority of the world's population, the bettering of conditions is much more a question of mitigating poverty, having more food, better clothing, housing, medical attention and employment than in seeking atmospheric pollution and its reduction."

Brazil's Minister of the interior's argument is open to criticism because rapid industrialization in the Third World without income redistribution often does not improve conditions for the vast majority of the population. Certainly the so-called Brazilian economic miracle has caused widespread suffering among the lower classes. In fact, it has decreased the proletarian share of goods because capital accumulation for industrialization is being achieved by a reduction in workers' real wages. In fact, the situation is so appalling that even Brazil's President Médici remarked publicly last year that, "The economy is doing well and the people are doing poorly."

Yet the Brazilians press on with their policies, justifying them with the convictions that at some point in the future, industrialization will indeed produce great benefits for all classes. This may or may not be true, but from an ecological viewpoint, the important thing is that urgent attempts to industrialize will continue under this model of development.

Basically, the issue as Brazil sees it, revolves around how new ecological concerns will affect their rates of development. Brazilians want to close the enormous and widening gap between themselves and the industrialized nations. While they recognize that ecological problems are not illusory, they feel that a concern for the environment is a trap which may frustrate their desires for rapid development, and they cite three reasons for that fear.

First, devices to reduce chemical and thermal pollution will be expensive and may in addition require lowering production to levels where the environment can absorb the waste generated. It's also observed that precious investment funds would become tied up in non-productive anti-pollutant devices which do not generate new capital. Perhaps most importantly, an anti-pollution campaign would increase the prices of each item produced. The consequences of a jump in prices would be disastrous for a developing economy because it would reduce the already small market for manufactured goods and create a structural block to any further economic growth. Therefore, the Brazilians do not want to take on the economic burdens of protecting the environment. They argued in Stockholm that the rich nations never had such a burden during the 19th century when they were industrializing, and that if the Third World is ever to catch up, it must now have all the advantages the developed world once did.

A second fear expressed by the Brazilians was that the issue of ecology will be used by the industrialized nations as a rationalization to block the Third World's development. They are afraid that rich consumer countries unable or unwilling to control pollution at home and conscious of rendering resource supplies will use these as a justification for keeping a large percentage of the species in underdevelopment and poverty. Ecological concerns have already had an effect, in fact on loan practices from the developed world. As Kalido Mendez, a delegate to the Stockholm Conference pointed out, "It is no accident that the only contributions from the industrialized world that have not declined in the past few years have been military funds and funds designated for population control."

Kalido Mendez's fears, "Namely that the developed countries will act to block development of most of the Third World, seem very real to us. It is however, our perception of the political map that Brazil's development will be permitted even aided by the first world in an effort to make her a partner in maintaining the current power distribution."

The third fear Brazil expressed in the Stockholm conference was that the ecological issue may sometime be used as an entering wedge by the industrialized nations to interfere in the internal affairs of the Third World. While this possibility seems remote at the moment, the situation could become extremely explosive if there were an ecological crisis, such as an oil shortage. Brazilians are especially sensitive to any infringement on their sovereignty because of a developing conflict over their usage of the Amazon River basin and a not dissimilar argument with Argentina over the Parana river. Both of these questions were raised at Stockholm.

The particulars of the Amazonian basin argument are as follows, the consequences of tampering with the ecology of the Amazon may have a very serious ramification for all people. Some scientists estimate that as much as one half of the world's oxygen supply may be generated by the foliage of this huge tropical forest. Also, that the tropical forest ecosystem is a very fragile one. Misuse of the areas such as caused by heavy mining and timbering and the concomitant erosion could convert that area of extremely thin soil layers into a desert within a generation. This may be an overstatement, but it is clear that the area plays a very important role in the world's ecosystem.

The Brazilians, on the other hand feel that for their successful development, they need to be able to exploit these frontier lands much as the United States used the West as a vast reservoir of untapped natural resources for population relocation and to be meted out as incentives for investment. Thus, through expensive governmental programs like the construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway and grants of millions of acres to multinational corporations, the Brazilians are trying to develop the virgin area quickly. Brazilian army engineers have cut huge swaths through the jungle to open roads.

The international corporations, mostly United States based, have begun to exploit timber and mineral resources and plan to turn thousands of square miles of forest into pasture land. All of this is being done very rapidly with only a superficial knowledge of the Amazon's ecosystem and with the hope that these disruptions of the forest will not touch off an ecological disaster.

It should be noted as an important aside that the involvement of multinational corporations are an aggravating element in this conflict between rapid development and ecological soundness. Because they remit large profits to their headquarters, usually in the United States, they increase the extent of ecological exploitation necessary to produce the desired level of development for Brazil itself. Finally, international corporations seem to be beyond the control of any nation and try to maximize profits without regard for the wellbeing of any single country. It appears doubtful that these companies will adopt policies which follow sound ecological principles.

When Western environmentalists criticize the opening of the Amazon because it is being done too quickly without sufficient consideration for ecological consequences. The Brazilians answer quite simply, the Amazon is theirs and they will broke no interference, or to state the matter more sympathetically to the Brazilians, they have no intention of maintaining the Amazon as a pollution free zone so that the industrial nations can keep their industrial economies and consumption levels at the current high polluting levels. In effect, the Brazilians are claiming the right to develop at the cost of nature as the US did and continue to do so.

A similar and equally unbending position is taken by the administration on the question of an enormous hydroelectric plant it's building on the Parana River, the Argentinians through whose country this river also flows, argue that the project will wreck havoc with the ecology of the entire area harmfully affecting fishing and farming. The Argentinians during the conference in Stockholm unsuccessfully lobbied for an agreement that would've required a nation to supply information to its neighbor about any project which might cause damage to the neighboring country.

Argentina is not in good economic or political shape at this time, so a military confrontation over the Parana does not seem likely. However, the problem certainly illustrates the explosiveness of the entire question of developmental projects and their effects on the ecology of neighboring countries. One can imagine, for example, how the US might react if the Canadians set about implementing a developmental plan that affected the entire Mississippi Valley. Argentina believes it is facing just such a situation now, and most other Third World nations will probably be in similar positions in the coming decade as competition for materials, energy, and the use of the environment increases.

In this report, we have emphasized the fears that underdeveloped nations feel about the ecological issue, and how it might slow their development and compromise their sovereignty. There is no doubt that if they followed the industrialized country's advice and took better care of the environment, their rate of development would be slowed. Furthermore, their assertion that the rich nations industrialized without considering the ecological balance is historically accurate, and it is also correct to say that almost all pollution comes from Europe, Japan, and the United States, but all the arguments in the world do not change certain grim realities, which must be faced by rich and poor nations alike, for there is an ecological crisis and it does involve all of humanity.

If there is a solution at all to this problem, it must fly with the richer nations. It was the industrialized nations which created the environmental crisis in the first place through decades of dumping waste into the biosphere. It was their non-rational, indeed wasteful usage of energy and natural resources that hastens us towards scarcity. The developed countries have accustomed themselves to using grossly and equitable shares of the world's limited resources, and it is a continuance of this policy, which will absolutely prohibit Third World development and make clashes between poor and rich nations over resource usage inevitable. As these practices continue, it is hardly realistic to ask the undeveloped world, not to pollute and to remain undeveloped while the developed world continues it's high pollution and consumption rates.

So the industrialized nations must cease polluting and bear the economic burden for cleaning up their own territories. More importantly, the general high level of industrial activity must be controlled. To achieve this, the richer nations must stop expanding their economies so rapidly. In other words, the industrialized nations must be willing to reduce their standards of resource use and energy use, while helping to raise the economies of other countries out of their current conditions of abject poverty. They must make a serious attempt to redistribute their wealth, which would allow the Third World countries to be industrialized in an environmentally sound way.

Unfortunately, we do not expect this to happen because we see no way it could be done given the present political, economic, and military structures of the richer nations. Perhaps an ecological disaster will be necessary to awaken people to the need for fundamental change on a global scale. Our hope is that such a disaster will not do irreparable harm to the biosphere. Perhaps wars for the control of natural resource and the usage of energy will be inevitable before people become enlightened as to the consequences of so, does equal a distribution of the world's wealth. Here to, we can only hope and plead that somehow reason and a sense of human solidarity can spare humanity this sort of bloodbath.

This week's feature is a published interview with a member of an Argentinian guerrilla organization called The People's Revolutionary Army. Unlike last week's feature, it provides a rather critical examination of Peronism and of Argentina's new Peronist government. 

Much attention has been paid recently in the World press to the March 11th election and May 25th inauguration of Dr. Hector Campora, a Peronist, as Argentina's new president. In the first election permitted by the Argentine military since their 1966 coup, the Peronist Coalition, which claims to be based upon strong, popular support of the labor movement, won the popular support of the Argentine people. Since Campora's inauguration, his government has released more than 600 political prisoners, most of whom had been jailed for terrorist activity against the military dictatorship, and has lifted the bans on communist activity. Also, he established diplomatic relations with both Cuba and Chile, expressed some verbal solidarity with the guerrilla movement, and requested a truce between the government and then guerrillas. 

The world press has paid special note however, to activities and proclamations of a guerrilla organization, which calls itself the People's Revolutionary Army, which has stated that it will not join in the Peronist Coalition and will continue armed guerrilla warfare within Argentina. Tagged by the World press as Trotskyists, the People's Revolutionary Army claims that the tag is insufficient. They are the "Armed Organization of the Revolutionary Workers Party of Argentina", and their organization encompasses Argentine patriots and nationalists of many different political ideologies. In a rare interview with staff members of Chile Hoy prior to Campora's inauguration, the People's Revolutionary Army describe the reasons for their non-support of the new Peronist government. 

We think that this unusual interview illuminates some of the political and economic dynamics, the manifestations of which seem to be keeping Argentina on the front pages of the world newspapers. In as much as the spokesman for the guerrilla organization uses Marxist economic terminology, his usage of the following terms should be noticed. "Capitalist" is the class name given to those people who own or who control for-profit the means of production. That is the factories, the banks, the transportation facilities, often the land, et cetera. In poor and underdeveloped countries, many of the capitalists are foreigners, North Americans, and increasingly Western Europeans or Japanese, hence the term "Imperialist". 

On the other end of the economic and power scale are the working people, or as the Marxists refer to them, "the masses" or "the people", who own only their own labor power and sell this to the capitalists. These constitute, of course, the majority of a population. The "Bourgeoisie" are the capitalist, and as the term is used in this article, also those people who, while not themselves the super rich nevertheless, do have their interests sufficiently aligned with the capitalists so that they support capitalist institutions and capitalist societies. Here then is the interview:

A question? How do you characterize the Peronist Coalition and the Campora government in particular? 

We are not unaware that in the heart of Peronism there are important progressive and revolutionary popular sectors that make it explosive, but we don't feel this should fool anyone, because what predominates in Peronism and even more in the coalition is its bourgeois character. For in its leadership as in its program and its methods, the next parliamentary government of Campora will represent above all the interests of the bourgeoisie and of the capitalists. 

A question, how is this massive popular vote for the Peronist coalition to be explained then? 

For us, it reflects at the same time the repudiation of the military dictatorship, which was very unpopular and the persistence of the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie. It is necessary to remember that the masses were only able to choose from among the different bourgeois variants in the electoral arrangement that the dictatorship structured. And among the bourgeois candidates the majority of the working class opted for the Peronist coalition, which had based its campaign on a furious and productive confrontation with the military government, and on pro-guerrilla arguments. 

What then are the true purposes of the Peronists in the current government? 

Their leaders and spokesmen have explained them quite clearly. They say that they are to reconstruct the country, to pacify it by means of some social reform. This along with the maintenance of "Christian style of life", a parliamentary system, private enterprise, and a continuation of the competition of foreign capital. All of the elementary measures for a true social revolution, namely agrarian reform, the expropriation and nationalization of big capital, urban reform, a socialist revolutionary government, all of these are completely absent in the plans and projects of the coalition. The bourgeois sectors of Peronism dominate the government. 

Another question. Apparently the Peronist coalition cannot be considered a homogeneous whole, as there are different tendencies within it, some of them revolutionary and progressive, which produces contradictions within the whole. How does the People's Revolutionary Army respond to this? 

Truly, as we indicated earlier, in the heart of the Peronist front government and in the parties which compose it, they will have to be developed an intense internal struggle, led fundamentally by the revolutionary and progressive sectors within Peronism, that even as a minority must struggle consciously for a program and for truly anti-imperialist and revolutionary measures.

The People's Revolutionary Army will actively support these sectors of Peronism in their struggle, and will insist upon a coalition of the progressive and revolutionary Peronist organizations and sectors with the non-Peronist organizations, both in their work to mobilize the masses for their demands, and in the preparation for the next and inevitable stage of more and new serious confrontations between the people in the bourgeoisie.

Another question. We imagine that the Campora government will not be the ideal government envisioned by the military. Can we then disregard the possibility of a coup d'état? 

It is certain that this parliamentary government will not enjoy the complete confidence of the military, which has accepted the Campora government as the lesser evil, and as a transition to try and detain the advance of revolutionary forces. But we think that the military coup will remain latent, with coup intentions however, growing in direct proportion to the success in broadening mass mobilizations. 

In the case of a military coup, where will the People's Revolutionary Army be? 

Of course, we'll be shoulder to shoulder with progressive and revolutionary Peronism, in order to confront any attempt to reestablish the military dictatorship. 

In recent declarations, the president-elect Hector Campora, has asked the Argentine guerrilla organizations for a truce in their activities beginning May 25th in order to, "Prove whether or not we are on the path of liberation and if we are going to achieve our objectives." You have given a partial acceptance of this request. What is the basis for that decision of yours? 

The request of Dr. Campora arose as a consequence of various guerrilla actions. We understood that the request of the president-elect implied the total suspension of guerrilla activities. We believe that the Campora government represents the popular will, and respectful of that will, our organization will not attack the new government while it does not attack the people or the guerrillas. Our organization will continue, however, combating militarily, the great exploiting companies, principally the imperialist ones and the counter-revolutionary armed forces, but it will not attack directly the governmental institutions nor any member of President Campora's government.

With respect to the police that supposedly depend on executive power, although in recent years, they have acted as an axillary arm of the present army, the People's Revolutionary Army will suspend its attacks as long as the police do not collaborate with the army in the persecution of guerrillas, and in the repression of popular demonstrations.

What are the factors determining your less than total acceptance of the truce? 

We have stated them too in our reply to Campora. In 1955, the leadership of the political movement that Dr. Campora represents, advise the country to, "Not let blood be spilled, avoid civil war and wait." The military took advantage of this disorganization and disorientation of the working class and of people in general to carry out their coup and were able to overwhelm progressive organizations. The only blood that wasn't spilled was that of the oligarchs and the capitalists. The people on the other hand, witnessed the death through massacre and firing squad of dozens and dozens of the finest of their young. 

In 1968, the same leadership advised the nation to vote for Frondizi and this advice when followed prepared the way for the military takeover. In 1966 the same leadership then counseled the nation to, "Reign back until things become clear." And this action when followed, allowed freedom of action to the new military government. 

So when I reply to Dr. Campora, we specifically stated, our own Argentinian experience has shown that it is impossible to have a truce with the enemies of the nation, with its exploiters, with an oppressive army, or with exploitative capitalist enterprises. To hold back or to diminish the struggle is to permit its enemies, to reorganize and to pass over to the offensive. 

What sort of relations does the People's Revolutionary Army maintain with other armed Argentinian groups? 

Since our creation, we have made and continue to make an appeal for a unified effort of all the armed revolutionary organizations with the idea of eventually forming a solid, strong, and unified People's Army. In such an organization, they would undoubtedly be both Peronists and non-Peronists, but all would be unified by a common methodology, namely prolonged revolutionary war and a common ideal, the building of socialism in our country. We have many points of agreement on fundamental issues, so we maintain fraternal relations with all of our fellow armed groups. 

A final question. You have explained the policy to be followed after May 25th, as laid out in your reply to Campora. What will be the policy of the Revolutionary Workers Party and the People's Revolutionary Army in relation to labor union policy, legally permitted activities, the united front and so on? And how do you contemplate combining legally and non-legally permitted activities? 

Our legally permitted activities will be oriented towards the consolidation and the development of an anti-imperialist front, in common with progressive and revolutionary sectors. We will concentrate all our immediate activity in mobilizing popular opinion towards the release of all political prisoners, repeal of all repressive laws, legalization of all political organizations of the left and the press, and an increase in the real wages of the working class. In relationship to the army, we propose the development of an active educational campaign among draftees, calling upon them not to fire upon the people, nor to participate in repression, encouraging desertion of soldiers and calling upon them to join the People's Revolutionary Army. 

In relationship to the popular front, the Peronist front, we call upon all of the left, all labor, popular progressive and revolutionary organizations to close ranks, to give each other mutual support, and to present an organized common front to the political, ideological, and military offensive of the bourgeoisie, not only in its repressive form, but also in its current populous diversionary one. 

As concerns the relationship between legally and non-legally permitted operations, we wish to carefully maintain the clandestine cell structure of the People's Revolutionary Army and of the Revolutionary Workers Party, so as to assure the strict carrying out of security measures and ensure their safety. But we wish to amplify to the maximum, the legally permitted activities of the organization and that of those groups on its periphery. And through this combination of legally permitted activities and illegal ones, we will attempt to procure the greatest advantage from the potential, which the vigor of the popular support gives to our organization. 

To sum up as far as your organization is concerned, what is the watch word for the present situation? 

We'll make no truce with the oppressive army and no truth with exploitative enterprises. We will seek immediate freedom for those imprisoned while fighting for freedom. Also an end to oppressive legislation and total freedom of expression in organization. We will try to build unity among the armed revolutionary organizations who we will struggle or die for the Argentine. 

Thank you. Our feature today has been a published interview with a member of an Argentinian guerrilla organization called The People's Revolutionary Army. The interview was published in the Chilean newspaper, Chile Hoy. The People's Revolutionary Army is known as the strongest and most effective guerrilla group operating in Argentina and was able, for instance, on the mere threat of a kidnapping, to force Ford Motor Company to give $1 million to various children's hospitals in Argentina. 

Excélsior reports that, in Mexico City, on Tuesday 16th of October, José López Portillo, a top economic advisor to Mexico, announced that his government, as well as the people of Mexico, would have to adopt a rigid austerity program for the fiscal year of 1974. His statement on the antiinflationary measures coincided with the report released by Mexican industrialist Juan Sánchez Navarro, on the skyrocketing of prices in petroleum-related industry.

The economic advisor Portillo stated that the increasing inflation unofficially estimated at 40% cannot be headed off, but rather its impact could only be lessened. Having just returned from a one-month trip, which included the World Monetary Convention in Nairobi and meetings in Europe and Japan, Portillo projected that Mexico's domestic economic policies will greatly resemble those employed by several European nations also facing inflation.

This from Excélsior of Mexico City.

This week's feature focuses on culture, a Cuban view of Cuban culture, exploring especially the history of efforts in Cuba to support and extend the arts in a country that historically was impoverished. The material and viewpoint of the feature on Cuban culture comes from the Cuban News Agency, Prensa Latina. 

Art in Cuba is not just the Rumba, one of the few forms Yankees visiting pre-revolutionary Cuba got exposed to out of the island's enormous contribution to jazz. Nor is it only films and posters, which are perhaps the best present-day forms of art in Cuba. To appreciate the significance and role of the arts and the artists in Cuba today, it's necessary to briefly review the history of the arts there. Of the many contributors to Cuban culture, the most important were the Spanish colonists and the African peoples brought to the island as slaves.

These two peoples eventually fused their arts, music, folklore, mythologies and literature and ways of thinking into an authentic Cuban national culture. Under colonial rule from the 15th through the 19th centuries, Spanish art and architecture prevailed. Stained-glass windows and integrate wrought iron railings on balconies and gates were familiar decorative elements in upper-class homes in what is now Old Havana. The upper classes furnished their manners with imports from Madrid.

After the Spanish American War, the United States remained in Cuba, directly or indirectly, until 1959. Frustration with American intervention was reflected in the works of early republic literature. By 1910, a younger group founded the magazine, Contemporary Cuba, where possible solutions to problems of the new nation had ample forum. After the revolution, as Cuba began the development of a new society, the role people played as individuals and participants in society began to change.

Responsibilities, priorities, values, and motivations were radically altered. None of these changes were automatically defined, nor did they appear in practice and in people's consciousness all at once. For intellectuals, for writers, painters, artists of all media, this transitional process of redefinition was and can continues to be complex and difficult.

In 1961, continues Prensa Latina, the first official encounter of artists, writers, and representatives of the revolutionary government took place. Various intellectuals expressed their concern over freedom of expression in the arts and asked what the parameters were in a time of change and polarization. "Was the form to be dictated by a government policy?" they asked.

Fidel Castro made a now famous speech in which he said, "With the revolution, everything. Against the revolution, nothing." And expanded and interpreted that to mean that no one was going to impose forms, nor was anyone going to dictate subject matter. But counter-revolution would not be tolerated in the arts or in any other activity.

Intellectuals who found themselves in the midst of the revolution faced adjustment of a lifetime of habits and ways of thinking to new realities and needs. For example, a painter in the 1950s sought some way of making a living rarely through art. He catered to rich patrons, if lucky enough to be recognized at all, and sold his works to individuals, invariably to friends or upper-class collectors. Most artists, as artists, were self-oriented. The very forms of artistic expression were narrowly individualistic.

Artists created canvases which hung in galleries and homes that only a fraction of the population could or would see. How could one put society first in an each man for himself world? There were diverse attempts to make art a vital part of the new society. One of the earliest projects the revolution initiated was the National School of Cuban Art, a gigantic complex of very modern one-level buildings in a luxurious residential area of Havana, for students of dance, sculpture, music, and theater. Young people from all over the country can apply for scholarships to this largest of the arts schools.

Prensa Latina continues that young art students in the search for new media, more accessible to the whole population, went to the factories, the farms, and the schools, and exchanged ideas with workers. Art students and established artists asked themselves and were asked, "What are the obligations of a socially-committed artist, a revolutionary artist? Are there specific forms, say, murals, that best reflect and contribute to the revolution?" Fortunately, says Prensa Latina, Cuban artists and government agencies did not fall into the trap of imposing a simplistic formula, the happy triumphant worker theme à la Norman Rockwell.

Throughout the 1960s, Cuban painters were exposed to the art of many countries. In 1968, the International Salon de Mayo exhibition was held in Havana, and artists from Western Europe, the socialist countries, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, participated. Young Cuban painters and old experimented with pop art, pop up, abstraction, and new expressionism. There were no limitations.

Out of all this experimentation and dialogue came the means of visual expression best known outside Cuba, poster art. Because of massive distribution possibilities and the functional character of poster art, it has become second in importance, only to film, as the visual vehicle of the message of the revolution. 

Art is also architecture. Before the revolution, architects designed residences for the rich, factories, and luxury hotels. Since 1959, construction priorities have shifted to the creation of housing complexes and thousands of schools and living facilities. With a tremendous growth in population, a demographic shift to newly inhabited zones of the island and a drive to get people out of urban slums, housing demands are massive and are met as fast as building materials and labor allow.

Volunteers have been recruited from every industry to put in extra hours on housing construction brigades. In housing and other construction, new functions have required new architecture. Extremely new designs and styles can be seen in the remotest corners of the countryside, as well as in the city.

Another art form much cultivated in Cuba is dance. The National Ballet of Cuba is world-famous, and Alicia Alonso is recognized as one of the greatest contemporary ballet artists. 

Music cannot be left out while reviewing the revolution's cultural activities. Traditional Cuban popular music flourishes. By wave of radio and films, western rock has also become known to Cuban youth. The task is seen to create a consciousness and a demand for genuine Cuban and Latin American music so that Cuban youth won't simply imitate foreign pop music. And at present, there is a big push to encourage amateur musicians in the ranks of workers and students and everyone, so as to maximize music and not leave music only in the hands of a few professionals. 

To speak of Cuban cinema, says Prensa Latina, is to speak of revolutionary Cuban cinema. In the course of the armed struggle against the dictatorship, a few protest documentaries and news reels were made by revolutionaries in the Sierra and the urban underground. Again, these were of the barest cinematic qualities. 

Following the winning of the revolution in 1959, Cuban cinema was aided by the creation of an institute of artistic and industrial cinematography. The institute supports the training of film students, the production of films, and the importing and exporting of films. One of the institute's highest priorities is to extend the availability of cinema to those who, before the revolution, had no access to films. So efforts have been concentrated in the areas where the cinema was once unknown, and there are now some 13 million moviegoers a year and over 500 theaters that dot the island. And other methods have been developed for reaching the more remote areas of the countryside and mountains. 

For instance, redesigned trucks, equipped with 16-millimeter projectors and driven by the projectionists, spread out across the country to show films in those areas where there are not yet theaters. These movable movies are now numbered at more than 100. One of the institute's most engaging short documentaries called "For the First Time" is actually about this part of the institute's operation. The episode photographed shows one evening when a projection crew went to an area in the Sierra Mountains to show a film to people there for the first time. The movie was Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times".

The attempt to demystify the cinema for an audience of novices is more than a little difficult to understand for a North American, whose sensibilities are bombarded by the electronic media. The institute has set itself the task of bringing young people interested in the cinema into discussion circles at student centers, union halls, and workplaces, and to explain its work.

More important, it seeks to explain the methods of the film to the entire population to work in a way against its own power, according to Guevara, the institute head, to reveal all the tricks, all the recourses of language, to dismantle all the mechanisms of cinematography hypnosis. To this end, the institute has a weekly television program, which explains all the gimmicks used to attract the viewer's attention.

When it began, the institute used the most elementary techniques. Most of the film workers were uneducated in the media, although a handful had studied in European film schools. Today, with a number of fully-developed trained persons, the acquisition of skills is now a secondary concern at best. The head of the institute explains that the priority is to break down the language structure of the film and find new ways to use film, being very careful in the process not to divorce the filmmaker from the audience for the filmmaker's own self gratification. 

He put it this way, "We must not separate ourselves from the rest of the people, from all the tasks of the revolution, especially those that fall into the ideological field. Every time a school is built, every time 100 workers reach the sixth grade, each time someone discovers something by participating in it. As in the field of culture, it becomes easier for us to do our work. Our work is not simply making or showing movies. Everything we do is part of a global process towards developing the possibilities of participation. Not passive, but active. Not as the recipients, but as the protagonists of the public. This is the Cuban definition of socialist democracy in the field of culture." 

In addition to production of films, as many as possible are imported. US films shown in Cuba are, of course, from the pre-revolutionary period: "Gigi", "Singing in the Rain", and "Bad Day at Black Rock". Late night television repeats, from time to time, a Dana Andrews or Ronald Colman melodrama. The economic blockade against Cuba has denied the island access to US movies of the 60s and 70s, though from time to time, a bootleg print gets through. A recent favorite there was "The Chase", with Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda, from the early 60s. Imports are in large part from the European socialist countries: France, Italy, Japan, and, to a degree, Latin America. 

Prensa Latina continues that obviously the shortage of currency is a great burden. To this day, the institute does not own even one eight-millimeter movie camera. There are no color facilities in Cuba, although a lab is now under construction. In this country where there were millions of peasants who never saw movies, the problem arose that many preferred to buy trucks and equipment to help with the work, rather than new camera equipment. 

From the beginning, the institute has faced a bit of a dialectic contradiction. It wants to capture, for posterity and for the moment, the complex reality of these years, but the reality is always changing. Alfredo Guevara, head of the Cuban Film Institute says, "These are surely the most difficult, complicated years, years in which the experiences we have are sometimes not recorded. To reflect them in the cinema means, in some way, we must crystallize them, which is the last thing we want. But every time we film, it is there. Whether or not we want to do so, we are always a testimony." 

Prensa Latina continues that the poster commemorating the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Cinemagraphic Institute shows a camera with gun smoke exuding from the lens. The imagery of filmmaker as cultural guerilla corresponds to the value system throughout revolutionary Cuba. Guevara says, "In the success of the revolution, we have placed, in our hands, a thing, the means of production, whose power we knew very well because it had been in the power of the enemy up to that point."

"When this force fell into our hands, it was clear to all of us that the revolution had given us a very serious job. I'm talking of everyone who has participated in the work of giving birth to the Cuban cinema or, what is really the same thing, the job of giving our people and our revolution a new weapon, a new instrument of work, one that is useful above all in understanding ourselves."

That concludes this week's feature, which has been a Cuban view of Cuban culture taken from the Cuban News Agency, Prensa Latina. 

Our feature this week is the first half of an article on the controversial Brazilian model of economic development written by the United Presbyterian Church and reprinted in the Mexican daily El Dia. 

Most Americans don't know it, but the land of Carmen Miranda and the bossa nova has become the industrial giant of the Southern Hemisphere. Derided only a few short years ago as the perpetual land of the future, Brazilians now proclaim loudly that the future has arrived. "Underdeveloped hell", read the slogan at one of Sao Paulo's recent auto shows. The talk now is of an economic miracle to rival the recovery of West Germany after World War II. 

One wonders what this economic boom means for the majority of the Brazilian population. Brazil's resources may be extensive, but the majority of its people have always been poor, and their suffering great. Brazil's Indian population was nearly wiped out by the Portuguese colonists in the 16th and 17th centuries. Black slavery was introduced early into Brazil and was practiced widely until 1888. Historically, most Brazilians, slave or free, have been dependent and poor. Even those who own land, supervise plantations, and led expeditions were poor by today's standards. Very few had much in the way of comforts and goods. For most of its history, Brazil was a colony. It was governed by Portugal and existed to make money for the Portuguese. No matter that Indians were exterminated and African slaves went to early graves. 

One must not forget that most of Brazil's population is racially mixed, according to El Dia, that much of it is Black, and that its history of subjugation and misery continues to this day. 

There exists in Brazil one of the deepest cleavages between rich and poor, economically, culturally, and racially, to be found anywhere in the world. A few facts may help sketch the current scene. Here are Brazil's income distribution figures for 1968. The richest 1% of the population received an annual per capita income of $6,500. The middle 40% income group received $350 in 1968, and the poorest 50% of the population earned an average income of $120 in that year. What this says is that one half of Brazil's population in the middle of the 1960s had an average cash income of 35 cents a day. Most people, in other words, live outside the money economy. A cultural and economic middle class does exist in Brazil. It is the small, relatively privileged top 10% of the population. A tiny part of this group is wealthy, but most of it is composed of business and professional people, army officers and government officials, and corresponds to the salaried urban middle class in the United States. 

"But what do you do about poverty?", asks El Dia. A decade ago, Brazilian leaders and their North American allies embarked on an alliance for progress, a program which had its roots in Kubitschek's Operation Pan America. Kubitschek was president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961. His idea was to improve the lives of all Latin Americans by laying out an elaborate and massive program of economic development. He would stimulate this development with huge inputs of foreign capital, principally from the United States and Western Europe. Factories would be built in Latin America to produce the things people needed, provide them with jobs and wages, and yield tax revenues for their schools and cities. Foreign investors would become catalysts in the process of developing the natural and human resources of Latin America and partners in the creation of new and greater wealth for everyone. 

The key to the process of industrialization in Brazil was to be a program of import substitution. The idea was for Brazil to limit the importation of manufactured goods and build domestic industry behind high tariffs. Thus, Brazil would exploit her own internal market. Brazilian industries would be created to supply a domestic market, formerly undeveloped or in the hands of foreign companies. Once these companies were on their feet, the tariff walls would be lowered, forcing Brazilian industry to become more efficient and competitive. Finally, these industries would operate without protection and in competition on the world market. Brazil would then begin to export manufactured goods, improve her balance of trade and be on her way. 

A glance at Brazil's economic history is instructive. El Dia explains that traditionally, the Brazilian economy was based on agriculture and the export of agricultural commodities and minerals, coffee, cocoa, sugar, cotton, iron ore and gems. Rubber and gold were of great importance at one time. But countries whose economies are based on the export of primary products play a losing game. They are subject to the fluctuations of the world market and the increasing competition of other primary producers. Brazil's economic history is characterized by a succession of cycles of its major export commodities. From the early 16th century on, this was in turn the story of dye, wood, sugar, gold and coffee. The latter, of course, is still Brazil's major export commodity, although its strength has fluctuated substantially with changes in world demand. 

Against this discouraging history, the process of industrialization began, but it was a late beginning. Until 1822, Brazil was a Portuguese colony administered along strict mercantilist lines. That is, no industry was allowed to develop. It was not until the First World War that the beginnings of industrialization were much felt. The impetus towards industrialization came from the impact of the two World Wars, largely because of the interruption of supplies from overseas and the elimination of foreign competition. It was during this period that Brazil's import substitution policies began. 

Kubitschek was undoubtedly one of Brazil's most enthusiastic developmentalists. When he was inaugurated in 1956, he immediately set up a national development council, formulated a program of targets, and called for 50 years of development in five. His most spectacular project was the building of Brasilia, the country's modernistic capital, 600 miles into the interior. Brazil's automobile industry began under Kubitschek. Steel and cement production doubled and power generation tripled. 

After Kubitschek, however, the country experienced a period of political instability. Jânio Quadros resigned shortly after taking office, and the administration of was marked by a period of runaway inflation. By 1963, prices were going up by 71% a year. In 1963, the gross national product increased only 1.6%, while population growth exceeded 3%, thus producing a negative growth in per capita income. 

Brazil's relations with foreign investors and the United States government suffered during this time. Popular movements were gaining force and demanding redress of the country's longstanding inequities. Social unrest was widespread and growing. United States economic aid and corporate investments dropped sharply. Then in March 1964, the Brazilian army staged a coup d'etat and the United States recognized the provisional military government within 24 hours. United States economic aid was then restored at higher levels than ever before, and US technicians and advisors began to enter the country in unprecedented numbers.

The Brazilian military, under Castelo Branco, crushed the protest movements, jailed their leaders and deprived civilian political leaders of political rights for 10 years. Under the leadership of Brazil's new Harvard-trained Minister of Planning, Roberto Campos, stringent measures were taken to stem inflation, and tax concessions and investment guarantees were set up to lure back foreign capital.

The economic picture began to change. In 1965, the Brazilian economy, principally the industrial sector, grew at a rate of 3.9%. In 1966, the rate was 4.3%. In 1967, it was 5%, and in 1968, it was 6.3%. Since 1968, the GNP has increased by no less than 9% a year to a record high of 11% in 1972. This is what Brazilians call their economic miracle, and it is indeed a formidable achievement. The evidence is everywhere. One may raise questions about the way Brazil is growing and about who is benefiting from this growth and who is not, but the growth is very real. 

According to El Dia, in 1968 the US Information Agency in Rio released a somewhat whimsical TV spot announcement, extolling the success of Brazil's industrial development. It showed a scantily clad and shapely model operating a massive drill press to the sensuous beat of the samba and asked, "Is this development or isn't it?" 

For many Brazilians, the answer was, "Maybe not." They had basic questions to ask about what was happening to their country, and they were not matters about which to be whimsical. The first question has to do with the theory of import substitution. On the surface, it looks like a good idea for Brazil to cut foreign imports and encourage the growth of domestic industry in a protected market. Why shouldn't Brazil supply its own consumer needs, reinvest its profits, and spread the wealth? Perhaps it should. The problem is the theory doesn't work that way.

It is not Brazilians, by and large who are manufacturing the import substitutes, but foreign companies incorporated under Brazilian law. No group of private investors in Brazil, for example, could possibly compete with Volkswagen, Ford, and General Motors in establishing an automotive industry. There are, of course, many successful Brazilian industrialists, but they compete at a great disadvantage against the corporate giants of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.

An American professor in Brazil put it this way. "What was supposed to be a solution for Brazil has turned out to be a solution for us. It was supposed to be a gain for Brazil to have foreign companies come in and set up shop. What we are now discovering," the professor said, "is that these companies make far more money through direct investments in manufacturing and sales operations in Brazil than they were able to make previously by exporting these same products from home. Volkswagen and Ford no longer ship cars to Brazil from Bremerhaven and New York. They manufacture them in Sao Paulo. Why is this more profitable? Certain costs, of course, are lower, but the more compelling answer is that the Brazilian market can be more effectively penetrated when a company's entire manufacturing, sales and servicing operation is managed within the host country." 

John Powers, president of Charles Pfizer & Company Pharmaceuticals, put it this way, in a speech to the American Management Association. "It is simply not possible in this decade of the 20th century to establish a business effectively in most world markets, in most products, by exporting. Successful market penetration usually requires building warehouses, creating and training an organization. It requires local sales promotion and building plants or assembly lines to back up the marketing effort. In short, it requires direct investment." 

It should not be surprising that some Brazilians are wondering who's helping whom. It is argued, of course, that even though foreign corporations take sizable profits out of Brazil, both in the form of repatriated profits and from cheaper production costs, Brazil benefits more than it loses. Certainly, some Brazilians gain from the salaries and wages paid to Brazilian managers and factory workers, from taxes paid to the state and from the availability of added goods and services. Whether the country gains more than it loses is another matter, and the answer depends on more than conventional economic considerations. 

You have been listening to the first part of a two-part feature on the Brazilian economic development model, written by the United Presbyterian Church and reprinted in the Mexican daily, El Dia. 

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. 

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.