Annotations for Countries: Mexico

It's hard to see how Panama can fail to achieve its objective of exerting painful diplomatic pressure on Washington through the meeting of the United Nations Security Council, which began last week in Panama City. Such meetings offer the poor nations of the underdeveloped world an opportunity to mobilize international support for their grievances against the rich nations in the glare of world publicity. The following excerpts from a front page editorial in the Panamanian newspaper, La Estrella de Panamá, comments on the current negotiations.

Our foreign ministry has engaged in able, patient and cautious diplomatic efforts since 1961 to serve as host to the meeting of the UN Security Council in Panama. That we have achieved this objective, considering that our only element of pressure was our moral force, constitutes a victory for the constitutional government and for the people that support our sound foreign policy. When the Security Council meets at the Arosemena Palace, our flag will be flown together with those of the 131 members of the United Nations. Panama will never again be alone in the long and painful battle in which it has been engaged since 1903. People everywhere are always fair and freedom-loving. The peoples of the world will be with us this March.

The editorial continues, "In October 1971, Panamanian foreign minister Juan Antonio Tack, addressed the 16th UN General Assembly and strongly denounced the existing situation in our country caused by foreign intervention in our sovereign territory." He said, "In 1903, Panama had imposed upon it a treaty that enabled the construction of a canal. A treaty that is humiliating to my country in most of its stipulations. By virtue of that treaty, a foreign territory known as the canal zone was embedded in the heart of our republic with its own government and laws issued from the United States." This from the Panama Daily, La Estrella de Panamá.

A further comment on the Panama situation from the Mexico City daily, Excélsior. "For 70 years", says General Omar Torrijos, "strong man of this country. Panama has provided the bodies and the US has provided the bullets." He's referring metaphorically to the colonial treaty, which is now under consideration of the United Nations Security Council. The 44-year-old General said that the approval of the new treaty can take place only by a plebiscite of the Panamanian people. With complete respect for the sovereignty of Panama, and without the qualifications that it be a perpetual or non-limited agreement.

Torrijos said, "One does not negotiate sovereignty. When we speak of sovereignty, they speak of economics. They say, 'Why are you so scornful of money?' As if money could buy everything. Sovereignty and only sovereignty is the question."

By airplane, car, and on foot, Torrijos toured the north of his country with Excélsior reporters. They observed the drama, the sadness, and the misery of the Panamanian peasants. Torrijos said, "We are subjugated by drought and erosion, as well as by a canal. An agrarian reform was initiated four years ago," and Torrijos said that this has total priority, but the canal by its very nature, is a more international issue.

Generation after generation, we have fought over this canal to change this situation. We haven't got a thing. The US has always insisted on a bilateral treaty and bilateral negotiations. We agreed with this and we're loyal to this until we realize that the canal is a service to the entire world. The world must realize that Panama is more than a canal, and that the canal is more than a ditch between two oceans. Around this ditch is a country, a nation, and a youth ready to sacrifice itself to regain jurisdiction over 1400 square kilometers now fenced off under the control of a foreign government.

Torrijos says that the legislature decided not to continue accepting the payment of $1.9 million so that the world can see that we are not being rented, we are being occupied. Excélsior asked Torrijos under what conditions he would sign a new treaty. The main problem he singled out was the length of time of the commitment. The US had been persistently pressing for an agreement in perpetuity, and their compromise offer of 90 years was evidently also too long for Torrijos. When the interviewer asked, "Do you feel that the other Latin American countries are behind you?" The general replied, "Yes, the sentiment of Latin Americans is almost unanimous." This was from Excélsior, the Mexico City daily.

And finally the London magazine, Latin America interprets the security council meeting in Panama as having important implications for US Latin American relations. Latin America says, "There is every reason to suppose that most, if not all, Latin American nations will use the occasion to air virtually every major complaint they have against the United States. During a visit to Mexico earlier this month, the Columbian foreign minister said that during the meeting, the countries of this continent must bring to discussion the disparity in the terms of trade, the growing indebtedness, the classic instability of raw material prices and the lack of markets which obstruct industrialization. The question of the 200-mile limit is also likely to be raised."

Latin America goes on to say, "It is the question of the canal and Panama's relations with the United States that are at the heart of the meeting, and it is here that the United States is most embarrassed. In the wake of the withdrawal from Vietnam, the Nixon Administration is anxious to follow a less exposed foreign policy and sees playing the world's policemen. It would be happy to make Panama substantial concessions, which if it were a free agent, would doubtless include formal recognition of Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal Zone and an end to the perpetuity clause of the 1903 treaty; much bigger payments to Panama for the use of the canal; probably a phasing out of the Canal Zone status as a colony of the United States; and perhaps even a gradual disbandment of the huge anti-guerilla training and operational base in the zone.

Though this would touch upon the sensitive question of continental security although Washington has made some concessions. Last month in a symbolic gesture, it removed the 20-foot-high wire fence separating the zone from Panama proper. The fence against which more than 20 Panamanians were killed in clashes with the United States Army in 1964. The United States ambassador, Robert Sayre, has publicly recognized that the zone is a Panamanian territory, though under United States jurisdiction. This commentary from the weekly Latin America.

Today's feature concerns Panamanian discontent with the current Canal Zone treaty and the politics made evident during the recent United Nations Security Council meeting, which was convened in Panama City in order to focus on this issue. The article was chosen not so much because of the Panamanian problem's importance as a single issue, but because it is illustrative of changing alliances and growing nationalism in Latin America. But as a preface to the Panamanian article, we include an article from this week's Le Monde, which is a virtual litany of the woes that the failed US policy during this month of March.

The Unida Popular government of Salvador Allende, termed Marxist with virtually unanimous reprobation by the North American press, has strengthened its position in Chile as a result of the March 4th legislative elections.

In Paraguay, an aroused military now has control over the government in the name of principles, which would not at all be disavowed by the Tupemaros.

President Luis Echeveria Alvarez of Mexico is preparing to fly, first to Europe to strengthen his bonds with the common market and then to Moscow and Peking. This voyage is unlikely to inspire joy in Washington in view of the intense pressure exerted by the United States on former President Lopez Mateos to give up his projected encounter with General De Gaulle in 1963. To leave no doubt of his desire for greater independence from Washington, Mr. Echeverria recently addressed the Mexican Congress, which has just adopted a law imposing rigorous controls on the deployment of foreign capital. The speech was an unusual event in Mexico where the head of state goes to Congress only once a year for his State of the Union message.

In Lima, Peru the heir apparent to General Juan Velasco Alvaro, who has just undergone a serious operation, is Prime Minister Luis Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, who also holds the defense portfolio. It was he who, when foreign minister, firmly placed Peru alongside the non-aligned nations of the Third World. He, along with President Allende warmly approved the project proposed by Mr. Echeverria at the last Junta meeting in Santiago, Chile, calling for a charter of economic rights and obligations for all nations.

Also, despite pressure from Washington's tuna lobby, Ecuador's Navy is harassing the Californian factory ships fishing within the country's 200-mile territorial limit, a limit now adopted by most Latin American nations.

Le Monde continues that Venezuela has joined the Andean group formed by Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, whose common legislation regarding foreign capital is not very different from that contemplated in Mexico City.

And while there is little to glad in the hearts of Washington leaders in any of these tidings, Le Monde continues, it would seem that the Peronist landslide of March the 11th would prove even more worrisome. For provided the military now in control in Argentina honors the electoral verdict, this development upsets the entire balance of power in the southern part of the continent for given the nationalism anti-Americanism, even slightly left-leaning tendencies in modern Perónism, it is not unreasonable to think that Argentina under Peronist leadership might provide effective opposition to Brazil's sub imperialist ambitions. So decried in chancellor's up and down the continent as well as lend its hand in obstructing US economic hegemony in Latin America.

And, Le Monde says, as for Panama, the extraordinary meeting of the United Nations Security Council in Panama City, which opened last Thursday was a heaven sent opportunity to raise an insistent voice against the continuation of what is called the colonial enclave, the zone controlled by the American company running the canal and by Pentagon's Southern command. This article was taken from the French Daily Le Monde.

The following feature length article on Panama is from The Guardian. The United Nations Security Council meeting in Panama last March 15th to 20th might mark a turning point in the decline of US domination of South and Central America. The meeting which the Panamanian government has been planning for over a year focused its fire on the main current issues involving US hegemony over the region. In particular, the nationalist Panamanian government of General Omar Torrijos has struggled to overturn the US domination of the canal zone, a 500 square mile area which cuts Panama in half. The zone includes the Panama Canal itself and the surrounding area, which houses no less than 14 different US military bases.Torrijos wasted no time in bringing this issue before the conference. In his keynote address, he denounced US control of the canal zone as "neo colonialism," which he then traced back over the 70-year history of US Panamanian relations. While making few direct references to the United States, Torrijos spoke of the zone as "a colony in the heart of my country," and also said that Panama would never "be another star on the flag of the United States."

In addition, the Guardian continues, Torrijos denounced, with extensive support from other non-aligned nations, the economic sanctions opposed against Cuba by the organization of American states at the demand of the United States. The 10 Latin American ministers present at the meeting, all invited by the Panamanians, included Raul Rojas, Cuban foreign minister.

John Scully, the US's new delegate to the UN had earlier replied to Torrijos on several points, saying that the United States was willing to revise the treaty, particularly its most objectionable clause, which grants control of the zone to the United States permanently. Scully implied the United States would be willing to accept a 50-year lease with an option for 40 years more if engineering improvements were made to the waterway. Panama formally introduced a resolution at the March 16th meeting of the security council, calling for Panamanian jurisdiction over the canal zone and its neutralization. This resolution was supported by 13 members of the 15 member Security Council, but vetoed by the United States vote. Great Britain abstained.

The Guardian goes on to say that the Panamanians carefully and skillfully laid the groundwork for the United Nations meeting, waiting for a time when they not only held a seat on the security council but chaired the proceedings. By the time their proposal for the Panama meeting came up for a vote in January, the United States was so outmaneuvered that the only objection the US could raise to the UN floor was to complain of the cost of the meeting. At the same time in the statement of the press, the UN's delegation made it very clear that its real objection to the meeting was that it would be used as a forum for attacks on US policies towards South America. Once the Panamanians offered a $100,000 to pay most of the UN costs, however, the US resistance collapsed.

But the Panamanians, the Guardian says, never made any secret of their intentions for the meeting whose very site, the National Legislative Building, is only 10 yards from the zone's border.

Until 1903, Panama was not an independent nation, but was part of Colombia. After the Colombians refused to a agree to an unfavorable treaty over the building and operation of the canal by the US, the US engineered a Panamanian Declaration of Independence 10 weeks later. Two weeks after that, the US rammed through a treaty even more onerous than the one rejected by Colombia with a new country now called Panama.

Protests over the US control of the zone led to invasions by US troops on six separate occasions, between 1900 and 1925. Both public and governmental protests in Panama forced the United States to sign a slightly more favorable treaty in 1936, but US attempts to make new gains led to demonstrations in 1947 and again in '58, '59.

In January 1964, when students demonstrated near the border of the canal zone, planning to raise the Panamanian flag within the zone, US troops fired on them, killing 22 Panamanians and wounding more than 300. This is well remembered in Panama.

The canal zone was again involved on October 11th, 1968 when Torrijos then the leader of the country's army, took power. Torrijos overthrew President Arnulfo Arias, who had become unpopular for his weak stand in talks with United States over a new treaty concerning the zone. In his first two years in power Torrijos policies, The Guardian states, were similar to those of many South American military dictators. He savagely suppressed spontaneous as well as organized, popular liberation movements. Even during this period however, the United States was not completely sure of Torrijos loyalty. And while he was in Mexico in 1969, the Central Intelligence Agency supported a group of military officers attempting to overthrow him. The coup failed and the officers were imprisoned by Torrijos. Several months later, they escaped, were given asylum in the canal zone and flown to United States. Then in June 1971, an attempt was made to assassinate Torrijos.

Whether from personal conviction, desire to build popular support for his government or antagonism arising from the coup attempt, Torrijos's direction began to change. He refused to agree to the new treaty. He held elections in August of 1972. He refused to accept the yearly US canal rental of $1.9 million. We note that the US' annual profits from the zone alone, not including the canal itself, over $114 million a year, and Torrijos instituted a program of domestic reforms.

Torrijos also expropriated some larger states while increasing government credit and agricultural investments to aid poor peasants. A minimum wage was introduced and a 13th month of pay at Christmastime, over time, premiums and other benefits. 100 land settlement communities were created with about 50,000 people living on them and working government provided land.

The economic philosophy of Torrijos, The Guardian reports, seems somewhat similar to that of other nationalistic left leading groups such as the Peruvian military junta.

The article goes on to say, but major problems remain for the country. About 25% of the annual gross national product comes from the canal zone, and United Fruits still controls the important banana crop. Panama also continues to invite US investment and offers special treatment for the US dollar and high interest rates for bank deposits. While the government has helped encourage economic development with several public works projects, spending is now leveling off, partly because of Panama's growing international debts and the currency inflation plaguing the country. Because of its debts, it has also suffered a growing balance of payments deficits.

A better renegotiation of the treaty then is of economic as well as of political importance. The Panamanian position on a new treaty asks for termination of US administration in 1994, an immediate end to US control of justice, police tax, and public utilities in the zone, an equal sharing of canal profits, which are estimated to have totaled around $22 billion since its opening, the turning over of 85% of canal zone jobs and 85% of wages and social benefits there to Panamanians and military neutralization of the zone.

The Guardian continues that this last demand is the most disagreeable to the US, especially since it is coupled with the demand for the removal of all US bases from the zone. The US is willing to compromise on money and other issues, but not on the military question. The reason is simple. The Canal Zone is the center for all US military activity in South America, including the Tropical Environmental Database, the US Army School of the Americas, and the US Southern Military Command, which controls all US military activities in South America and the Caribbean, except for Mexico.

The zone also includes missile launching and placements and a new US aerospace cardiographic and geodesic survey for photo mapping and anti-guerrilla warfare campaigns. The special significance of these bases becomes clear within the general US strategy in South America. As Michael Klare writes, in War Without End, "Unlike current US operations in Southeast Asia, our plans for Latin America do not envision a significant overt American military presence. The emphasis in fact is on low cost, low visibility assistance and training programs designed to upgrade the capacity of local forces to overcome guerrilla movements. Thus, around 50,000 South American military officers have been trained in the canal zone to carry out counterinsurgency missions and to support US interests in their countries. In addition, the eighth Army special forces of about 1100 troops specializing in counterinsurgencies are stationed in the zone, sending out about two dozen 30 man mobile training teams each year for assistance to reactionary armies. This whole operation is as important and less expendable than US control of the canal waterway itself."

Thus, The Guardian article concludes Panamanian control of the Zone then would not only be a big advance on the specific question of national independence, but also would strike a powerful direct blow at US hegemony all over the South American continent.

More recent articles carry evaluations of the outcome of the security council meeting. Associated Press copy reports that General Torrijos said that he was not surprised by the US veto of the resolution before the UN security meeting "Because Panama had been vetoed for 60 years every time it tried to negotiate." The General said he was pleased with the seven-day meeting of the security council, the first ever held in Latin America, but even more pleased by the public support Panama received from other members of the Security Council. He said, "I look at it this way, only the United States voted to support its position, 13 other countries voted for Panama."

Torrijos later taped a national television interview in which he praised the Panamanian people for their calmness and civic responsibility during the council meeting, he said, "Violence gets you nowhere, and the people realize this." But General Omar Torrijos also says that he started immediately consulting with regional political representatives to decide what his country should do next in the Panama [inaudible 00:28:57] negotiations with the United States.

The recent meeting of the Economic Commission for Latin America, a respected and influential branch of the United Nations, has provoked a great deal of discussion in the Latin American press. Excélsior of Mexico City reports that Raul Prebisch, Executive Secretary of the Commission, issued a call for serious structural reforms in Latin American countries. "These reforms," he said, "are a necessary, though not sufficient condition, for overcoming the contradictions that imported technology creates for Latin America." He discussed the difficulties that the Economic Commission has had in its work because of forces opposed to development in Latin America and called for renewed strength within the organization for objective research. The Latin American economist spoke out against what he called "dependent capitalism" saying that its benefits were limited to elites and did not extend to the great majority of people.

In a speech sent from his hospital bed to the Commission's meeting, Peruvian President Velasco Alvarado, spoke of the great revolutionary current in Latin America of which he felt his own country was an example. Mexico's official participation in the conference took the form of several warnings, including the danger of international trade and tariff agreements, which are made without the participation of Third World nations. The Mexicans also requested that ECLA begin a systematic study of the characteristics of multinational corporations in Latin America whose activities in the region seem to be a major source of economic decision making.

Latin America, a British periodical, points out that the main feature of this 25th anniversary meeting has been more bitter Latin American criticism of the United States. So, with the United States veto in the Security Council in Panama last week and the Organization of American States meeting in Washington next week, the United States will have been Latin America's whipping boy three weeks in a row. "What may cause anxiety in the State Department," Latin America writes, "is the stark public revelation of the incompatibility of interests between the United States and Latin America."

The Cuban speaker encountered widespread Hispanic support when he said that, "At the present moment in history, there is no community of interests between the United States of America and the other countries of the hemisphere." He attracted even more sympathy for criticizing proposals to move certain Economic Commission agencies from Santiago de Chile to Washington and even for calling for the expulsion of the United States, Britain, France, and the Netherlands from the Commission so that it could be truly representative of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Echoing problems in the United States, the Miami Herald reports from Mexico City. Thousands of butcher shops in Mexico City refuse to sell beef to protest government fines for passing on higher costs to consumers. The butcher sold pork instead. Some shops were closed. An organization of small businessmen claimed that 12,000 of an estimated 14,000 butcher shops in the Capitol had cut off beef sales between Saturday and Tuesday. Others said only about 3000 shops were involved. Supermarkets continued to sell beef.

Continuing our coverage of a US diplomatic offensive, or counter offensive in Latin America, The Guardian reports that preceding General Abram's planned visit, United States General Vernon Walters, second in command of the Central Intelligence Agency, visited Brazil last month. After his visit, Brazilian General Mello declared that the United States and Brazil, "Will continue their struggles against communism, which is showing its claws in South America."

In another view of impending diplomatic developments and especially Nixon's possible trip to Latin America, Excélsior of Mexico reports that Nixon would encounter considerable hostility. Nixon, Excélsior reports, will encounter a Latin America radically different from that of 15 years ago when he made his last state visit there.

The hostility with which he was received in touring several countries as Vice President reflected an anti North American sentiment that had at the time barely taken hold among the students and workers. A decade later in several nations, Excélsior says, the sentiment has spread reaching even official levels. In addition, the internal situation of most countries has changed. Only in Paraguay where Alfredo Stroessner remains dictator is the political atmosphere unchanged.

In Peru, 15 years ago, Nixon was welcomed by protests and stones, but he received an official apology from the government. Now, the government there itself has had several serious run-ins with the US foreign investment policies. In Venezuela, 15 years ago, Nixon was bombarded by eggs, tomatoes, and rocks, and the army was forced to intervene to literally save Nixon's life from a so-called mob. Now, while there are officially amicable relations between the two governments, Venezuela has imposed severe restrictions on the US companies operating in the region, and a humorist there suggests that Nixon had better keep a low profile.

Excélsior also reported that in evident disregard for Latin American needs and opinions, Nixon made a speech, April 10th, asserting that, "Multinational corporations are a viable source of world prosperity," and asking the US Congress not to pass reform legislation attempting to curb their power. In addition, Nixon's new foreign trade proposals have been described by the Mexican ambassador as posing an enormous threat to Mexico. Nixon announced that if he had his way, the US would help Latin American countries only if they helped the United States. That poses a problem for Latin American countries since they are already running a major trade unbalance that is in the favor of the United States, that from Excélsior.

In addition to the trip of General Vernon Walters, second in command of the Central Intelligence Agency, the announced trip of General Creighton Abrams of the joint Chiefs of staff and the possible trip of Nixon to Latin America, William Rogers of the State Department has announced some plans for a trip. The Miami Herald reports that Secretary of State, William Rogers, will visit a half a dozen key countries in a two-week trip through Latin America next month. The 14-day trip, tentatively set from May 5th to 20th, will include stops of between one and two days in at least five Latin American nations, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina before the inauguration there of the new Peronist government on May 25th are certainties. Columbia and Venezuela are likely stops and Peru is a possible one.

The Miami Herald continues noting that Chile, where the United States faces some of its most difficult bilateral issues, will not be included on the Roger's itinerary. Nor will Panama, where the United States has come under increasing pressure over the canal. Among bilateral issues to be raised are those of trade and tariffs, petroleum, the law of the sea, the changing role of the United States and a Latin America anxiously asserting political and economic self-determination. No high ranking US official has systematically visited Latin America since New York Governor Rockefeller undertook a protest marred country by country tour in 1969. The Nixon administration has consistently ranked Latin America near the bottom of its foreign policy priorities, but President Nixon, in a recent message to Latin American leaders, promised to accord inter-American affairs priority consideration during this, his second term. That from the financial section of the Miami Herald.

Meanwhile, as US diplomats plan their trips, Latin American officials are not exactly waiting around. Excélsior reports that Mexican President Echeverria was visiting Moscow. President Echeverria also announced during his trip to Europe, Moscow, and Peking that he definitely will not establish relations with General Franco, the US ally who has been ruling Spain since the fascist victory there in the 1930s. Excélsior further reported that Echeverria did meet in Paris with Perón and cordial relations between Mexico and Argentina are expected to develop after the popularly elected Peronist candidate takes office when the military steps down. That report from the Mexican daily Excélsior.

Two comments in the Latin America press seemed to sum up the general feeling on the continent in the wake of the recent organization of American States meeting in Washington DC. Mexico's President Echeverría, when asked by Rio de Janeiro's Opinião about his opinion of the organization was replied, "The OAS? Does it still exist? It is necessary to reconstruct it on different bases. It is necessary to establish a new regional organization which does not exclude anybody, including Canada and Cuba."

In Lima, a newspaper favoring the government, El Expreso, said that the Latin Americans now need a Declaration of independence equal to the one the North Americans gave to England in 1776, and concluded that the organization of American states will not survive if the United States continues to dominate it.

A more detailed view of the OAS (Organization of American States) meeting was given by the British Weekly, Latin America, which said that the general assembly of the OAS ended its meeting in Washington two weeks ago without voting on the question of Cuba's readmission, or the lifting of diplomatic and economic sanctions against the island. Although there was undoubtedly a majority in favor of ending Cuba's isolation, most delegates withdrew from the brink of an outright confrontation with the US, which continued to object to Havana's military links with Moscow, and maintained that despite certain changes, Cuba was still interfering in other countries' internal affairs. A working group was set up to find a compromised solution with both Chile and Brazil among its members representing the most extreme viewpoints on Cuba.

It was also agreed unanimously to form a commission to study the complete restructuring of the OAS, and there was a unanimous vote for ideological plurality in the hemisphere. A resolution approved by 21 votes to none, with only the United States and Honduras abstaining, called on Washington not to sell its strategic mineral reserves in a way that would harm Latin American economies.

Another resolution approved unanimously, except for the abstention of the US, called on Washington to prevent transnational companies from intervening in other countries internal affairs. This report from the weekly Latin America.

For today's feature, we've invited economist David Barkin to discuss the problem of unemployment in Latin America. David's a participant in the conference on US/Mexico Economic Relations this week on the University of Texas campus, is currently teaching economics at the City University of New York, and has traveled widely in Latin America. He visited Cuba for two months in 1969 at the invitation of the Cuban government, has worked with Chilean economists off and on for the past four years, and has done extensive research and has taught economics in Mexico for about five years.

David, someone at the conference the other day stated that unemployment rate in Mexican agriculture is 46%. Could you comment on this figure, and include what efforts are being made by the Mexican government to correct this problem?

The problem of unemployment in Mexico is very serious because of the nature of development, which is leading to the development of commercial agriculture in selected parts of the country. In a few selected parts of the country. And the rest of the agricultural sector is stagnating. People are being forced out of the agricultural sector, but those who remain are finding themselves without the resources and without the government assistance which is necessary for them to become productive members of the society.

The 46% unemployment figure in Mexico is a reflection of the fact that although a lot of people remain in the agricultural economy, many of them are not producing nearly as much as they might produce were resources available for the production of goods which could satisfy the needs of the mass of the people in the population. In the urban sector, the problem is not quite as serious in absolute magnitude, but perhaps in human terms even more serious. The misery associated with urban unemployment is greater than that with rural unemployment. And the slums in the large Mexican cities are growing year after year. The unemployment rate in Mexico City and in other urban areas in the country may be as high as 30 or 40 percent, if you consider what these people could produce if they were working fully in productive occupations, satisfying the basic needs of people, which at the present time aren't being satisfied.

Now, in terms of what the Mexican government is trying to do to solve the problem, they have undertaken a large program of public works projects, and are trying to encourage additional investment both by Mexicans and foreigners. The problem with this program is that it is designed to satisfy the needs of only a small proportion of the Mexican population, perhaps only 30% of the population. 30% of the population with income levels far above those of the other 70% of the population who live at bare levels of subsistence, and many of them living at below the level of what we would consider dignified living levels. It does not seem to me, nor to many of the representatives at the conference that the present development programs of the Mexican government are going to be able to seriously attack and make inroads into the problem of unemployment in Mexico. This is further compounded of course by the high rate of population growth in Mexico, but even if population growth rates were to decline in Mexico, it's not clear that they would be able to solve the unemployment problem with their present approach.

What about the effect of US investments in Mexico on the employment problem?

US investments are particularly injurious to the Mexican people because they're creating a type of industry which is displacing people in favor of machines, for the production of whatever goods are being produced in Mexico. US investments are generally what we would call capital intensive. That is using machinery to replace people in the production of goods. The goods which are produced are the kinds of goods which we, Americans, consume, but which because we are so rich, the middle level American standard of living is so high compared to that in Mexico, the kinds of goods which are produced are only able to be bought by those people in the 30% that I cited, who have sufficient income to buy those kinds of goods. That is they have income like a middle income level person in this country might have. An average person.

As a result, American investment is only heightening the problem in Mexico, creating additional difficulties because they are creating the appearance of modernity and creating a whole gamut of goods which the whole population can see but does not have access to.

What about the Mexicanization regulations that are being discussed now in Mexico in terms of affecting foreign investment? Is that going to solve any of the problem?

The Mexicanization legislation, which is designed to put some curbs on foreign investment is designed to attack a different problem. A problem that American foreign investment is making inroads into the capital equipment, the machinery and the factories which is owned by Mexican entrepreneurs. Until recently, Americans have been going into Mexico and purchasing outright large factories in large parts of the economy owned by Mexicans, and what the new legislation is designed to do is to try to stem this tide. It is not designed to prevent foreign investment, and it is not designed to prevent the sorts of effects which I just talked about, but rather to try to give the Mexican some protection in the face of the large transnational corporations who are trying to get greater control over the Mexican economy.

David, what about unemployment in Chile under the popular Unity government? What is Salvador Allende doing to correct this problem?

Well, unemployment in Chile was a growing problem during the last part of the 1960s. The economy was stagnating and unemployment rates in the city of Santiago, which is the most highly developed part of the country, reached as high as 10 and 12%. Now, that's very serious in an industrial labor force, which was as fully integrated into the modern sector of the economy, as is the case in many of our own North American cities.

10% and 12% unemployment for the group as a whole is very serious, and the Allende government's first problem, first priority when taking over was to do something about this problem. What they did was to redistribute income in a very simple, straightforward way by directing that wages be increased while profits be frozen. This sort of measure led to an immediate reactivation of the economy and an increase in demand by workers and the lower socioeconomic groups in the population, which made it possible for the government to increase employment in firms which it was taking over because private entrepreneurs were not responding to the increase in demand by the lower classes, and in instead trying to shift their resources to production of goods for the upper classes. As a result, in 1972, employment rates had gone down to below 4%. Quite an achievement in a very short period of time.

The Cuban government claims to have created a full employment economy. David, you've visited Cuba and you've written a book about Cuba. From your experience, how has this been accomplished?

Basically, the reason—the way in which unemployment has been eliminated, in fact the employment problem has been changed from one of unemployment to one of over full employment and a shortage of labor, is by a change in the basic assumptions on by which people are asked to participate in the economy.

In an economy based on a market system, people must work, produce sufficient income for an employer in order to provide that employer with a profit. If the person could produce something for the benefit of society, but that production is not profitable for some private entrepreneur, that person is not going to be employed. In Cuba, a person who could produce for the benefit of society, even if it doesn't go to the benefit of one individual in the society, can and must be employed.

In fact, during the first years of economic reorganization in Cuba, people were absorbed into the economy through a vast educational effort in 1961, a vast medical effort, and the expansion of production in every sector of the economy. Social services and productive services were expanded so that by the late 1960s the problem in Cuba was not how to find work for people, but rather how to encourage people who previously did not consider themselves part of the workforce to join the workforce, and now old people who were previously retired are performing useful social tasks for the society, people who are in schools, children and young people are being asked to join as part of their regular school program in productive tasks, and women and disabled people are also being fully incorporated into the economy.

I'd like to go on though and explain the nature of the unemployment problem and the way in which the Cubans solve it differently than say the Mexicans. Sugar cane cutting is a very difficult task and it requires in the pre-revolutionary era, about 300 to 400,000 people during four months a year, working 12 hours a day and sometimes as much as seven days a week during four months a year to cut the sugar cane. During that period they were paid sufficient income to live on for 12 months, but only at the very, very miserable levels of subsistence, which prevailed in Cuba at that time. Most of them didn't have access to meat and milk, for example. But they were unemployed for eight months of the year.

In the post-revolutionary government era, it's impossible to conceive of people being idle for eight months a year because of the very, very serious needs of people throughout the whole economy to solve productive problems, and to increase production in agriculture and industry and in services. As a result, most of these people who were working in sugar were incorporated into other activities. Reorganization of agriculture, livestock industry, and things like that. As a result, they were not available full-time during the sugar harvest for cane cutting.

When cane cutting needs were great, the entire population was recruited for sugar cane cutting on a voluntary basis. And people worked in brigades based on workplaces, and went into voluntary areas, and people at the factories remaining at the productive jobs and in the bureaucracy were expected to do the work of other people, to cover their jobs while they were absent. As a result, a technical problem, the cutting of sugarcane is solved in present day Cuba not by allowing people to be unemployed, which is the case of our migrant farm workers and of migrant farm workers all over the hemisphere, but rather by getting brigades of voluntary workers to achieve this task in a collective way.

This I think has great lesson for us in America, because we assume that people must be employed only at a specific task, and if that task is not available, then they're going to remain unemployed, as is the case of migrant farm workers. When we cannot create sufficient jobs because of specific political policies, policies of the government, we are in a quandary. We don't know how to provide these people with sufficient income and still remain with the incentive system to encourage them to work when we need them to work at low wages. As a result, we have a technical problem which translates itself into a social problem. The social problem of poverty, and widespread un- and underemployment, with the impossibility of many groups in our population finding work at all. Especially women and some third world groups.

The technical problem could be solved in our country, but not under the assumption that people must work to provide a profit for a small group of employers. It's only if they could work by satisfying social needs that we're going to be able to attack the basic underlying problem of poverty.

The latest developments in the Watergate scandal are receiving wide international attention. Mexico's Excélsior, for example, reported extensively on former Attorney General Mitchell's payments of more than $2 million to Republican spies, and the paper provided detailed reports on subsequent events.

The Watergate affair has also occasioned some editorial comment in the Latin American press. Brazil's News Weekly Visão said, "The revelations surrounding Watergate will not have much practical effect since Nixon is already reelected. The wave of mud, which stretches from the Democratic headquarters to the basement of the White House will result in a few convictions, but little else."

Visão continues, "At this point, it is possible to expect that the case will end with a few resignations, because of sudden illness in the family or pressing private business affairs of some prominent White House aides. Certainly the interest of justice will not be entirely served, though the law makes no distinction between those who execute a crime and those who order it. Experience clearly shows that the former almost always go to jail, while their chiefs only lose their jobs. But it is also easy to predict that the example of Watergate will serve some use and that this type of electoral politics will lose for a good while its attractiveness."

"We conclude," Visão writes, "That the wave of reaction created around Watergate was not useless. It was a wave which was born after the official investigation had dried up and became irresistible, in spite of the frank opposition and all the capacity for pressure of the most powerful force of the republic, the White House."

Excélsior reports that the People's Republic of China and Mexico have signed a commercial agreement, the first in history between the two countries. The agreement involves immediate sales to China of more than $370 million dollars in Mexican products and was reached during President Echeverria's recent trip to China.

The Miami Herald reports another result of Echeverria's trip. President Luis Echeverria of Mexico gained a diplomatic success today with the announcement by his government that China will sign a treaty assuring Latin America of freedom from nuclear weapons. A spokesman for the Echeverria government in China said, Chairman Mao of China will sign the Treaty of Tlatelolco in all its meanings. The pact, signed by Latin American nations in 1967, bans nuclear arms from all of Latin America. This is the first time one of the five nuclear powers has said it would sign all of the treaty. Until now, China has refused to sign the agreement if their other powers did not approve it without restrictions. The United States and Great Britain have signed only parts of the pact, while France and Russia have agreed to none of it as yet.

Tri Continental News service reports on the Latin American reaction to the US strategic reserve's policy. The Nixon Administration's plan to sell 85% of the US' non-ferrous metal reserves and other minerals on the open world market is causing great concern in many underdeveloped countries, particularly those of Latin America. The US government has traditionally stockpiled vast reserves of strategic materials for use in case of a national emergency and as a hedge against the ups and downs of the world market. Nixon now claims that the US economy and technology are sufficiently dynamic to find substitutes for scarce materials during possible large scale conflicts, and has presented a bill to Congress authorizing sale of almost nine tenths of the US strategic reserves, which would flood the world market next year if approved.

Tri Continental News Service continues, at a recent meeting of Latin American energy and petroleum ministers, the Peruvian Mining and Power Minister called the US government's moves in reality economic aggression against the Latin American countries. He went on to explain that such a move would force down prices of those materials and have a disastrous effect on the economies of Latin America. Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, who export one or more of the affected minerals, would be hurt most severely. Guyana, Mexico and Columbia would also suffer negative effects.

La Nación of Buenos Aires reports that in Montevideo, Uruguay, all eight daily newspapers have closed, three under government decree and the others by a strike protesting the government action. President Juan Bordaberry on Friday ordered La Mañana, Ahora and El Popular shut down for three days starting Saturday for allegedly publishing state secrets. One of the editors was temporarily detained by the police. Excélsior of Mexico reports that thousands of students participated in the funeral procession for four of their companions killed in May Day clashes with the police. The funeral ceremonies held May 3rd went off without incident following two days of disturbances. The violence was touched off May Day when police tried to stop 300 students in a building of the autonomous University of Puebla from joining a downtown May Day demonstration.

Receiving front page coverage in the US press was the kidnapping of US Consulate General Leonhardy, Mr. Leonhardy was safely released May the 7th in exchange for the kidnapper's demands.

The Christian Science monitor notes that the terrorist kidnapping of the United States Consulate General in Guadalajara, Mexico's second city, could hardly come of a more difficult time for President Echeverría. Fresh back from a month-long world trip designed to enhance Mexican global prestige, the Mexican leader this past week has been faced with mounting student unrest spotlighted by the killing of four students in Puebla.

Moreover, the continuing activity of guerrillas in the mountains south of Mexico City is causing new concern. And now comes the abduction of Consul General Terrance G. Leonhardy, coupled with the terrorist demands that the Echeverría government released 30 political prisoners in exchange for consul. The government quickly agreed to the release and the 30 were flown to Havana in a Mexican Air Force plane. The secondary and tertiary demands, namely reading of the kidnapper's public message and a ransom of one million pesos were also met in the government's concern to protect the consul general's life. This from the Christian Science Monitor.

This week's feature is on Mexico and we're happy to have Robert Hedner with us who has been a correspondent to Mexico for some time. What can you tell us given the recent kidnapping of the American consulate about the guerrilla movements in Mexico?

Well, first of all, due to the attitude of the government and the controlled press, little is really known about the guerrilla movement. The government either denies their existence or claims that they have just been destroyed or alternatively says they're only a matter of thieves and assassins anyway and they can be dealt with by the local police. The press complies by relegating all reports of guerrilla activities to the crime pages. So, it would seem that the Mexican authorities would prefer that Mexico be known as the country with the highest crime rate in the world rather than having foreign investors and tourists and most importantly their own population suspect that a widespread popular movement may be developing.

How widespread would you say that movement is?

Well, I think first of all, we have to speak of various local movements rather than a national movement. There doesn't seem to be evidence that there's any national coordination among these various local movements. The strongest movement is undoubtedly that of in Guerrero, which is in the state and the southeast of—excuse me, the southwest of the country and is headed by Lucio Cabañas. Judging from the repression there, the movement seems to be very strong indeed. There's been two to three years of repeated search and destroy missions in Guerrero. The former leader of the movement, Genaro Vázquez, was murdered by the police about a year and a few months ago, has now become a national hero.

Napalm has apparently been used, American helicopters, CIA-trained counterinsurgency teams, but all of this has failed to diminish the growing movement. Growing in any case, if we can measure it by the attacks on military camps, army convoys and the repeated kidnappings of the past year and a half, which now have been reported in the newspapers. There's also mass repression in Guerrero, reports of mass arrests in the slums of Acapulco and the other major cities in Guerrero, and also reports of what the Mexicans call "Vietnam villages", which are what we call strategic hamlets, villages surrounded by barbed wire in order to control the rural population.

So, that apparently, Lucio Cabañas, his group is not just a guerrilla band, but a popularly supported movement, not just in the countryside but in the cities of Guerrero and not just in Guerrero, but also in neighboring southern states. There have been many reports of other guerrilla movements such as in Sinaloa, in Tlaxcala, in Chiapas, and in various other parts of the republic.

Are there any reports of activities in some of the major cities?

Yes. There have been numerous reports of urban guerrillas, particularly in Monterey and Acapulco, in Mexico City, but in almost all the main cities of Mexico. And in all of them, you find now that the banks have details of soldiers outside them guarding them. Usually these guerrillas demand the freeing of political prisoners, and this suggests that the Mexican jails are once again overflowing with them. I think the most important urban guerrilla movement has been that of in Chihuahua. In January of '72, a number of the downtown banks were expropriated, as the guerrillas put it. Some of the guerrillas were then arrested. There were reports of there being tortured and even of murders in jail.

In the face of these reports, a popular assembly was called Foreign Chihuahua and 15,000 people turned out for the first one. Subsequently, a popular tribunal was formed to judge first the local repression, but then finally the repression on a national scale to judge the whole regime and it's a permanent political organization, and there now have been popular assemblies in other cities in Mexico, including Puebla and Monterey. So that there seems to be a connection and certainly a great impact between the guerrilla movements, the underground and clandestine movements and these popular movements. But in some, again, I would say that there's no national coordinated movement with a national program, but rather growing local guerrilla actions and then generally, a growing political movement despite sophisticated and very violent repression in Mexico.

Guerrilla movements sound rather strange to us. I was wondering if you could explain some why there are guerrilla movements and why these movements seem to be growing.

Well, I think the fundamental and root cause is the distribution of the social product in Mexico, a distribution which despite, or rather really because of Mexico's wanted economic growth in the past 20 or 30 years is very, very uneven. The 50% at the bottom of the social scale received 15% of the national income and the 15% at the top, those have been benefiting from this economic growth now receive 60% of the national income. This of course after American corporations have subtracted their part.

Why is the income so concentrated or so uneven?

Well, as in all societies, control of the means of production determines how the product will be distributed. In Mexico, which is a dependent capitalist society, the means of productions are controlled by the foreign monopolies in alliance with a local big bourgeoisie. Together, they have pursued an economic policy, which they call import substitution, which is finally responsible I think for the nature of the distribution of the social product there.

This particular policy of import substitution, what is that? Can you describe that?

Yeah. I think there are two ways of looking at it. One, from the point of view of the Mexican and the other from the point of view of the multinational corporations. The Mexicans, and for the underdeveloped countries in general who undertake this kind of policy, it means the substitution of products previously imported from the metropolitan countries, almost always manufacturing, manufactured products, substituting for these imports by making the products at home, by importing the means of production to make them. That is, instead of importing commodities, you import machinery and you make the products at home.

Where did they get the capital for that? How is that arranged?

Well, the capital comes from multinationals. And from the point of view of the multinational corporations, this is a very attractive policy. Rather than export to Latin America manufactured items made by expensive American labor, you export your youth machinery and you get the super exploited Latin American worker to produce the products. And in exchange for this flexibility, you get a guaranteed monopoly in the national market and tax concessions from the local bourgeoisie anxious to share in the profits from foreign capital investment.

However, this process does create serious problems. The one thing, it's based on an existing and given market, that is all it does is substitute where the product is made, and since this foreign investment is attracted by low wages, it's very difficult to expand the market. What happens is to the extent that the market is expanded is it is expanded by deepening it, the 15% or so who are benefiting from this process by more, television sets and automobiles, let's say. So, that capital moves from one branch, which has been substituted such as textiles to another branch, such as television sets, and then when this branch is saturated, when the market has been used up or can't expand anymore, capital has shifted into another branch such as now petrochemistry, or intermediate production goods in general.

But what happens is that the population remains underfed and underclothed and 15% of the population, which benefits from the process continues to benefit and the gap grows wider. It also causes balance of payment problems because the whole process is finally dependent on foreign loans to pay for the importation of machinery from the metropolitan countries.

Given this economic situation, what are the multinationals in the Mexican government planning to do?

I think basically they're planning to follow the Brazilian model, the model that Brazil has followed since 1964, which is to emphasize exportation, to try to solve the balance of payment problems by exporting manufactured items principally to the regional markets in Latin America. However, this also creates problems, perhaps even more serious problems. In order to participate in the world market, the Mexican industry must become more efficient. It's now been protected by 30 years of high tariffs in this import substitution policy, so that it is very inefficient. Therefore, productivity has to be increased, machinery has to be bought, the industry has to be modernized.

Well, it's obvious that the companies which can afford to buy machinery will be the big ones, the monopolies, the foreign monopolies particularly, so that those companies which will benefit from the process will be the North American companies, who will continue to penetrate the Mexican market even more so. The small businessman will be the one who will suffer. He's been protected by this import substitution policy, but now tariffs are being lowered again to raise the efficiency of Mexican industry.

And finally, since the whole process is based on increasingly sophisticated machinery, technological unemployment will rise. The only thing that the president of Mexico, Echeverría, has done to deal with these contradictions, particularly among the smaller businessmen, is to present his policy as a very nationalistic anti-imperialist policy that Mexico will grow greater and begin to export. In fact, it is anything but an anti-imperialist policy and Echeverria is perhaps the new model of the anti-imperialist imperialist statesmen.

How would you see then the future of this development that would seem that the income distribution is already severely strained and that the possible growth plans for the economy would emphasize exports rather than improvement of the mass standard of living at home, that would only seem in the long run to make things worse?

Yes. I think that on the one hand, there will be some attempt to co-opt the working class as they have been to some extent the unionized working class co-opted since World War II. But they haven't been so much co-opted, as had their trade union organizations controlled and dominated. But they will try to create a kind of labor aristocracy in Mexico, but it'll be very, very difficult in the face of falling wages.

I think the only thing that would really be left for the government is what they're already doing, which is massive repression of any kind of political descent, mass descent movement. There will be increasing political prisoners and the left will be faced with the job of really implementing the worker, peasant, student and unemployed alliance that they have been talking about. I think a great deal will depend on the working class movement. If the working class movement, which has arisen in the past few years and has threatened the control of the trade unions in the past two or three years, if this movement becomes more than a syndicalist reformist movement and begins to become a revolutionary movement to align with the campesinos, to align with the unemployed and with the students, then I think Mexico will be entering into a pre-revolutionary, even a revolutionary period.

And the whole, I think an interview in El Punto Crítico, which is the finest magazine in Mexico for this kind of information, an interview with one of the guerrillas, one of the Chihuahua guerrillas perhaps summarize what we can expect in Mexico in the next few years. This prisoner was in jail and heard that one of his compañeros, one of his associates had been captured. He later heard the next day that there had been a shootout in the jail and that someone was killed. He was told that. When he asked who it was that was killed, he received no answer and was just left wondering what had happened to his compañero.

A few hours later, the subdistrict attorney came in and the interview goes on and says, "He told me that the dead man was Raul Diaz," his campanero. I answered him. I said to him, "Revolutions are made with the barbarity of some and the sacrifice of others. And I think this is what we can expect will continue to be the case in Mexico, and even more so in the next few years. Barbarity on the one hand and enormous sacrifice on the other."

Excélsior reports from Mexico City that, on May 1st, while workers' demonstrations were taking place in all parts of the republic, mass political murder again struck the Mexican democratic struggle. The scene was Puebla, traditional bastion of the Mexican right, noted traditionally for its numerous churches and, more recently, for its ferocious politics.

According to Excélsior, five students were gunned down and a dozen others, including four police, were injured when members of the student movement attempted to distribute leaflets at the local Mayday parade. According to police, the students had attempted to alter the direction of the parade. The official statement of the student organization claimed that the students were killed at a meeting called to discuss and protest the imprisonment of students passing out literature to the workers. Police open fired at the meeting from nearby rooftops and a number of students were shot down.

Excélsior continues, the following day, as President President Luis Echeverría ordered an investigation of the incident, Puebla's governor stated that the killings ought to be a lesson to the students. Days later, the governor himself was in turn deposed due to a growing nationwide reaction, including a national university protest strike and numerous protests from students and worker organizations.

Puebla industrialists and businessmen organize a transportation and service stoppage to protest the deposition of the governor, while students and workers attempted to organize a mass meeting, later prohibited, to protest the stoppage. 20,000 sympathizers attended the funeral of the murdered students.

According to Punto Crítico, Puebla has been the scene of political assassination for nearly a year now. Ever since the student movement under left wing, including communist party, leadership attained a strong measure of influence in university affairs in 1972. The students attempted to carry out reforms widening the social base of the university. They set up service brigades to supply medical aid, social services, and general information to local peasants and workers unemployed in the crisis-ridden textile industry of Puebla.

In July, a young architect and director of the Free People's High School was gunned down in the streets of Puebla apparently by members of a national fascist political organization. Despite demands for a thorough investigation and government promises to comply, to this date, no one has been accused of the crime. In October, the right organized an anti-communist and pro-religious demonstration. Amid growing labor and peasant solidarity and demonstrations of support from other universities, the reaction continued to grow. Last winter, the organizer of the service brigades was also killed in Puebla. According to reports, this investigation has also gone un-investigated by the authorities.

As Punto Critico and Siempre! describe it, Puebla is at the heart of an attack on the universities by organized elements associated with industry and the labor union bureaucracy who wish to discourage mounting student participation in the worker and peasant movements growing noticeably since 1968. The university have recently been the scene of what the government calls an educational reform designed to depoliticize the university. Puebla has now become the symbol to many of this policy. During the weeks, students in Mexico City attempted to demonstrate in solidarity with the Puebla victims. The demonstration was prohibited by government officials, and those students who persisted were violently dispersed according to Excélsior. As yet, no one has been arrested for the murders in Puebla. This report on Puebla was from Excélsior, Siempre!, and Punto Critico.

The London News Weekly Latin America reports that the dramatic new initiatives launched by President Nixon in Europe and Asia this year and last are not to be matched in the region nearest to the United States, Latin America. This is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the Latin American section of his annual policy review to Congress last week, which was significant for what it did not say than for what it did. The only major positive move to be announced was that the president himself is to make at least one trip to Latin America this year, preceded by his Secretary of State, William Rogers. In the light of the Watergate scandal and of the current bad relations between the US and Latin America, it may be doubted whether President Nixon's trip would be any more successful than his disastrous tour of Latin America as General Eisenhower's vice president in 1958.

Latin America continues, certainly, there is little enough in the policy review for Latin Americans to welcome. An assertion of the president's desire to underscore our deep interest in Latin America through closer personal contacts was not accompanied by any concession to Latin American interests or aspirations. Only, perhaps, the Mexicans can find some satisfaction in Nixon's promise of a permanent, definitive and just solution to the problem of the high salinity of Colorado River waters diverted to Mexico, but there was no give it all in the United States position on many of the other broader disputes with Latin America. On the Panama Canal issue, he appealed to Panama to help take a fresh look at this problem and to develop a new relationship between us, one that will guarantee continued effective operation of the canal while meeting Panama's legitimate aspirations.

Panama's view, however, is that its effort to persuade Washington to take a fresh look at the problem had been frustrated for so long that its only recourse was to make this matter an international issue at the United Nations Security Council. On this, President Nixon merely noted disapprovingly that an unfortunate tendency among some governments and some organizations to make forums for cooperation into arenas for conflict, so throwing the blame back on Panama.

Latin America's report continues that, in a clear reference to the dispute with Chile over compensation for the copper mines taken over from United States companies, the president said adequate and prompt compensation was stipulated under international law for foreign property nationalized. There was no sign of any concessions there nor did Nixon envisage any reconciliation with Cuba, which he still saw as a threat to peace and security in Latin America. Furthermore, his proposal that any change of attitude towards Cuba should be worked out when the time was ripe. With fellow members of the Organization of American States, OAS, came at a moment of deep disillusion with the OAS on the part of many Latin American governments. The review displayed no understanding in Washington of why nearly all Latin American and Caribbean governments sympathize with Chile and Panama and many, if not most, want to reestablish relations with Cuba.

Nixon's undertaking to deal realistically with Latin American governments as they are, providing only that they do not endanger peace and security in the hemisphere, merely begs the question that Latin Americans have been posing for years nor did the review reflect in any way the Latin American feeling expressed with a unanimous vote at last month's meeting of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, ECLA, in Quito that the countries of the region are helping to finance the rise in United States' standard of living at the cost of their own impoverishment.

Latin America concludes that there is some satisfaction at President Nixon's call to Congress to revise the legislation that imposes penalties on countries which arrest United States' fishing vessels in territorial waters the USA does not recognize, but many Latin Americans see this merely as a recognition that the existing policy hurts United States' interests, but the failure of Washington to appreciate Latin America's views may not be the main feature of the United States' policy towards Latin America this year. Unless the White House can overcome the Watergate scandal and revive its decision-making process, the United States will be quite unable to react to the new Peronist government in Argentina or exert any influence over the selection of Brazil's new president. This report was taken from the London News Weekly Latin America.

Excélsior reports more details on the recent kidnappings of the American consulate in Mexico. Suspects were rounded up in the kidnapping of American Consulate, Terrence Leonhardy, in Guadalajara. The kidnappers released Leonhardy unharmed after four days of detention in exchange for the freeing of 30 political prisoners from seven Mexican jails around the country, along with the ransom of $80,000. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People, branded as nothing more than common criminals by President Echeverría, forced the government to publish their political statement in major Mexican newspapers, radio and television.

The statement printed in Excélsior read in part, "With all the means of communication at its disposal, the government of the wealthy tries to hide the true significance and origin of the bank robberies, kidnappings and acts of justice realized by revolutionary groups who operated all over the country. They have unleashed a propaganda offensive trying to convince the people that we are common criminals, paid assassins, thieves, enemies of the country. Today, for the first time and not voluntarily, the means of communication serve the proletarian cause. We direct ourselves to our exploited brothers, to all the working people so that they may know why we struggle, why we choose the path of armed struggle as the only one through which it is possible to defeat the wealthy and their government of exploiters."

The statement of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People goes on to say that, "As long as one privilege social class exploits and enriches itself with the work of other classes, the class struggle will necessarily continue to exist and, with it, violence, the violence of the exploiters to maintain their economic and political interest and the violence of the exploited to liberate themselves to win the right to enjoy the product of their labor. The concentration of the country's wealth in the hands of a very few, the suctioning off of great quantities of this wealth to the exterior, the exploitation of the workers and peasants by wealthy nationals and foreigners are the fundamental causes of the poverty of the working people. The wealthy in power, not satisfied with the hundreds of billions that they have accumulated, thanks to the exploitation of the workers and peasants, have delivered the country to foreign capital. Factories, industries, the best land, mineral deposits are all in the hands of foreigners, principally wealthy North Americans."

The statement went on to outline a revolutionary strategy led by Vanguard Proletariat utilizing many forms of struggle. This statement appeared in Excélsior and other Mexican newspapers. Excélsior also reported later that all suspects arrested have been released.

The Miami Herald this week commented on the effect that the May 4th kidnapping of a US consul in Mexico has had on the Mexican people. The dramatic kidnapping of a US diplomat has suddenly thrust an unheard of guerilla organization into prominence in Mexico. Almost overnight, the name FRAP has become a commonplace. It stands for Fuerzas Revolucionarias Armadas del Pueblo, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People. Up to now, Mexico had been relatively free of the urban guerrilla activity that has swept Latin America in recent years. Anti-government groups have sprung up and died out here without the spectacular publicity of the Tupamaros in Uruguay or the underground groups in Brazil.

But FRAP succeeded by kidnapping US consul, Terrence G. Leonhardy in Guadalajara on May 4th and holding him until the government released 30 prisoners and arranged a ransom of $80,000. In all Leonhardy was in guerilla custody for 76 hours. He was not harmed. The prisoners were flown to Cuba and given asylum. FRAP in the meantime, won wide publication of a manifesto assailing the Mexican government and emphasizing what it termed the injustices against Mexico's poor. Never before in Mexico's turbulent history has a single anti-government group put its political philosophy before so many people so rapidly.

The FRAP manifesto was very much to the political left and called on the poor to join in an armed fight against social ills by overthrowing the government. Authorities in the interior ministry, which deals with political matters and subversion say they know little about FRAP. Who its members are, where it is headquartered, or who directed the abduction of Leonhardy. The manifesto was well written and well reasoned. Leonhardy reported being asked questions apparently prepared by someone with more education than the men who handled the actual abduction and guarded him.

The manifesto touched on some sore points in Mexican society. It noted the huge gap between rich and poor, charged exploitation of rural and urban poor by landowners and industrialists, accused the establishment of failing to provide educational opportunities to the poor, and claimed that both the poor and poorly educated are mistreated by police and politicians. It accused the government of trying to convince Mexicans that guerrillas are common criminals, cattle thieves, hired killers, enemies of the country, people who work against Mexicans and other such things.

FRAP said it and other guerrilla groups had entered the armed fight because they feel it is necessary to put an end to this privileged caste, which for hundreds of years has been enriching itself at the cost of the sweat under subhuman conditions of the laborer, the farmer, and all workers in exchange for a miserable salary, which is barely enough for bad food.

The manifesto apparently met with much sympathy in Mexico. It expressed what the Mexican middle and lower middle classes discuss in their homes. Through radio and television the manifesto reached millions of illiterate poor. It's said that the poor are no better off than before this country's 1910 agrarian revolution, aimed at ending the oppression of the rural dwellers. Mexico has a population of close to 50 million. Its per capita income is among the highest in the developing world, a bit more than $600 a year, but 13 million Mexicans live on less than that. About half a million campesinos or peasants earn no more than 16 cents a day. 

A factory worker in Mexico City probably earns the minimum daily wage allowed by law, $2 and 52 cents a day. The contrast between rich and poor is evident throughout Mexico. Lavish homes are walled off from tin and cardboard hovels. Multi-million dollar luxury hotels in Acapulco are within walking distance of abject poverty. This report from the Miami Herald. 

On a practical note, David Belknap of the Los Angeles Times service reports kidnapping for politics or profit or both has created a demand for a new kind of insurance in Latin America, and the latter has lately become available. English underwriters, most of the members of the Lloyds of London Group, now offer kidnapping insurance. Policies that will reimburse the hefty ransoms currently being exacted south of the border by urban guerrilla organizations.

With a present annual average of more than one big money kidnapping a week, Argentina is a prime market for the new insurance, now available everywhere in Latin America according to industry sources here. Besides Argentina, nations with kidnapping problems dating from as long ago as 1968 include Columbia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Brokers hesitate to discuss for publication details of the new insurance. Beyond saying that it is available to families and corporations with the name or names of insured individuals specifically mentioned in the policies. That means that if the top five men of a company are mentioned and number six gets snatched, the policy doesn't apply, said one industry source. Blanket coverage isn't available yet, the concept is still too new for blanket premiums to be calculated. This from the Los Angeles Times service. 

Shifting from Argentina to Mexico, the assassination of several students in Puebla, Mexico has brought about consequences to that state and the nation of Mexico as a whole. Latin American newsletter reports that the governor of Puebla was forced to resign in the wake of the uproar over the death of several students killed by police on Mayday. The departure of the government had been the aim of the Puebla university students and of the rector, for some time. A number of students, and last year, two well-known faculty members, had been murdered by extreme right wing groups and many beaten up, but the Mayday incident was the last straw, and the governor was forced to resign. 

However, his resignation brought reaction from conservative groups urging a hard line against students and dissidents. The chamber of commerce called a 24-hour strike and local banks and businesses closed their doors, with business leaders describing the departure of the governor as, "Yet another step in the communist escalation." 

At the national level, President Echeverría has been having problems too in that his handling of the kidnapping of US consul in Guadalajara, Terence Leonhardy, was attacked by Mexican conservatives as weak, since Echeverría accepted the guerrilla's demands. That from Latin American Newsletter. 

There've been several strong reactions to US Secretary of State Rogers recent visit to Latin America that were ignored in the US press, but received ample coverage in Latin America. This report from Chile Hoy the Santiago weekly, is typical. 

The old rhetoric of the good neighbor no longer serves to suppress Latin American insubordination to aggressive US policies, leaving a trail of popular protest in Caracas and Bogota, prearranged tribute in Managua, and cold official receptions in Mexico City and Lima, Secretary of State, William Rogers arrived May 19th at his first breathing spot, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in his impossible goodwill mission to Latin America.

Rogers seeks to soften the growing Latin American reaction to the imperialist policies of his country, expressed clearly in recent international events and to make the road that President Nixon will soon follow, less rocky. Since the Secretary of State can obviously offer no real solutions to the antagonism between his country and Latin America, he has embellished his tour, characterized as a diplomatic diversion by an American news agency, with gross rhetoric. That from Chile Hoy.

On another matter, Excélsior reports that the mafia illegally passes to the United States 50,000 Mexicans a month. The illicit importation of Mexican workers to the United States in Tijuana alone produces for the mafia between 250 and 300 million pesos a month. An agent of the Public Federal Ministry in Tijuana told the Excélsior that, "The brains of the organization which traffics in migrant workers live in the United States, as do those who obtain the major economic benefits." Asked what authority or political person in the United States he was accusing directly, the lawyer answered that he could not reveal directly who in the United States intervenes as an individual or as an authority, but that the United States government should investigate it. 

Excélsior continues, reporting that in many cases the illegal migrants were provided with counterfeit green cards, as the legal papers for immigration are called. It has been proved that these cards are authentic and that the materials used, paper, ink, printing plate, and the stamps of US machines were genuine. This implies either the direct involvement of immigration authorities who have access to such materials or total penetration of the Treasury Department printing offices by organized crime. This from Excélsior, Mexico City. 

In its continuing coverage of the Watergate affair and the ensuing investigations, the Mexican daily Excélsior has shown special interest in linking Watergate conspirators to clandestine activities in Latin America. Excélsior reported last week that John Dean, Counsel to the President until April 30th of this year, and a prime witness in the ongoing Senate Watergate investigation, revealed to news sources a plot to assassinate the Panamanian chief of state Omar Torrijos. According to Dean, Howard Hunt, convicted Watergate conspirator, was in charge of organizing an action group in Mexico for the purpose of assassinating the Panamanian general. The plot was apparently in response to Torrijos' lack of cooperation in revising the Panama Canal Treaty with the US and to his alleged involvement in drug traffic. 

Dean said that the certain operation was discussed at government levels beneath the presidency. He did not reveal exactly when the assassination plot had been under discussion, but he made it clear that it had not been approved, although Hunt and his group were apparently ready and waiting in Mexico. 

In the course of the investigations of the Watergate scandal, several witnesses, among them former CIA members, declared that on at least one other occasion Hunt was involved in clandestine CIA operations in Mexico, presumably around the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. This from Excélsior in Mexico City. 

Chile Hoy reports from Uruguay. "Few of the diplomatic appointments of the Nixon administration will be as significant as that of Ernest Siracusa, a veteran ambassador who will be taking over the US Embassy in Montevideo. Siracusa has served in various Latin American countries; Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia. In Bolivia, he arrived just as a military coup had opened up possibilities of a nationalistic takeover. In this latter case, he seems to have performed well. Bolivian workers organizations attribute a very influential role to him in the defeat of progressive forces and the setting up of a military dictatorship. It has been suggested that he is linked less to the Department of State than to the CIA." 

Whatever the exact nature of his ties, his next assignment will be Uruguay. Chile Hoy predicts that his mission in Uruguay will be largely to convince certain military leaders that nationalist politics are not appropriate to Uruguay, and encourage the rightist generals that the Brazilian model of military control and close alliance with the United States is desirable. 

Meanwhile, Chile Hoy continues, "In Santiago, a committee formed of certain leftist Uruguayan groups gave a conference last month in which they documented repression in their country. Since 1968, when the constitutional government was transformed into a type of military civilian dictatorship, the Army has had a free hand in dealing with dissenters." 

"The statistics are impressive. In less than a year, the joint armed forces killed 43 men and four women. The form of death was typically sinister. Four died from excessive torture. One was thrown off a four-story roof. There were two suicides of people anticipating more torture, 21 were merely riddled with bullets, and the rest were finished off in various armed confrontations. The estimated number of political prisoners is more than 4,000. In a country of less than 3 million inhabitants, this comes down to one political prisoner per 750 citizens." This report from Chile Hoy, a Santiago weekly. 

Our feature this week concerns Latin immigrants in the United States. Their status, their role in the US economy, and recent actions by the immigration service, which appear aimed to shift the blame for the nation's economic and social problems to the immigrant. 

A recent article in The Guardian reported that there are mounting signs that a new anti-alien drive is underway to turn neighbors into scapegoats for unsolved social problems. Without fanfare, since mid-1972, immigration authorities have conducted dragnet raids, victimizing thousands on the street, outside a movie theater, at bus stops, at a dance hall, anywhere if they were dark skinned and looked Latin American. More than 2000 persons, most of them Chicanos, demonstrated in Los Angeles, June 16th to protest massive deportations of people of Mexican ancestry by the United States Immigration and Naturalization service. 

The immigration service, a branch of the Justice Department, began rounding up persons who were supposedly here illegally, arresting more than 1000 people last May 23rd in drag net raids throughout Los Angeles and Orange County. Since then, more than 6,700 people, most of them of Mexican descent, have been arrested and forced to sign papers agreeing to voluntary repatriation. 

As the Guardian points out, the raids have resembled more a Gestapo roundup than a deportation campaign, with the immigration service setting up roadblocks in the Chicano community of East Los Angeles and checking drivers and passengers for proof of citizenship. In addition, immigration service agents have also been arresting people at bus stations, restaurants, on their jobs, and have been breaking into private homes. 

In one instance, the immigration service bursted into a Catholic church service, dragging out more than 200 people. In another case, agents tore down a window screen and climbed into a house, taking away an 11-year-old boy who was there all alone. Later, the parents returned to find the doors wide open and the house empty, only to be informed by neighbors that the boy had been deported to Tijuana, Baja, California, some 130 miles away. 

The deportees have been taken to the Long Beach Naval Station, where they are kept handcuffed overnight before they are shipped across the border. Reporters have stated that immigration officials have removed handcuffs when news reporters have come to inspect the camp. Furthermore, news sources have reported that mothers were unable to attend to their children because their hands are manacled. 

"The deportation", says the Guardian, "have increased to astronomical proportions over the last two years and have begun to resemble the campaign of 1954, when more than one and a half million people were deported, many of whom were United States citizens of Mexican ancestry. In 1971, the immigration service booted out more than 250,000 people, and last year more than 450,000 people were deported, most of them Latins or Mexicans."

The Institute for Social Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico has documented many of these deportations and has discovered that most of the deportees were poor agricultural laborers, who were kicked out after harvest time and without a cent. The author of this study also said that these Mexicans live in the United States in a situation of complete slavery, with terrible working conditions imposed by the owners and without any regard for the precepts of law or humanity. This story appeared in The Guardian. 

Despite allegations to the contrary, immigrant labor contributes more to the US economy than it receives in return. A recent study entitled "Workers Without Visas", a permanent part of the workforce and economy of the United States, makes some startling revelations about the true status of these workers. Published in the latest issue of the magazine of the World Federation of Trade Unions, the article was written jointly by Umberto Corona, Secretary of the Center for Autonomous Social Action, a Los Angeles based organization dedicated to defending the rights of immigrant workers, and Lorenzo Torres. 

Mexican workers without visas in this country do in fact pay taxes. Actually, they pay more taxes than all other residents or workers on the same amount of wages earned. The Internal Revenue Service denies these workers the right to deduct for dependents, even though their dependents may be US citizens or permanent residents. Mexican workers without documents also pay for Social Security benefits through their regular weekly payroll deductions. They cannot, however, collect these benefits when they need them most, when old or sick. 

According to Corona and Torres, these workers cannot take advantage of labor law enforcement rights and facilities when employers refuse to pay wages, overtime pay, vacation, pay, pensions, or even the minimum wage. If they complain, the employer calls the immigration agents and out they go across the border. When these workers cannot produce papers proving citizenship or permanent residency, they are denied welfare benefits, even though they have been workers in this country for years. When jobless, many times they're not able to collect unemployment insurance benefits, despite years of steady work 

In many areas, their children are refused public schooling and are not eligible for scholarships. They have no recourse in civil court for fear of deportation. During the arrest and detention process, prior to deportation, they're denied due process, the right to counsel, to bail, to appeal, on grounds that they're not criminals. They're merely being detained under administrative procedure, the immigration service argues. Finally, but most importantly, they cannot vote and so have absolutely no political recourse. 

Corona and Torres consider that special mention must be made of the terrible injustices being committed daily against hundreds of thousands of deported families, particularly children, but also spouses who are United States citizens. They are unable to return to the land of their birth simply because the breadwinner in their family has no visa. 

The United States economy benefits from the presence of immigrants without visas in yet other ways. The US economizes on the expenses for health, education, and whatever vocational training the immigrant worker receives prior to joining the labor force. The US bears neither the expenses of youth nor of old age, for when one worker without visa is too old, no longer profitable enough, he is deported to the country of origin or simply denied Social Security benefits. 

Immigrant workers, particularly the ones without documents, represent not only a great saving for the US capitalist society at large, but also for the individual capitalists who employs them. In the Southwest, agribusineses has been based in great part on the supply of workers without visas as a source of cheap labor. In more recent years, industry and business in the urban areas have also been taking advantage of the worker without papers, by paying them substandard wages. It is the lowest of the lowest paid jobs, the most arduous, the dirtiest, and the most undesirable to which the immigrant, particularly the one without papers, is assigned. 

Corona and Torres said that in many industries where machines have displaced highly paid workers, these companies have also introduced the use of immigrant Mexican and other Latin American workers without visas at the lowest of wages to perform the rationalized operations that then feed the automated ones. They contend that companies are not interested in automating the very dangerous, unhealthy, or backbreaking jobs when they can pay meager wages for them. 

Many employers hire these workers knowing full well their legal status. When they don't bend to his particular whims, the employer calls the immigration agents. If demand slackens and he must cut his workforce, the employer might withhold wages for a while. When the workers become restive. However, he'll call the immigration service and thus avoid further payment. The bosses can hire these workers for a 10 to 14 hour day for as little as a $1.00 to a $1.30 an hour. 

Corona and Torres say that corporations and government place the blame for the ills of the nation on the immigrant, particularly the illegal one. Some trade unions, adopting this line of reasoning as their own, further argue that these workers block the organizing of unions in industries where they predominate. This is true. These workers are a source of cheap labor for the employer. So long as they remain unorganized, they do exert pressures on the wages of all other workers. 

Some unions have sought an easy way out. They've ignored shops with large concentrations of workers without visas. In some cases, they report them to immigration agents. These unions reject these workers on the pretext that their vulnerability makes them good prey for employers who want to break a strike. 

The approach of the United Farm Workers and other progressive unions has been to include the immigrant without papers in union membership and strike activity. In Hawaii, the International Longshoremen's and Warehouse Men's Union defended foreign workers, Filipinos, Okinawans, Japanese, and other Asians from deportation and the threat of it by plantation owners. The union also used natives of these countries as organizers who would travel with the migrant stream during the on and the off season. It was the only way the union could shield itself against the employer's encroachment and promote unity within this labor pool all year long. 

As recently as last year, the United Farm Workers successfully applied the same tactic during the Yuma organizing strike drive along the Arizona, Baja California border. Here, the union convinced Mexican workers not to scab, and from among them, recruited some of the best organizers for the duration of the strike. 

Coupled with welcoming these workers into the ranks of labor, these unions and community groups argue that a national drive, such as being spearheaded by the Center for Autonomous Social Action, must be given full support by labor and other sections of the population for rejection of laws that restrict the rights of immigrants. They contend that anti-scab legislation is the key to guaranteeing the rights of those and all other workers. Otherwise, the employer will inevitably use workers without documents, who may already be disenchanted with a union that doesn't care for their wellbeing, against the rest of the workforce. 

Immigrants traditionally feel that they have the right to fight for their existence anywhere on the globe. "Mexicans," continues Corona, "don't view their presence here in any way as an intrusion. Mexican families in the United States are descendants of those who colonized, peopled, and developed what is known as the American Southwest long before 1776." 

They ended their article with a warning. "We see the revival of an anti-alien hysteria and jingoism that seeks to place the blame upon Mexican and other Latin American workers for the loss of jobs that have been brought about by automation, termination of certain war contracts, defense spending shifts, space contract cutbacks, and runaway shops, the importation of goods from low wage countries, the closing down of not so profitable operations, and the accompanying lack of planning for the future fate of the workers that are displaced. The allegations against immigrant workers," Corona and Torres charge, "are a phony escape valve to further divide workers, to confuse them, and to divert them from taking joint action against the real culprits, the businesses for which they work." 

The immigration service's recent crackdown on illegal aliens is further described in an article from the New York, Daily World. The article describes the experiences of farm worker and United States citizen Armando Muñoz, who was deported from Florida and sent to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. After two months of frequent cold and sleepless nights, and a 1,200 mile journey, Muñoz reached Matamoros just across the border from Texas, where he called relatives. They hurried across the border with Muñoz's birth certificate, proving his US citizenship and took him back to Texas. 

Muñoz is now suing the immigration service for $25,000 in damages. Munoz's experience is typical of what happens yearly to thousands of US citizens, permanent residents, and workers without visas of Mexican origin, who are whisked across the border without a hearing when they cannot produce documents on the spot. 

Some observers see the recent flurry of activity on the part of the immigration service as being prompted by disclosures of corruption. Top immigration officials and Attorney General Kleindienst are among those who have been implicated in cases of corruption, first disclosed by the New York Times. 11 persons, including seven immigration officers, have so far been indicted by the Department of Justice. 

The federal investigation found that at least one high official is engaged in illegal activity at every major point of entry along the 2,000 mile United States Mexican border. The investigation reveals that immigration officials smuggle drugs and immigrants and sell false documents. Some have raped Mexican women or have traded entry documents for the women's sexual favors. When in their custody, workers without visas who refuse to do their bidding or answer questions have been beaten with lead weighted gloves. In collusion with employers, immigration officials have robbed workers of their wages by conducting a raid just before pay time, in return, receiving cash, or other kinds of payoff. 

The information for this report was drawn from The Guardian, the Daily World, the New York Times, and the World Trade Union Magazine. 

La Paz, Mexico. President Luis Echeverría says Mexico will expand its 12-mile offshore limit to 200 miles keeping rich fishing waters out of the reach of Americans and other foreigners. An expansion by Mexico would be opposed by American tuna fishermen and other, since it would put most of Mexico's rich shrimp beds off southeast coast off limits to foreign boats. 

However, Mexico's move represents an increasing tendency among underdeveloped nations to claim a 200 mile rather than 12-mile sovereignty over resource-rich ocean space along their borders. Even nations such as Iceland and Australia traditionally allied with the United States and Europe have broken with the big powers on this issue. This from the Miami Herald. 

Tri-Continental News Service in New York reported this week on the expanding market in human blood, which Tri-Continental calls the ultimate commodity. The shortage of blood plasma in this country has provided some enterprising US businesses with a profitable new commodity and has created a new source of misery for the poorest people in America. Donations of blood in the United States cover only about 60% of the annual need. The deficit, about two and a half million pints, comes from people who sell their blood in order to survive. The going rate in urban slums and poor southern states of the United States is from five to $15 a pint, which the companies then sell to hospitals for up to $35. 

Now, United States companies have found an even cheaper source of this strategic raw material. They have set up blood banks in half a dozen Latin American capitals, where unemployment rates of up to 50% assure a virtually unlimited supply of people willing to open up their veins for these merchants. The plentiful supply of blood has driven the price down, and prices are from $2 to $3 a pint are common. 

The blood exporting countries include Haiti, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, and Brazil. A recent survey carried out by the Department of Experimental Surgery at the Autonomous University of Mexico estimated that the export of blood from Mexico alone was a $10 million annual business. Latin American blood is sent to West Germany and Israel in addition to the United States. 

Tri-Continental claims that many of the people who sell their blood are undernourished and anemic, and yet they will come in week after week to make their sale. The companies, which are not licensed or controlled by medical authorities, are not concerned with the loss of iron, which often results in the slow death of the chronic blood donor. 

Tri-Continental suggests that the reason why such practices persist is government corruption. When defense minister Luckner Cambronne was dismissed from his post in Haiti in November 1972, it was learned that he had been a partner in Hemo Caribbean, a US controlled blood company that also has branches in the Dominican Republic. Similar financial connections have been revealed between Carlos Arana Osorio, president of Guatemala, and the Sedesa company, which exports blood from that country, and in the case of the Samosas family's holdings in blood exporting companies in Nicaragua. This report from New York's Tri-Continental News Service.

At a recent meeting of an Organization of American States Committee, the Chilean delegate denounced those who oppose modifications on the inter-American system as being tied to the United States. The Mexican daily Excélsior reported this week that the special committee for the reorganization of the inter-American system meeting in Lima, Peru re-examined the entire structure of inter-American relations.

Mexico stated that the United States must be prepared to accept certain economic changes, such as liberalization of markets, stabilization of Latin American export prices, and certain adjustments in the granting of financial and technical aid. In an intense emotional speech, which lasted almost two hours, the Chilean delegate termed ridiculous the idea that the people of Latin America and the United States have a convergence of interests.

The Chilean delegate said, "It is a lie. We are not the same. We are not of the same family. We do not have the same interests nor the same ideas, nor the same intentions. We do not want a system which will continue to contribute to the prosperity of the most powerful nation." Excélsior commented that at one point, the Chilean delegate raised his fist and pounded the table hard, sending microphones bouncing to the floor and upsetting a water pitcher. 

He continued, "This should not be taken as a personal or political attack. The United States is in a powerful position both politically and economically. What then is its goal? Above all, it is the protection of that position. What are the goals of the people of Latin America? What are the goals of underdeveloped nations? To enhance our prosperity and to allow our people to build their own road to development." 

The Chilean spokesman then began reading figures from an economic study. He said that, "While in the 1950s, United States invested almost $3 billion in Latin America, it extracted almost $13 billion in profits and dividends. In the period from 1960 to 1967, the imbalance was even worse. Investments totaling 985 million yielded over 6 billion in profits and dividends. Furthermore," he said, "this incredible deficit was not compensated for by financial help from the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the United States Treasury, or the International Monetary Fund." This from the Mexican daily Excélsior. 

Our feature this week is a commentary on Latin American art, taken from a recent book by Jean Franco called "The Modern Culture of Latin America".

An intense social concern has been the characteristic of Latin American art for the last 150 years. Literature and even painting and music have played a social role, with the artists acting as teacher, guide, and conscience of his country. The Latin American has generally viewed art as an expression of the artist's whole self, a self which is living in a society and which therefore has a collective as well as an individual concern. On the other hand, the idea of the moral neutrality or the purity of art has had relatively little impact. 

In countries like those of Latin America, where national identity is still in the process of definition and where social and political problems are both huge and inescapable, the artist's sense of responsibility towards society needs no justification. Generally, movements in the arts have not grown out of a previous movement, but have arisen in response to factors external to art. A new social situation defines the position of the artist, who then improvises or borrows a technique to suit his purpose. 

Ms. Franco's book is a careful study of these changes in the artist's attitude to society and the way that this is expressed in literature and, to some extent, the other arts. She begins her analysis with the year 1888, the year of the publication of an influential volume of poetry by Ruben Dario, the leader of Latin America's first native artistic movement, known as modernism. 

Modernist is a term used to characterize many diverse writers, such as Nicaraguan Ruben Dario, the Cuban Jose Marti, and the Colombian, Jose Silva. All of these writers had a great deal in common. The type of society the modernist hated above all was contemporary bourgeois society. This may seem strange, since Spanish America was only at the margin of industrial and capital expansion.

Yet the poets did not have to see dark satanic mills on their doorsteps to realize that a new and disturbing force was looming over them. The cash nexus, destructive of all other human relations, was what the artist most feared. Indeed, many of the prose pieces written by the modernists are in the nature of allegories about the relation of the artist to a materialist society. The poet's hatred of the materialism of his age was often to remain exclusively verbal.

But there were very many different shades of social involvement. From Dario's aloofness to the militant commitment of Jose Marti, a dedicated fighter for Cuban independence, nothing could be further from an elite attitude than these words of Marti. "Poetry is the work both of the bard and of the people who inspire him. Poetry is durable when it is the work of all. Those who understand it are as much its authors as those who make it. To thrill all hearts by the vibrations of your own, you must have the germs and inspirations of humanity. Above all, you must live among a suffering people." 

After this early period, characterized by a real or symbolic rebellion, came an intense concern with culture rather than politics. A new influential movement known as Arielism took its name from an essay by Uruguayan Rodo, in which he emphasized the spirituality of Latin American culture, especially when contrasted with the vulgar neighbors to the north, the United States. There was an emphasis on original native culture and efforts to revive the memories of heros of the past. 

After the first World War, the Latin American intellectuals began to seek some roots in the cultures of the Indian and the Negro, and in the land itself, alternative values to those of a European culture, which seemed on the verge of disintegration. Literature about Indians and Latin America was to have two distinct functions. One was to fulfill a direct social purpose by arousing a general awareness of the plight of submerged sections of the population. The other was to set up the values of Indian culture and civilization as an alternative to European values. 

This tenancy found its best expression in Mexico, where the world famous muralists Diego Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, and O'Gorman revived mythological Indian figures with very beautiful and innovative techniques. The Negro tradition expressed itself in the 1920s within Cuba and fostered a great deal of literature, as well as music. This trend towards more native emphasis in Latin America was a very important stage of development. At its most superficial, it was a gesture of defiance towards Europe and the United States. At its best, it did justice to hitherto ignored, if not disparaged segments of the population. 

In the 1920s, the world gradually began to divide into the hostile political camps of communism and fascism. Political concern was almost unavoidable. Whether such concern would be reconciled with the pursuit of art was another matter. Some intellectuals became militants and abandoned their painting or poetry. Some put their art to the service of a message. A few attempted to find a form of art which would universalize their political concern. 

In Latin America, many communists and socialist parties were founded and run by the artists and intellectuals. The most outstanding example was the Mexican Communist Party, which had, at one time, no less than three painters, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Guerrero on its executive committee. In Peru, the socialist party was founded by an intellectual, Mariategui. In 1936, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War drew many more writers and artists into the left-wing ranks, and prompted middle-class intellectuals to join with workers and peasants. 

Of all the poets and authors involved in this political reawakening, Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, succeeded most in bringing political elements into poetry without sacrificing originality or creative depth. While arguing that poetry should not be separated from everyday life, but rather should be impure, as he put it, "corroded as if by an acid, by the toil of the hand, impregnated with sweat and smoke, smelling of urine and lilies". He still managed, as is obvious from the quote, to use very striking and beautiful imagery. 

The novelists of the early 20th century also show political concern, but are preoccupied with such philosophical and ethical issues as authenticity. Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rufo in Mexico both struggled with the problems of the Mexican consciousness. Ms. Franco writes, "In the modern novel, revolution is no longer seen as a total solution. At best, it is only an essential first step. The real battle, it has suggested, is now within the human mind and particularly within the minds of the upper and middle classes, whose failure to construct a reasonable society is one of the tragedies of Latin America." 

For a century and a half, the republics of Latin America have been following different paths. Mexico has undergone a social revolution. Paraguay has lived under a series of dictators. Argentina's population has been transformed by immigration from Europe. Obviously, such factors have their repercussions in the continent's literature, which besides common Latin American features, has also specifically Argentinian, Mexican, or Paraguayan characteristics. 

These local variants are not necessarily political. The incidents of illiteracy, the presence of a large rural population also affect the artistic environment. This does not mean that socially underdeveloped countries do not produce good literature, but simply that in such places the artist's task is lonelier and more difficult. 

Most countries in Latin America have experienced political oppression during the present century, and in many, the condition has been constant. Contemporary literature abounds with the personal testimonies of men who have been imprisoned and persecuted by dictators. In many countries, the problem of oppression is much wider than the immediate physical consequences. The writer suffers from the much slower torments of frustration, lack of freedom to write as he wishes, and a crushing intellectual environment. To be born and grow up in a Latin American dictatorship is, to use the words of Asturias, "to be born into a tomb". 

Two outstanding writers, Augusto Roa Bastos and Miguel Angel Asturias, the first from Paraguay and the second from Guatemala, have succeeded in gaining an international reputation, despite the inhibitions of their background. Asturias' book, Men of Corn, traces the dispossession of the Indians and the commercialization of agriculture. Roa Bastos' short story, "The Excavation", presents a nightmare of frustration in which those who rebel against the status quo are shamelessly murdered. The works of such writers as Asturias and Roa Bastos only serve to emphasize the tragic waste of human potential inherent in a dictatorship. These problems are particularly relevant to the Brazilian situation today, where a censorship of all printed and electronic media is unlimited. 

Latin American intellectuals have always been intrigued with the subject of revolution. The Mexican experience of 1910 is very prominent in the literature and art of the last decades. The Cuban Revolution has also had a great effect on national cultural life. Although the changes in the political and social life of Cuba are still too recent for a solid judgment to be formed, the revolution of 1959 changed the social structure of Cuba. Most of the upper class and many of the middle and professional classes left the island.

A vigorous campaign against illiteracy has brought into being a new amass readership, encouraged to write and help to publish by the official Union of Artists and Writers, and by the prizes offered by the Casa de las Americas, which acts as a cultural clearinghouse. Book production has enormously increased, and there are now available cheap editions of many Cuban and Latin American classics.

In a 1961 speech to intellectuals, Castro guaranteed freedom of literary expression, declaring, "Within the revolution, everything, outside the revolution, nothing," a guarantee that was repeated by other leading intellectuals and which has allowed a remarkable variety of styles. Unlike Soviet writing, realism has not been the only permitted style. Science fiction, fantasy, and black humor are all common. Within the first 10 years, the struggle in Cuba has not meant the sacrifice of spontaneity and variety. It'll be interesting to see whether, in time, totally new art forms will emerge. 

To declare one's self an artist in Latin America has frequently involved conflict with society. In the 19th century, the artist was divided from most of his fellow countrymen because of his culture and upbringing. As we have seen, the majority of 19th century reformers were also political fighters dedicated to reforming their society. It was only towards the end of the century, with modernism, that it was even suggested that art might be more important than the political struggle. 

This did not mean that they had given up on social programs. On the contrary, the modernist ideal of society was the exact contrary of the vulgar materialism, which they regarded as the symptom of the age, and their way of life was a protest against those who were uncritical of bourgeois values. Without abandoning ideals of culture and refinement, the Arielist generation saw itself as moral leader. The artist put his faith in education and in the written word as a means of changing society. 

However, ultimately, neither the written word or education was effective. The Arielist generation was overtaken by a rising tide of unrest, by the shattering impact of world events such as the Russian and Mexican revolutions and the First World War. The post-war generation was no longer in a position to feel superior. The masses had become a power to be reckoned with. The intellectual was therefore obliged either to regard himself as an ally of the masses, a helper in their cause, or if he could not do this, he tended to stand aside, proclaiming that politics and social reform belonged to a world of appearances. 

At any rate, there are many signs that Latin American literature has come of age. Two Nobel Prizes in the last five years have gone to Latin Americans, Miguel Angel Asturias of Guatemala, and Pablo Neruda of Chile. The work of these two men effectively summarizes many of Ms. Franco's points about Latin America and the artist's social concerns. Asturias' most famous series of novels deals with the role of foreign banana companies in his native country, and Neruda's verse is an enthusiastic witness to the success of the new Chilean regime. 

A complex series of electronic devices similar in nature to the ill-fated McNamara Line in Vietnam is being implanted along the 2000-mile border between the United States and Mexico, according to sources in the border patrol and immigration and naturalization service. The Mexican government has asked the United States for an official explanation of the new border security program, which the US apparently plans to begin soon. The Mexican chancellor said in an interview with the Mexican daily Excélsior that his government voiced certain points of disagreement with the plan and that he expects a prompt reply from the US. 

Employed sophisticated military technology, the detection units contain noise sensors which are to be buried underground. The only thing showing will be a small antenna, which can detect footsteps at a range of 38 feet. There will also be infrared sensors to detect human body heat as well as metal detectors to register the appearance of money, keys or other items which might be in the pockets of illegal entrance. Although the sensors will not cover the entire border, they will be installed at commonly used entry points and will be moved frequently. 

The new detection system comes in the wake of statements by immigration service officials that the border situation has gotten out of hand. The director of the Chula Vista office of the Immigration Service said recently that, "The situation grows worse every year because there is no law to prevent American companies from hiring illegal Mexican immigrants." In testimony before a special grand jury in San Diego, federal officials said that they had evidence which showed direct ties between groups dealing in illegal immigrant labor and certain industrial enterprises in southern California which employ day laborers. The proceeding story from Excélsior of Mexico City. 

Reaction to the electronic fences has not been universally favorable. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, Democrat from Texas, was quoted as saying, "The concept of a barrier is repugnant to me because I felt there would be some inherent international psychological repercussions that should be evaluated before any commitment is made. I believe techniques now available such as helicopter surveillance and other normal procedures would be more than adequate if the Border Patrol is staffed at a sufficient level, which it hasn't been." 

On July 26th of this year, Cuba celebrates the 20th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada army barracks. This insurrection led by a young lawyer named Fidel Castro was by any military standards a failure. More than half of the 167 attackers were killed during the attack or as a result of the tortures to which they were later submitted. Almost all the survivors, including the leaders, went into prison and when released into exile. 

It was from their exile in Mexico that some of them returned three years later to begin the guerrilla actions in the mountains of Cuba's easternmost province. A guerrilla campaign in which small victories alternated with severe setbacks until popular support increased. The fronts multiplied and the tide of victory mounted. On New Year's Day 1959, Batista's hated regime was replaced by revolutionary government. 

During its brief 14 years of power, that revolutionary government has transformed the face of Cuba and has transformed the Cuban people as well. One of the major goals of the Cuban Revolution has been to incorporate all its citizens into active participation in national life. Development of rural areas has been encouraged in preference to urban centers as a means of eliminating the marginalization of the peasant sector of the population. 

Another front in the battle to break down the distinction between city and countryside has been the policy of bringing the cultural advantages of the city to the rural peasantry. The first campaign of this nature continues to be the most famous. The literacy campaign of 1961 reduced illiteracy from 27% to 2% in the space of one year. In Cuba, universal literacy was seen as a prerequisite for revolutionary change because it set the stage for the spread of revolutionary culture throughout the entire country. 

Any appraisal of revolutionary culture in Cuba should look at three areas of artistic production. First, the performing arts, music, dance, theater, and especially film. Second, the plastic arts, poster, design, painting, sculpture, and architecture. The third category that of literary production is too vast to be included in this brief survey. 

It should be noted however that there has been a virtual explosion in Cuban letters since the revolution, in the novel and short story, poetry, essay and creative nonfiction, as well as in the publication of many influential periodicals. In fact, the literary coming of age apparent throughout Latin America is attributed by many literary critics to the inspiration and example of the Cuban Revolution. 

Even during colonial times, the island of Cuba was famous for its music, for its seductive blend of African and European rhythms. For the style and verb of its tropical dancers, alongside this showy strain, which to some extent came to be associated with the vice and exploitation that flourished when Cuba was the brothel of the Caribbean.

There also existed a more intimate folk song tradition derived from the Spanish than the African. It was these popular folk musicians, for example, who set Jose Martí verses to a traditional melody, thus creating the well-known "Guantanamera". Both the Afro-Cuban rhythms and the simpler folk melodies still coexist in revolutionary Cuba, but it's primarily the latter that has been recruited into the service of the revolution.

Carlos Puebla, Cuba's best known songwriter, composes songs celebrating the lack of discrimination in the revolutionary society, satirizing the organization of American states, which expelled Cuba from its membership, urging the Cubans to cut that cane and eulogizing Che Guevara. Cuba has organized festivals of popular and protest music enabling musicians and singers from all over Latin America to share their music and learn from one another. 

The island famous for the Rumba and the Mamba also boasts one of the world's leading ballerinas, Alicia Alonso. Now almost completely blind, she continues her dancing and continues to direct Cuba's ballet troop as they perform in Cuba and countries around the world. 

Cuban theatrical companies are semi-autonomous collectives of varying styles and aims all operating out of the National Cultural Council. Like the other art forms in Cuba, the theater remains very open to influences from abroad in content as well as technique, but they managed to impart a particularly Cuban flavor to everything they produce. Cuba has produced several excellent playwrights since the revolution, but the playbills boast names of plays all over the modern world, including the US. 

Some companies have their home base in rural areas on the theory that the troops should interact with the segments of the population least contaminated or deformed by capitalist culture. All theatrical performers spend two years performing in the countryside in lieu of military service, and most companies make annual tours to the rural areas. 

It is, however, the Cuban film industry, which is generally credited with having developed the greatest revolutionary art form. The Cubans believe that of all the 20th century art forms, cinema is the most significant with the greatest revolutionary potential. Within that medium, the revolution is striving to develop its own forms and cultural values to free itself from the techniques and values which commercial interests have placed on film. 

Film in Cuba, before the revolution, has a long and not so exciting history. In the early part of the century, when the film industry was in the infancy, Cuban entrepreneurs imported films from France and Italy, but with the advent of the talkies, US influence began. The attempts of early Cuban filmmakers to develop a national cinema drawing from Cuban history and folklore were overpowered by the efforts of those interested in films for quick exploitation and profit. 

From 1930 until the Triumph of the Revolution in 1959, the Cuban film industry mimicked US models incorporating Cuban music and dance into the thin and melodramatic plots of musicals and detective stories. Because of the setup of international film production and distribution chains, Cuba had no access to an international audience except through co-production with Mexico or some other country. 

Domestic audiences preferred films from the US or Mexico, anyway. So on the eve of the revolution, the Cuban film industry was primarily dedicated to the production of commercial advertising shorts, technical and scientific films, and newsreels for domestic consumption. 

In the course of the guerrilla struggle against the dictatorship, a few newsreels and documentaries were made by revolutionaries in the Sierra and the Urban Underground. Though of rudimentary film quality, these films were a concrete step in the process of converting a traditional tool of the dominating classes into a tool for the defeat of those classes. One of those bearded filmmakers in fatigues was Alfredo Guevara. Fidel called on him shortly after the triumph of the revolution to draft a law founding the Cuban Film Institute. 

In March of 1959, only two months after the revolutionaries came to power, the first law in the field of culture was proclaimed. It founded the ICAIC, Cuban Institute of Film, Art and Industry. In effect, the Institute is sort of a ministry of film with Alfredo Guevara as its head. It oversees all aspects of the Cuban film industry, the training of film students, the production of newsreels, documentaries, and features, the supervision of Cuban theaters, the import and export of films. 

Cuba has some 500 movie theaters, but 25% of them are concentrated in Havana. In deciding upon its economic priorities, the Cuban Film Institute has invariably sacrificed sophisticated equipment which would improve the technical quality of their films in favor of what they see as more necessary expenditures. 

The first priority was consistently been securing the necessary equipment and operators to expose the widest possible audience to the experience of film. Cuban now has over 100 mobile theaters, redesigned trucks equipped with 16 millimeter projectors, and driven by a single projectionist who wanders through the remote Cuban countryside, giving free film showings on the spot. 

These shows invariably consist of a newsreel, a feature, and one or more documentaries. One of the most engaging Cuban documentaries called "Por Primera Vez", For the First Time, simply records the joyful response of a peasant audience as they view a moving picture for the first time. 

Despite several technical and financial limitations, Cuban documentaries span a wide geographical and cultural range. The most famous of the Cuban documentary filmmakers, Santiago Alvarez, uses montages of still photographs, pen and ink drawings and cartoons to compose brilliant film essays on the Indochina War, events in the US, and the Third World, as well as Cuban topics. 

It was not until 1968 that Cuban feature film production really began to flourish. That year saw the release of two of the finest Cuban feature films to date. "Memories of Underdevelopment" views the revolution through the eyes of an intellectual of upper middle class background whose family and friends have fled to Miami. 

The film and the novel on which it is based both confront the problems of creating a revolutionary consciousness in a culture long convinced of its own inferiority and imitative of the dominating culture imported from the US. "Lucia", another award-winning Cuban feature looks at three revolutionary periods in Cuban's history through the lives of three Cuban women. 

The current rate of feature film production in Cuba indicates a new period of growth. The success of one particular film, "The Adventures of Juan Quin Quin", may spark a trend towards more humorous films, which explore revolutionary themes in a lighthearted vein. Others forecast a greater use of third world solidarity themes and a new look at contemporary revolutionary conflicts. 

Painting sculpture as traditional plastic arts have undergone relatively little change in Cuba since the revolution. Architecture and poster design, on the other hand, have changed significantly for economic as well as ideological and social reasons. In architecture, as in the other arts in Cuba, there has been a continuing dialogue as to the responsibility of the architect in answering and shaping the needs of the new revolutionary society. The fact of socialism in the country, de-emphasizes large private houses in favor of community centers, apartment complexes, group recreational facilities, schools, and the like. 

Entire community complexes called micro cities, which include necessary public services and recreational facilities are springing up in the countryside further, helping to break down the distinction between urban and rural areas. Like other less substantial art forms, revolutionary Cuban architecture too is compelled to innovate because of the shortage of building materials produced by the US sponsored blockade. The blockade doesn't succeed however, in keeping out inspiration from various sources around the world. 

In the field of the plastic arts, it is the work of the graphic artists that has received the greatest acclaim. Before the revolution, poster art like the film, was virtually non-existent in Cuba. It has now come to be along with the film, one of the two primary revolutionary art forms. With a demise of the profit system in Cuba, advertising as it has been known, becomes instantly obsolete. But instead of disappearing, billboards and wall posters began to multiply. Instead of exhorting consumers and sparking private appetites, Cuban poster art concentrates on building shared ideals, sympathies and responsibilities. 

The posters testified to Cuba's current struggle to claim her place in history among the self-determining nations of the world. They commemorate Che's death in Bolivia, urge solidarity with the struggle of the peoples of Indochina, encourage Cubans to get polio vaccinations and join volunteer work brigades, announce films and other cultural events, and spark public debate on such issues as whether or not to raise the price of rum and cigarettes.

The Cuban artists are not purists. They borrow images from everywhere, never hesitating to expropriate, the most recent produce of Bourgeois culture, if it can be turned to meet their needs. For a government attempting to revolutionize the consciousness of its people to fundamentally alter human nature and create a new man, all of society is transformed into a school, and posters are an important method of public education.

As even this brief summary indicates Cuba possesses a rich national culture, diverse, and developing. The economic and ideological blockade against Cuba has had no visible success in stunting Cuba's cultural growth. In fact, in cultural terms, the principle result of the US blockage has been the cultural impoverishment of the American public. US citizens who are interested in contemporary Cuban literature find that Cuban books are only available here after the lengthy process of being reprinted in Spain or another Latin American country. Cuba's world renowned ballet troop will never dance before North American audiences as long as the blockade continues to stand. 

Film goers find it impossible to see Cuban films of international acclaim and the few films which managed to enter this country are subject to mysterious disappearance or illegal confiscation. More important still, as long as the blockade continues, there can never be any sustained and open exchange between culture workers from Cuba and the United States; painters, graphic artists, architects, poets and novelists, teachers, critics, songwriters, and popular musicians, all those people whose work and existence helps build national and international culture. 

The Mexico City Daily, Excélsior, reports from the United Nations, Mexico, Switzerland, and Brazil vehemently attacked the United States and the Soviet Union, who continue to conduct underground nuclear testing despite the fact that they signed a treaty 10 years ago to bring such nuclear testing to an end. There is particular concern over a new type of nuclear weapon known as the mini nuke, which is a small-tonnage nuclear weapon. It can be aimed with absolute precision and has a small concentrated effect. Critics feel that its production could easily lead to a new and dangerous arms race.

A United Nations representative pointed out that the nuclear potential of the superpowers is already equivalent to 15 tons of TNT for every single inhabitant of the planet. Mrs. Alva Myrdal, the Swedish representative, said that the majority of nations who do not possess nuclear arms consider continued testing a breach of promise and an insult to the will of the majority of nations at the United Nations Assembly. Meanwhile, in Lima, Peruvian doctor, Louis Patetta declared that French nuclear testing in the Pacific had raised the incidences of respiratory, eye and skin diseases. He also claimed that radioactivity in Lima had reached alarming proportions. This from Excélsior. 

Professor Barkin was recently interviewed in a series of articles in Mexico's most important daily newspaper, Excélsior. Professor Barkin, I've noticed that Mexico City's Excélsior has published a number of articles about your work on the problems of Mexican agriculture. Could you tell us something about this?

Yeah. Right now, there's a very serious problem in Mexico because agricultural production has not been going up in line with demand, and during the past few years, Mexico has been forced to import substantial quantities of wheat and corn, Mexico's basic food stuffs. Unfortunately, Mexico's had to do this at the same time as world prices for these commodities have been going up, and therefore, this has meant a substantial drain on the balance of payments.

What happened was the Mexicans have right now just discovered the agrarian crisis, which has been in the making for 30 or 40 years. During the past few decades, Mexico has postponed its crisis by having substantial increases in agricultural production from the extension of irrigation, especially in the northwestern part of the country that is bordering on the United States areas which has been the grainery of Mexico. At the same time, they've had substantial increases on exports of important agricultural crops, most notably cotton, but also sugar.

This agricultural production has all been concentrated in the hands of 3% of Mexican farmers. There are two and a half million different farm units in Mexico, and only 3% of those have produced more than four fifths, more than 80% of all of the increase in agricultural production during the past two decades. As a result, the majority of Mexican farmers and farm families, which is perhaps as much as one half of Mexico's population - that is 25 million people - have been isolated from Mexico's agricultural progress. As a result of this isolation, living standards have actually declined in the countryside. 

Now, the reason for this is very easy to identify with government statistics, Mexican government statistics. The reason for it is a very successful program of irrigation which has been given to a very small proportion of Mexican farmers. This 3% of the Mexican farmers that I mentioned control 70% of all irrigated land in Mexico. This 3% of Mexican farmers control 75% of all machinery in Mexico, and as a result, the rest of the people have been completely left out of progress.

This is creating lots of social problems throughout Mexico, and in the first six months of 1973, the Mexican army has been reported to have taken military action in 70 different instances against land takeovers by peasants trying to get some improvement in their living standards as a result of the impoverishment which has come about through years of neglect.

I understand that the Mexican economy has been an extremely dynamic one, especially when compared to some other Latin American economies. Do we really have some genuine evidence that the majority of the population, and especially the rural population, hasn't really been benefiting from this economic growth?

We certainly do. Mexico's dynamic growth has a history of 35 years of 6% a year real growth. That is after taking away for effects of price changes, inflation, which we know a lot about now. But the real problem is that this growth has come about exactly following the models which we, that is our government, is asking the underdeveloped countries to follow - heavy investment in new industries and in agriculture. You had the heavy investment in agriculture which got Mexico into very important export crops but did not affect over 2 million farm families, which is 15 million people. 

Now, in addition to that, in industry, you've had exactly the same thing happen. Mexico has been very successful in getting increases in production, but the policy, which the Mexicans call stabilizing development -- the treasury secretary who invented this policy called his policy stabilizing development -- might be better called growth for growth's sake. Growth for growth's sake means let's just raise the product. It's reminiscent of what happened in the United States when we were just trying to raise our national product without worrying whether we were producing pollution or terrible cities or mass transportation, or any of the other things which have caused the social and economic ills which we're now suffering in our own country. Well, the Mexicans have it much worse. 

The Mexicans have it much worse because 1% of all the industrial firms in Mexico, that's 938 companies out of 35,000, control two thirds of everything that are produced in the manufacturing sector of the Mexican economy. Two banks, which own many of those 938 firms which are Mexican owned, control a large proportion -- I'm sorry, I don't know the exact figure -- of all the banking. Two banks, and they have offices in New York also. During the past years, American foreign investment has virtually poured into Mexico to such an extent that it now controls 90% of the modern food industry of Mexico. 

Now, these sorts of figures are creating large problems all over the Mexican economy. During the past year, for example, the Mexican government, for the first time in its history, admitted an unemployment problem, but when they admit an unemployment problem, they do it in grand style because they are estimating the unemployment rate at 25% now. I conservatively estimate that they're wrong. I think that the real rate is between 30 and 40% unemployment, in real terms. 

Do you think that this trend towards industrial and agricultural concentration, which seems to be taking place, is going to be reversed at any time in the near future? Or are the policies of the Mexican government not concerned with this issue, not directing any efforts towards trying to correct it? 

The Mexican government's very concerned about concentration, but the problem is that the Mexican government is incapable of doing anything about it because the very dynamic of the Mexican economy depends upon that concentration. In the same way that concentration in the United States economy is creating a problem in the United States when the transnational corporations are making their influence felt in the United States. As we heard about, we regularly hear about the ITT affair, but in Mexico, such concentration creates a very peculiar problem.

The dynamics of 6% plus growth every year depends upon the fact that they continue to produce automobiles, electric dishwashers, electric dryers, and all the other sorts of appliances which we consider part of middle-class living. But in Mexico, only 30% of the population can even aspire to get a non-electric washing machine, and a very small proportion of the population can consider the possibility of getting electrical appliances and consumer durables like automobiles. The automobile is having a banner year in Mexico, but only because during the past 20 years, almost half of every dollar increase in Mexico's income has gone to the upper 10% of the population.

Professor Barkin, you mentioned the issue of transnational corporations, which has been one of a great deal of concern to very many scholars and policymakers. Are there any other aspects of United States economic policy that affect Mexico very strongly? 

Almost every one. Every American policy affects Mexico. Mexico depends upon the United States for its markets and Mexico imports from the United States almost all of its capital equipment. Inflation is a tremendous problem in Mexico now. The Mexican government at the end of July admitted that inflation in the first six months of this year had been at 11% a year. That's only because the people who estimated the inflation only go to government stores. The housewives think that inflation must be in the order of 25% this year, which means that inflation is a huge problem in Mexico and is creating lots and lots of repercussions throughout the whole society. 

The problem is faced from the United States' point of view because Mexico tries to export more to the United States. For example, tomatoes, which the Mexicans have now, quote, voluntarily, unquote, agreed to an export quota so that the Florida tomato growers using their chemical processes and their artificial mechanisms can have the American market and keep prices of tomatoes high in the American market and keep out the Mexican tomatoes, which would permit farm prices to come down in the United States. The same is true for other agricultural products. Textiles are also affected by import quotas imposed by the United States. 

Other sorts of problems are created in the border areas because Mexico is trying to create border industries, but the American Trade Union movement is trying to prevent that because they claim that jobs are lost. These sorts of conflicts are a daily occurrence between Mexican and American governments, and every policy decision from phase one to phase five, which I guess will be coming soon, will affect the way in which the Mexican economy continues to have growth for growth's sake. 

It seems very interesting to me that the same sort of economic problems that the United States is having are also causing Mexico a great deal of problems, particularly this inflation. It seems as though all these economic problems occur almost on a hemispheric level rather than on a national level, which is how we're accustomed to thinking of them. Do you think that these problems with inflation in Mexico will affect the tourist—the United States tourist who's trying to get away from it all in Mexico? 

Well, for the tourist who's trying to get away from it all and going to the lost village in the mountains, it will affect it relatively little, but for the tourist who's interested in the attractions of touristic Mexico, as the guidebooks would have it, that is Mexico City in the central part of Mexico and Acapulco, prices have been going up but it's still a lot cheaper to take a vacation in Mexico than it is to take a similar one in the United States, and airfares are not going up to Mexico City. 

And the Mexican governments doing something else, which is very interesting. They're developing tourism very quickly because it's an important export earning in the face of restrictions on exports of other goods to the United States, so that there are two new tourist areas - one in the Caribbean called Cancun, and one in the Pacific called Zihuatanejo, which are being developed for large scale jumbo jet type tourism. And I guess in that sense, the Mexican government is trying to stimulate tourism and going to try to control prices in doing so, because it depends upon that to keep up the consumption standards of the upper classes. 

Thanks very much. We've been discussing the recent economic situation in Mexico with Dr. David Barkin of Lehman College of City University of New York.

Excélsior, of Mexico City, reports from Argentina that General Juan Perón, ratified as presidential candidate in the upcoming elections, has proclaimed that his health is excellent. The ex-leader, 77 years old, announced his decision to run at a national convention, while millions of people demonstrated in support. He delineated as his primary goal unifying all Argentinians. He said, quote, "We will go slowly, but we will proceed." 

He appeared with his wife Isabel, who has been nominated as the vice presidential candidate. Perónsaid that his government would not present any spectacular plans for development, but rather, carefully studied projects, and he criticized economists and politicians who called for rapid development as the top priority for Argentina, saying that the super developed countries regret what they have done, because their technology has caused the destruction of their natural resources. That from Excélsior. 

Latin America, in a more detailed analysis of the Argentinian political maneuvers, points out that the nomination of Isabel Martinez de Perón by the Justicialista party congress as her husband's running mate in the September presidential election seems to be a holding formula which might be altered should the radical party leader, Ricardo Balbin, become available for the vice presidential nomination. Both Perón and Balbin have continued to explore the possibility of a joint, radical Peronist ticket, but the political obstacles in Balbin's acceptance of the vice presidential spot seem formidable. 

While the radicals continue to debate the unpalatable choice with which they're faced, Isabel Perón fits neatly with the new image of Peronism. If Albin fails, Perón has another alternative scheme of his sleeve, the creation of a council of state with members drawn from all political sectors to assist the president. Like the proposed electoral pact with the radical party, such a broadening of the Peronist government's institutional base would help eliminate any threat of a new intervention by the armed forces. 

The British Newsweek continues that the ex-president Hector Campora is about to be sent as ambassador to Mexico, thus ending the attempt of the Peronist youth to build him up as the champion of the left. Perón is denouncing guerrilla activities in terms which seem extraordinary when compared to his defense of the guerrillas only last year. Then he said they were the natural response to an oppressive dictatorship. Today, however, he says that they are agents of international communism. 

For the time being, there is little the left can do. So much face was placed in Perón that even the most amazing inconsistencies have to be accepted or explained away. This from the British News Weekly, Latin America. 

Another news brief taken from Latin America, reports that tensions have been rising again in Mexico. Latin America reports that at the National University in Mexico City, a student was shot dead in a confused incident last weekend. This follows an alleged attempt to kidnap the rector purportedly to be exchanged for 150 students accused of hijacking buses and about 100 protesting peasants they were supporting a student was also shot dead in Guadalajara, Western Mexico. Meanwhile, 17 members of a group that calls themselves the student revolutionary front have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the kidnapping of the US consul, Terrence Leonhardy, in Guadalajara last May. This from Latin America. 

Tri Continental News Service reports from Mexico City that the current wave of land seizures is an expression of Mexico's rural problems, according to peasant leader Ramon Danzos, now in jail there. The agrarian reform and the government's proposal for deep going solutions will not solve the president's difficulty. Danzos said, "They don't eat speeches, they don't eat promises." 

In recent months, peasants have seized land in the states of Oaxaca, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Guerrero, Veracruz, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Mexico, and San Luis de Potosi. Recently it was revealed that North American owners hold huge estates in the Ciudad Valle zone in San Luis De Potosi state where the peasants have been negotiating for land for more than 30 years. 

This week's feature is on the recent history of US press coverage of Chile. We will be drawing on an article printed in the magazine, The Nation, in January of 1973 by John Pollock of the Department of Sociology and Political Science, Rutgers University. Dr. Pollock is also a member of the Chile Research Group in Livingston, has done research in Chile, and has been specializing in the US press coverage of Chile. 

Mr. Pollock's analysis opens with the US press coverage of Dr. Allende's speech at the United Nations in December of 1972. 

Typical press coverage of Allende's visit is best examined by referring to the major US newspapers which report regularly on Latin American affairs: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, the Miami Herald, and the Los Angeles Times. These papers generally included the following information in reports on Allende's speech. 

One, he called Chile the victim of serious economic aggression by US corporations, banks, and governmental agencies, accomplished through denial of previously available loans, interference by IT&T in Chile's internal affairs, and a boycott of Chile's copper in foreign markets. 

Also, he called the economic blockade of his country an infringement of Chile's sovereignty condemned by United Nations resolutions and a problem for all Third World countries, and that IT&T and Kennecott denied any efforts at interference in Chile's internal affairs or any other wrongdoing. 

Mr. Pollock continues noting that divergent opinions were presented, but the appearance of balance was specious. Although President Allende's views and those of US ambassador to the United Nations, George Bush, as well as those of IT&T and Kennecott copper companies were all mentioned, none of the opinions was investigated or tested in any serious way. 

These leading newspapers did not simply fail to weigh evidence regarding the charges made, they never raised any serious questions about the charges at all. The overall impression was given that Allende was pandering to an automatic anti-American sentiment, easily aroused in an audience comprised largely of Third World countries. 

The New York Times had the gall to run an editorial titled, "What Allende left out." For those unfamiliar with recent developments in Chile or with the press coverage of them, the Times editorial might have appeared reasonable, but close examination of political events there and the reporting of them yields a quite different impression. It is not Allende but the United States press which has left out a great deal. 

None of the newspapers had prepared readers for Allende's visit with substantial background information on Chile and its concerns. None of them mentioned that in stops en route in Peru and Mexico, Allende had been accorded tumultuous welcomes. 

Referring to IT&T activities in Chile, three of the newspapers, including The New York Times, failed to mention IT&T correspondence revealed by Jack Anderson and never denied by IT&T, which implicated that company in efforts to topple the Allende government, and only the Miami Herald linked IT&T to reports of specific subversive terrorist activities culminating in the assassination of Chile's General René Schneider, the army commander-in-chief. 

Only one newspaper, The Wall Street Journal noted that Allende nationalizations actions were legal, having been authorized by a constitutional amendment passed unanimously by the Chilean Congress in January of 1971, which set forth procedures for expropriating mines owned by Anaconda and Kennecott. The most important provision as reported by the Journal was that any profits since 1955 in excess of 12% of the concerns' investments in Chile should be deducted from the payment of the expropriated properties. 

The Journal was alone again in devoting substantial attention to Allende's claim that Kennecott had arranged a boycott of Chile's copper exports to European ports. In fact, it was the only paper which considered the issue of corporation induced embargoes against small countries sufficiently important to explore in any detail. 

Nor did any paper attempt to determine, and only The New York Times mentioned at all, whether Kennecott Copper had indeed made astronomical profits in Chile. According to the Times, Allende charged that from 1955 to 1970, Kennecott had made an annual average profit of 52.8% on its investment. That higher return would doubtless have had provoked substantial comment if reported in any context other than that of Allende's critical speech. 

The omission of important questions was not the only striking tendency in press reporting on Allende's UN presentation. Also evident were characterizations of the Chilean president as essentially insincere and duplicitous. Suggestions that he was more concerned with maintaining an act, charade or a popular posture than with accomplishing what he has often claimed to care about, the achievement of socialism within a democratic framework. 

Noteworthy in this connection was The New York Times editorial with reference to Allende's "cleverness" at the UN. A Washington Post editorial tried to dismiss Allende's presentation as full of "inflammatory tinsel" insinuating "that the beleaguered Chile's beleaguered president did unfortunately, the easy popular thing. Mr. Allende indulged in dubious and gaudy rhetoric." Such characterizations hint that the Chilean president is ineffectual and ridiculous, not to be taken seriously by serious people. 

Mr. Pollock continues, "The crucial questions left unasked and the belittling of the report of Allende presented in press reports, especially in the editorials of two of the nation's foremost opinion shapers, The Washington Post and The New York Times, are not simply troublesome elements in the press coverage of a single event. Rather, they are part of a consistent set of themes and omissions periodically evident in reporting on Chile ever since Allende's election in September 1970. Careful analysis of that reporting reveal several disturbing tendencies." 

One, our newspapers have usually omitted information on the vast minority of Chileans. Most reporting on citizens' reaction to the Allende regime is based upon interviews with privileged national business leaders, large landowners or owners of medium-sized firms. The results of such interviews, anti-Allende in tone, are presented as typical of popular reaction to the new president. Seldom are opinions solicited from those most likely to support Allende: organized labor, unorganized labor, the unemployed, farmers on small and medium-sized plots of land, and the poor generally. 

A second noticeable omission in the US reporting on Chile is the failure to cover right-wing activities. Left-wing activities by contrast receive substantial since sensationalist attention. For example, many articles have been written about the threat to Chile's political system from the Left Revolutionary Movement. Genuine concern about threats to the stability of the Chilean political system would, one might suppose, stimulate press coverage of political activity on both the left and the right. Yet even a cursory review of press reports will disabuse any one of that assumption. 

Activities of the right extremist organizations such as Patria y Libertad, which trains children in the use of arms and forms secret paramilitary organizations in middle-class areas are never mentioned. Indeed, those groups are hardly even reported to exist. It is customary in addition for disruptions to be reported in a way that fails to identify the ideological persuasion of the protestors. They're presented as upset citizens while protestors presumed to be left-wing are characterized in sensationalist terms. 

Consider the report of an assassination clearly by rightist forces of the army chief of staff in an effort to block Allende's ratification by the Chilean Congress, and a subsequent retaliatory assassination assumed to have been performed by the left. The New York Times correspondent wrote that, "Extremists have already produced two major crises since Allende was elected. The assassination of General Schneider, and nine months later, the assassination by left-wing terrorists of Edmundo Zujovic." The right-wing assassinations are simply assassinations. Those from the left are left-wing terrorists. 

Furthermore, in reporting on the victims, there was scarcely any mention of the fact that General Schneider, the one killed by rightists, had been a major force in maintaining peaceful constitutional democratic rule, while the person killed in retaliation by the leftists had been as a previous minister of the interior directly responsible for the torture of political prisoners. 

Mr. Pollock continues that suppressing information on right-wing activity extends to a near blackout on news about disruptive or distasteful activities by Allende's opponents. The most glaring example of such emissions is found in the coverage of a street demonstration by 5,000 women who in early December of 1971 protested food rationing in Santiago. The March of the Empty Pots, so-called because the participants banged empty saucepans as they marched, was reported by several papers. Only one however mentioned any clear estimate of the general social or economic origin of the women, information any reader would consider essential to assess the political implications of the march. The Christian Science Monitor noted that the sound of the marching pots was loudest in the wealthiest sections of Santiago. 

In contrast to the North American papers, highly respected foreign sources did as a matter of course identify the socioeconomic origins of the women. Le Monde, the French paper, the British weekly Latin America, and Excélsior, the Mexican equivalent of The New York Times all reported that the marching women were upper middle and upper class. 

In addition, the US press reported that the women's march was led by groups of men wearing safety helmets and carrying sticks and was broken up by brigades of leftist youths wearing hard hats and carrying stones and clubs, and by an overreacting Allende who asked police to disperse the women. The foreign press, on the other hand, reported that women were led by goon squads of club wielding men, called the march a right-wing riot, and reported it broken up by police after the president and his palace had been stoned by the women. 

A fourth omission, perhaps more flagrant than the others, is the virtual absence of evidence suggesting that Allende has made any social or economic progress whatsoever. News reports and editorials have abounded with dark hints that the Chilean economy and Chilean politics are on the brink of upheaval and Cassandra-like accounts bewail reports of food shortages, unemployment, inflation, and the scarcity of foreign exchange, as though economic ruin were just around the corner. 

What go unreported in the United States are social and economic statistics available to any reporter who cares to examine them. There is some evidence that Chile's first year under Allende, 1971, far from inducing despair, gave reason for hope. Agricultural production doubled. The consumer price index rose at only one half the rate registered during the last year of President Frei's administration, and the construction industry grew by 9%. Unemployment, again contrary to US press reports, declined from 8.3% in December of 1970 to 4.7% a year later. 

Food shortages do exist, but they're a product not of government food austerity policy, but of the increased purchasing power of Chile's working classes. Food production has actually increased in Chile, but the working classes and the poor are buying much more. 

Allende raised wages and froze prices in profits ensuring that the salary and wage segment of national income increased from 51% in 1970 to 59% in 1971. Finally, during Allende's first year, Chile's increase of gross national product was the second highest in Latin America at 8.5%. Our reporters have failed to record such indicators of progress and have fairly consistently labeled Chile's future as dismal and clouded. 

The US press in reporting the economic difficulties and the food lines managed to leave the impression that the socialist leadership was at fault for the grave economic situation, whereas actually the Chilean economy had long been in crisis and Dr. Allende was elected in large part in response to the disastrous economic policy of earlier pro-US governments, and indeed the situation was quite measurably improving for broad sectors of the population after Allende's election. Up until concerted efforts by the threatened local and foreign economic interests began to disrupt the economy in hopes of fomenting unrest sufficient to cover a coup. 

In particular, the reported food shortages were not as such shortages but reflected the fact that for the first time, major sectors of the population could buy more food so that although more food was being produced, demand outpaced supply requiring rationing that upset the wealthier classes who resented the partial equalization of access to food. 

We add that Dr. Allende's popularity and support was consistently growing as proven in the congressional elections. Consequently, the right-wing attempts to reimpose its control could no longer happen peacefully and concerted rightist disruption of the economy began so as to set the stage for a military coup on the pretext of restoring stability. The US press managed to leave the impression desired by foreign and national business leaders. 

A fifth major omission in coverage of Chilean politics is perhaps the most obvious of all. It is difficult to talk about the State of Delaware without mentioning the Du Ponts, and it would be bizarre to talk about Montana without speculating on the role of Anaconda Copper. Yet our reporters somehow managed to write about Chile without examining the political influence of Anaconda, Kennecott Copper, and IT&T. 

Mr. Pollock concludes that the omissions of information on the opinions of less affluent Chileans and the absence of reports on right-wing activity or the disruption activity by Allende's opponents, the failure to report economic and social progress where it's occurred, and the paucity of investigations of multinational corporate activity give a distorted portrait of Chilean political system. 

The foregoing feature is based upon work by Dr. John Pollock of the Department of Sociology and Political Science, Rutgers University and is available in the magazine, The Nation of January 1973. 

The military Junta seems firmly in control in Chile after staging a successful overthrow of the government of President Salvador Allende on September 11th. The following report on recent events in Chile and world reaction to the coup is compiled from the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Miami Herald, the Mexico City daily, Excélsior, NACLA, Prensa Latina, and The Guardian. 

The Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet issued a communique recently in which he said that the armed forces were searching the country to put down extremist forces. The military said they would expel from the country all of the Latin American leftists who had taken refuge there during Allende's rule. At the same time, relations were broken with Cuba and the entire Cuban diplomatic mission was put in a plane to Havana.

The Junta's interior minister, General Óscar Bonilla said the military took over the government because more than 10,000 foreign extremists living in Chile, including exiled guerrillas from Uruguay and Brazil, posed a threat to the country. The armed forces had to intervene in order to safeguard the destiny of the country, seriously threatened by extremist elements, Bonilla said.

Organizations in the United States, which have been expressing concern about the fate of the foreign exiles in Chile, also estimated their number at 10,000. Other sources have indicated that an equal number of Chileans were left dead in the wake of the coup. The military said that many Chileans and foreigners were being detained at the Ministry of Defense, the Military Academy, various military posts, and the dressing rooms of the national soccer stadium. A television station broadcast films of 60 prisoners in the dressing rooms, their hands clasped behind their heads. 

There were widespread reports that could not be confirmed that many former officials and supporters of Allende's popular Unity Coalition had been executed by the military. The North American Congress in Latin America, NACLA, a research group on Latin American affairs in the United States, monitored reports from Cuba and Inter Press News Service. They said that these sources and ham radio reports from Santiago all reported widespread fighting and the execution of many of Allende's associates and supporters. NACLA quoted Inter Press Service as saying that at least 300 foreign exiles were killed during and after the military takeover. 

NACLA also said the coup was an attack not only on the popular government of Chile, but the entire anti-imperialist movement in Latin America. Censorship was imposed on the Chilean media and foreign journalist dispatches. The Junta announced that 26 newspapers and magazines were told to suspend publication indefinitely because they were opposed to the Junta's goal of depoliticizing Chile. 

While the extent of resistance in Chile is uncertain due to conflicting reports, much of the rest of the world has raged in protest. An estimated 30,000 protestors filed past the Chilean embassy in Paris, brandishing red flags and banners and shouting "Coup makers, fascists, murderers!" and "Down with the murderers in the CIA!" Thousands of demonstrators marched in Rome, where a group calling itself the International Militant Fellowship claimed responsibility for a pre-dawn fire bombing of the Milan office of Pan-American World Airways. The group said the attack was in retaliation for participation in the coup by US imperialists. 

The West German government withheld recognition of the new Chilean regime for the time being, and in protest of the coup, canceled credits of 35 million marks, which it had agreed to extend to Chile. The World Council of Churches asked the Junta to respect the rights of political exiles in Chile, and the secretary general of that organization expressed the council's concern over the brutal rupture of Chilean democratic traditions. 

In Latin America, reactions were much stronger. The Argentine government declared three days of national mourning for the death of President Allende, and 15,000 marched in a demonstration in that nation's capital protesting the coup. Telecommunications workers in Buenos Aires staged a one-hour strike in solidarity with the Chilean workers who were killed by the troops of the military Junta.

Also in Buenos Ares, the movement of third-world churches condemned the coup and exhorted all Christians to fight the military dictatorship. Juan Perón, who will soon be elected president of Argentina, said that while he does not have the evidence to prove it, he believes that the United States engineered the coup. Venezuelan president Raphael Caldera called the military takeover a backward step for the entire continent.

In Costa Rica, thousands of students marched in protest of the coup and in solidarity with Chilean resistance fighters. While the Costa Rican government offered political asylum to Chilean political refugees. One of the loudest protests came from Mexico City where 40,000 joined in a protest march shouting anti-US slogans and burning American flags. 

An indictment of the type of economic colonialism, which had Chile in its yoke was voiced by Osvaldo Sunkel, a noted Chilean economist when he appeared last week before a United Nations panel investigating the impact of multinational corporations. The panel was created largely because of Chile's charges that the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation had tried to block the election of Dr. Allende in 1970. United Nations officials maintained that there was a strong sentiment for such an inquiry apart from the ITT case. 

In his remarks, professor Sunkel charged that foreign corporations were bent on siphoning off resources of the developing countries. He heatedly disputed testimony by five corporate officers that their concerns had contributed to the health and welfare of the countries where they operated. He said, "I get scared, really scared when I hear such individuals speak of social responsibility. Who has appointed a small group of individuals to decide the fate of so many?"

Sunkel said, "The government of President Allende made an attempt at changing the structure of underdevelopment and dependence in Chile. It may have had many failings and committed many errors, but nobody can deny that it attempted to redress the unjust economic and social structure by fundamentally democratic means."

While much of the anger and protest around the world seems directed at the United States, State Department and White House officials have consistently denied that the US was involved in the coup in any way. Nevertheless, critics of the Nixon Administration's policy in South America blamed the United States for helping create the conditions in which military intervention became an ever stronger likelihood. Joseph Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies said the tactics were economic chaos.

Collins said that Chile had become the first victim of the Nixon-Kissinger low profile strategy in which credits are withheld while military assistance continues to pro-American armed forces. Military assistance to the Chilean regime continued throughout the three-year presidency of Allende, however development loans were halted. Collins said US companies had put pressure on their subsidiaries and on foreign associates not to sell vitally needed equipment and spare parts to Chile.

The following commentary on the role of the United States in the Chilean coup comes from The Guardian. "US involvement could be seen on several levels. US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis went home to Washington per instructions September 6th, returning to Santiago September 9th, only two days before the coup. Davis was a high-ranking advisor in the National Security Council from 1966 to '68 and later served as US Ambassador to Guatemala during the height of the pass pacification program against leftist forces there.

When Davis came from Guatemala to Chile in 1971, he brought a number of aides with him who had helped run the repression there. The State Department trains people for special jobs, and Davis seems to have specialized in these kinds of operations," says The Guardian.

According to The Guardian, Davis's philosophy of international relations was expressed in a speech in Guatemala in 1971. "Money isn't everything," he said, "love is the other 2%. I think this characterizes the US' policy in Latin America." The New York Times reported that the US was not at all surprised by the coup and that US diplomats and intelligence analysts had predicted a coup would come three weeks earlier.

"In another interesting possible prediction," claims The Guardian, "the State Department called back four US Navy vessels, which had been heading into Chilean waters for annual naval maneuvers scheduled to begin September 13th. The State Department claims that this was done when news of the revolt came, but some sources say that the order came before the beginning of the coup indicating prior knowledge."

The Guardian claims that US corporations were clearly pleased by Allende's overthrow. When news of the coup came, copper futures rose 3 cents on the New York Commodity Exchange, but the US government is cautioning against too optimistic a view on the part of expropriated companies since a too rapid return of nationalized properties would only heighten antagonisms and further reveal the coup's motivation. The preceding report on recent events in Chile was compiled from the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Miami Herald, the Mexico City Daily Excélsior, NACLA, Prensa Latina, and The Guardian. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Chile itself comes the word of the death of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda on September 23rd. Neruda's death came just 12 days after the coup, which resulted in the death of Neruda's close friend, Salvador Allende. Neruda had been suffering from cancer. 

At Neruda's funeral on Tuesday in Santiago, a crowd of almost 2000 cheered the Chilean Communist Party, sang "The Internationale", and chanted, "With Neruda, we bury Salvador Allende". The daring left-wing demonstration was in direct defiance of the military junta. Yet even the risk of arrest could not stop the crowd from chanting, despite the heavy contingent of soldiers stationed around the mausoleum. 

Meanwhile, the New York publishing house of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux announced Thursday that the manuscripts of the poet's memoirs, as well as a number of unpublished poems written before Neruda's death, are missing. Neruda's home in Santiago has been ransacked and all his books seized. The military junta has denied responsibility and called the incident regrettable. Yet it is popularly believed that military police sacked the house in search of leftist literature and arms. 

Pablo Neruda's activism was as stronger as his lifelong commitment to poetry. Neruda's career as a poet officially began in 1924, when he published "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" at the age of 20. Following a tradition of long-standing, the Chilean government sent the young poet on a series of consular missions. In 1934, he was appointed counsel to Madrid. There he published the first and second series of his enormously successful work, "Residents on Earth". 

When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, Neruda made no secret of his antifascist convictions. He used his post as counsel in Madrid to aid the Spanish loyalists. Finally, the Chilean government recalled him when his partisan behavior became simply too embarrassing. 

From then on, Neruda became progressively involved in politics. His poetry reflected the direction in which his entire life was moving, and he became a very controversial figure. Neruda later wrote of this time in his life, "Since then, I have been convinced that it is the poet's duty to take his stand along with the people in their struggle to transform society, the trading to chaos by its rulers into an orderly existence based upon political, social and economic democracy." 

After serving as counsel on Mexico for several years Neruda returned to Chile in 1943, he joined the Communist Party and decided to run for a seat in the National Senate. He was elected to the Senate in 1944 and served for five years until the conflict between the Chilean government and the Communist Party reached its peak. The party was declared illegal by an act of Congress, and Neruda was expelled from his seat. 

He made his way secretly through the country and managed to slip across the border. He lived in exile for several years traveling through Mexico, Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. In 1950, he published his "General Song". 

Neruda returned to Chile in 1953 and in that same year was awarded the Stalin Prize. He became the leading spokesman of Chile's left while continuing to write poetry prolifically. He also wrote exposes of Chilean political figures, and articles condemning US foreign policy in Latin America. In 1954, he published "The Grapes and the Wind", which contained a great deal of political verse. 

In 1971, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for poetry. Neruda strongly condemned US economic policies in Latin America. He felt that the United States used its dominance over the Latin American countries to finance US national security ventures and to supply US industrial needs, all at great cost to the Latin American countries themselves. 

Mexico's Excélsior also reports that on October 15th, the band of urban guerrillas known as The 23rd of September League had freed Anthony Duncan Williams, honorary British consul, after holding him captive for five days. The group announced that they freed Williams after a guerrilla tribunal determined that he did not belong to the exploiting class and that he was poor. No mention was made of Luis Fernando Aranguren, the industrialist who was kidnapped along with Williams on Wednesday, October 10th. 

Shortly after the kidnappings, the guerrilla left a statement in a mailbox in Mexico City saying that Williams and Aranguren had been condemned to death by a guerrilla tribunal for being representatives of the bourgeoisie. The group listed several conditions to be met in order to prevent the carrying out of the sentence, including the release of 51 political prisoners, an airplane to transport the released prisoners to North Korea, $200,000 ransom, and distribution of the guerrillas' message by all the major news media. The Cuban ambassador was designated as intermediary by the kidnappers. 

The government apparently refused to release any political prisoners, but agreed to provide safe conduct out of Mexico for the kidnappers along with the $200,000. After his release, Williams told the story of his kidnapping to the press. Shortly after 8:00 AM on Wednesday, he was taken from his home by five armed men who blindfolded him and forced him to lie in the rear seat of his own car. After driving for a while, the group abandoned Williams' car and transferred him to a light truck. Williams was then taken to a home, presumably in the country, where he was kept in the small room while wallpapered with newspaper to keep him from identifying his surroundings later. 

The kidnappers provided him with good food and his favorite kind of brandy. They told him that they were familiar with his habits because they had kept him under surveillance for the last six months. His captors told him that a guerrilla tribunal had sentenced him to death for being rich and belonging to the class that oppresses and exploits people. Their plan was to use Williams and Aranguren to secure the release of political prisoners held by the Mexican government. They said that Williams' status as a diplomat would ensure the government's cooperation. 

Williams explained to them that his position as consul was merely an honorary one and paid nothing. He promised to relinquish his position if released, insisting that he had to work for a living. After several days of interrogation, the guerrilla informed him that he would be released. Immediately after being freed, Williams resigned his position as consul. According to the police, the 23rd of September League is a band of urban guerrillas formed by the remaining members of several other leftist groups, including the Armed Revolutionary Movement and Zapatista Urban Front. That from Excélsior. 

The Miami Herald reports that Mexican president, Luis Echeverría, in addressing the 14th annual United Nations conference of editors and publishers called on US newspaper executives to give greater coverage to third world efforts to achieve some economic balance with the rich industrialized nations. President Echeverría, arguing that three fourths of the world is presently prevented from even taking care of its basic needs, suggested, "You should promote a system of world cooperation that would correct the imbalance and lack of proportion between those few nations and the rest of humanity." That from the Miami Herald. 

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.

The Mexico City Daily Excélsior reports that the Mexican government has announced that some businesses formerly under state control are now on sale to private investors. Purchasers may either make direct offers or they may buy stock in various concerns. More than 300 enterprises will be affected, including the iron, steel, chemical, petroleum, mining, textile, and automobile industries. Banks, hotels, restaurants, and theaters will also be transformed from the public to the private ownership. Medical services and other social services will also be included. 

At the same time, the Director of the National Finance Ministry announced that the government wished to promote the Mexicanization of foreign enterprises by giving technical and financial aid to private industry, as it did recently in the case of Heinz International. President Echeverria was asked if the government's moves indicated that Mexico was no longer on the road to socialism. "No", he has said, "There are simply some businesses which the state should not administer." He referred to the Mexican economy as a mixed economy.

Excélsior continued that there is much controversy in Mexico over these recent governmental decisions. Leading industrialists have voiced the opinion that businesses and government can work hand in hand for the good of Mexico. Pedro Ocampo Ramirez, on the other hand, editorializing in the Excélsior, states that the private industry will not want to invest in those businesses which are doing poorly. He says, "And if the industries are prosperous, it is absurd to put them in the hands of a privileged few instead of conserving them as an instrument for the common good". 

Excélsior also reports that the universities in Uruguay remained occupied by the armed forces while hundreds of teachers and students, including the rector, remained in jail while four investigations were carried out, judicial, police, financial and administrative investigations of the national university, which was seized by the military government last week. 

The military intervention in the university was approved by Uruguayan President Bordaberry on October 28th after the death of an engineering student who supposedly made an explosive device which burst accidentally. The interior minister of Uruguay said that this explosion and the presence of other bombs constituted a plan to overthrow the government. 

The situation of higher education is one of the most burning problems of the Bordaberry government, cites Excélsior. For example, the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva announced that they deplore the closure of the University of Uruguay and pointed out that the imprisonment of the rector and professors is an attack on intellectual freedom and a violation of university autonomy. 

According to Excélsior, the director of the social science faculty of the University of Uruguay said, "The university was the only institution in Uruguay which was unharmed during the military escalation which demolished the legislature, the courts and the labor unions". Because he was in Argentina at the time, the director was the only university authority not arrested by the military last week in Uruguay. 

The director said, "In the political and social landscape of Uruguay, the university was a democratic center of clear opposition to the dictatorship imposed last June. The results of the September university elections indicated clearly the anti-military and anti-dictator sentiment of the whole institution."

Excélsior continued that the social science director said that the military version of the death of a university student while preparing a bomb was absolutely false. He said, according to Excélsior, "This is a story fabricated by the military. It was outside forces which planted the bomb. There is evidence that the bomb was of industrial construction, a type which only the armed forces possess. The two individuals who set the trap belonged to a paramilitary police force and were seen leaving the room where the explosion occurred when the victim was approaching. There are eyewitnesses to all of this". That a report from Mexico's Excélsior. 

The junta is continuing with its efforts to stamp politics out of the Chilean consciousness until the country is back on its feet again. El Mercurio, one of the few newspapers still allowed to publish in Chile, carried on the front page of a recent issue, a decree by the junta outlying all Marxist political parties and declaring all others in recess. The Marxist parties now illegal include the Socialist, Communist, Radical, Christian left, Movement of the United Popular Action and Independent Popular Action Party. 

El Mercurio of Chile continues that the major non-Marxist parties now in recess include the Christian Democrats, the National Party, the Radical Left, the Radical Democratic Party, the Democratic National Party. The junta is also depoliticizing the universities, according to El Mercurio. 8,000 of the 19,000 students at the University of Concepción were expelled for leftist activities, including every student enrolled in the School of Journalism and the Institute of Sociology. Those expelled cannot enroll in any other college in Chile, according to El Mercurio of Chile. 

The Chilean ex-ambassador to Mexico, Hugo Vigorena, claims that 60 people have taken refuge in the Mexican Embassy in Santiago, and are awaiting safe passage out of the country. Vigorena says that their situation is desperate, but that negotiations for their safe conduct do not look hopeful. Troops remain stationed around the embassy to prevent Chileans from seeking asylum there. 

Excélsior notes that meanwhile the Junta is working to establish beneficial foreign relations, Brazil has announced the extension of a $12 million worth of credit to Chile. A delegate from the International Monetary Fund is scheduled to arrive in Chile to discuss the resumption of important loans and credit denied Chile under Allende's regime. General Pinochet, the head of the Junta, has announced plans to meet with the Bolivian president, Hugo Banzer. That report on Chile from the Mexico City daily, Excélsior, and from the Chilean daily, El Mercurio. 

Our feature this week is a historical account of the development of the oil industry in Venezuela compiled from Peter Odell's recently published study, "Oil and World Power", as well as some other news sources. Most US attention has been focused on the Middle East as a source of petroleum. However, Venezuela has been and continues to be an important supplier of oil. In 1971, 566 million barrels were exported to the United States. 

Recently, such exports have been dropping, but energy shortages in this country may eventually bring about changes, such as increased exploration for oil in Venezuela and surrounding areas. If so, it should be interesting to observe how various South American governments respond to this. 

The history of Venezuela parallels that of the Middle East in that national governments have taken a more active role in recent years. This trend, of course, reached its climax in the Arab oil reductions during the recent war in the Middle East. The question of sovereignty over natural resources will probably become more and more important, since minerals crucial to industrial growth are finite and seem to be concentrated in underdeveloped countries. 

This is one reason why it is interesting to review the evolution of relationships between the Venezuelan government, the oil companies, and the US government. 

Venezuela was the first nation to undergo a meteoric rise to significance as a major producer and exporter of oil. After 20 years of halfhearted exploration there, the big oil companies were finally galvanized into an urgent flurry of activity by their expropriation and expulsion from Mexico, where the oil industry was brought under national ownership in 1938. 

For 28 years, a succession of governments in Mexico had always seen such action as the ultimate outcome of the conflict between the state and companies, but since it had been avoided for so long, the companies had come to believe it would never happen. 

The promising prospects for oil exploitation in the Maracaibo Basin and in other parts of Venezuela now benefited from the company's need to find or quickly to replace the 15 million tons or so per year they had been lifting from their Mexican fields, mainly for sale overseas. This important stimulus to Venezuelan oil development was soon supplemented by a second, even more important one, the petroleum needs of a rapidly expanding wartime US economy. 

These wartime demands proved too great a strain on the US domestic oil industry and gave companies still greater incentives to seek new resources in Venezuela. 

As a result, oil production there rose rapidly from only 20 million tons in 1937 to some 30 million tons in 1941 and to over 90 million tons by 1946, by which time the country was the world's most important petroleum-producing nation outside the United States. Since almost all the oil was exported in contrast with the mainly domestic use of American oil, Venezuela became the world's most important oil exporter, a position which it has just held on to in 1970, but which it lost to Iran and Saudi Arabia in 1971. 

In the post-war world, which had an energy shortage as a result of dislocations in many of the most important coal-producing areas, the demand for energy from other sources grew rapidly. The political economic environment was also highly favorable to foreign investment in Venezuelan oil because the dictatorial regime there welcomed such investment as a means of amassing private fortunes for those individuals close to the regime. 

These two factors ensured the continuation of the growth of Venezuelan oil production throughout the rest of the 1940s and up to 1957. 

This 20-year period of growth was marked by only one short interlude of restraint. The few months in 1948 when a government came to power under the leadership of a political party, Acción Democrática, whose electoral manifesto called for the nationalization of the country's oil resources and whose leaders in exile had lived mainly in Mexico, where oil was already nationalized. The reaction of the oil companies to this new government was immediate and very blatant. 

Investment virtually ceased, development came to a halt and production was stabilized, while the managers of the companies concerned attempted to decide how far they would be able to work within the framework of the policies likely to be adopted by the new regime. As it turned out, their fears were short-lived. For after a short period of democratic rule, the country reverted to a military dictatorship, a reversion which was almost certainly only made possible with the active help of at least some of the oil companies concerned. 

In 1958, the conflict between the government and the oil companies seemed inevitable, as Acción Democrática still had proposals for the nationalization of the industry in its manifesto and took early action increasing taxes on the industry and giving its support to the oil unions pressure for greatly increased wages and fringe benefits, which seemed to indicate that a head-on clash was but a matter of time, but after 1958, Acción Democrática did not treat its nationalization commitments seriously, and certainly made no move in this direction. 

In fact, by this later date, Venezuela was so completely dependent economically on the oil industry that no government, and certainly not one as anxious as Acción Democrática to achieve its country's economic progress, could afford to think of action which would essentially close down the oil sector of the economy. 

No other sector could avoid repercussions from such action, and the consequent unemployment and distress would certainly undermine the government's political strength. The government's freedom of action in economic terms was thus heavily constrained, and even in political terms, there was little to be said for action which, no matter how immediately popular, seemed likely to create such stresses and strains in the system that the instigators of it were unlikely to survive. 

But if by 1958, the government's ability to act out its basic philosophical beliefs was constrained, then so was that of the oil companies. By now, they were under pressure from the US State Department to achieve an agreement with the Venezuelan government, which was believed by the United States to be the government which provided the key to the stability of the whole Caribbean area, but stability in Venezuela, particularly in the period following Fidel Castro's success in Cuba, demanded an expanding economy. 

This in turn depended upon the continuing development of the country's oil industry, which accounted for something like 25% of the country's gross national product, provided the government will over 60% of all its revenues and accounted for over 90% of the nation's total exports. 

The companies, therefore, though powerful in the Venezuelan context, had to reorientate their attitudes and policies to the even more powerful force of the foreign policy of the United States, which required that the oil industry make it possible for Venezuela to achieve its objectives of continued economic advance. 

This demanded their willing cooperation with a government which they certainly disliked and probably distrusted, but for which there was no acceptable alternative and which, therefore, they could certainly not think of overthrowing, as they had in 1948. 

Economic and political necessity, therefore, as interpreted by the United States, produced a situation in which the international oil companies, dedicated to the idea of as little government intervention in industry as possible and a government devoted in theory at least to socialist planning, had to work together. 

This development, concludes, Odell, unusual, for its time has since been paralleled in both oil-producing and oil consuming nations, as the companies have been obliged to recognize the validity and permanence of governmental concern over oil and oil policies. 

The expansion in Venezuelan oil production since 1958, states Odell, has by no means been as rapid as in the earlier post-war period, but advances have taken place and some investment has continued. Government revenues from oil have been increased, all in spite of the fact that over the period since 1958, Venezuelan oil has become increasingly uncompetitive in many markets of the world as a result of rapidly expanding lower-cost oil output from countries in the Middle East and, more recently, in North and West Africa. 

Moreover, falling costs of transporting oil across the oceans, as larger and larger tankers were brought into use, helped to eliminate 10 as well as competitive edge in markets in close geographical proximity to it than to other main producing areas. This was particularly important with respect to the US market, which had hitherto been considered the particular preserve of Venezuelan oil, but to which Middle Eastern and other oil was now attracted. 

From the interplay of all these economic and political forces, says Odell, Venezuela has since 1958 achieved an average annual growth rate in oil production of less than 3%, compared with 10% per year achieved over the previous 15 years, in spite of the fact that the closure of the Suez Canal since mid-1967 has given Venezuela oil a temporary boost in markets west of Suez, particularly in the United States. 

Though the Cuban crisis and resultant pressures by the United States Department can be seen as the main factors which have saved the Venezuelan oil industry from a serious decline in the last 10 years or so, one must also note the impact of the growing professionalism of the Venezuelan government in dealing with the companies. In earlier days, the expertise was all on the side of the oil companies, which had to respond only to the political pressure of the government. 

Since 1958, the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons in Venezuela has built up a team able to urge, in technical and economic terms, with advice as to exactly how much pressure should be put on the companies to make concessions, particularly as regards taxation arrangements. 

Thus, the government has been able to increase its share of total profits on several occasions and to collect taxes in arrears the liability for which the company's challenged. This has had the effect of increasing the revenues which the country collects on every barrel of oil that is exported. This is now more than $7 per barrel, compared with less than one-tenth this amount when Acción Democrática came to power. 

By virtue of these actions, government revenues from oil have continued to grow at a rate high enough to finance requirements of the economic and social development program, the main short-term aim of the government in its oil policy. 

The government does not accept the idea of the concession system as a means of producing the nation's natural resources, except as a short-term expedient for ensuring the continued flow of oil, and in the light of external pressures, to allow the existing concessions to work their agreed areas. Since 1958, therefore, there have been no new concessions and, as a result, Venezuela's proved oil reserves will be used up in about 13 years at the current rate of production. 

If this situation continues, Venezuelan oil output must soon start to decline, and by the time the concessions are legally relinquished in 1983, it seems likely that Venezuela would be little more than a minor producer. 

In line with its philosophy, Acción Democrática has sought to resolve this issue through the establishment of a state oil company which has been given responsibilities for working any concession areas which might be relinquished by private companies and for negotiating joint arrangements to work as yet unexplored areas of Venezuela with oil potential. 

It now has producing capacity amounting to about 9 million tons per year, and in 1969 accepted offers from a dozen or so petroleum companies for joint operations in the southern part of Lake Maracaibo. 

Whether it will enable Venezuela to exercise more influence in the development of the world oil market is doubtful unless consuming countries also decide to put the oil industry under national control and then conduct their negotiations for supplies directly with other state entities in producing countries. This account of the development of the oil industry in Venezuela was compiled from Peter Odell's recently published study, "Oil and World Power", as well as some new sources. 

The newsweekly Latin America reports from Mexico that President Echeverría has again warned foreign investors not to buy up profitable Mexican firms, but the government is to persist in its controversial decision to sell off some state companies to the private sector. Latin America reports that President Luis Echeverría showed last weekend that he was still worried about the longstanding practice of some foreign investors of buying up going concerns in Mexico as the cheapest way into the local market.

This, of course, is not the kind of investment that Mexico wants, as the President made clear to a group of West German economic correspondence. "That," he told them, "was why the government had introduced a new investment law to protect the country from foreign investors who attempted to buy up everything productive and efficient there, big or small."

The president said that while some more reflective directors of foreign companies had adopted a "more positive attitude," there were still certain "multinational monopolies which have failed to understand the aims of the new law." He also made clear that his warning was directed as much at Mexican businessmen who made a big profit by allowing their companies to be taken over by foreigners. "The government was prepared to help firms which sought the capital and technology they needed abroad," he said, "but they must be associated with foreign interests when necessary and not sold out to them."

More pleasing to the private sector, continues Latin America, has been Echeverría's decision to sell off certain state companies to private interests, despite strong criticism from the left. The private sector has been pressing for this for some time, and the more extreme enthusiasts for private enterprises would even like to see such public services as electric power and the railways restored to them. They will certainly be disappointed. Not only would it be politically unacceptable, but it is doubtful whether the private sector could raise the necessary finance to develop and modernize either industry.

Latin America continues to note that the government does urgently need capital to develop them. Electricity prices have just gone up and railway fairs and tariffs are likely to do so soon, as well as other infrastructure projects and vital industries such as petrochemicals. Echeverría has made it clear that when the state investment corporation will be selling the companies, it took over from private hands who would be selling them when they are in danger of growing bankrupt. The purpose of this was to prevent sources of employment from being lost. Where these companies had been put back on their feet and the state had no strategic interest in holding onto them, they would be sold, thereby releasing public investment funds for more essential purposes. 

Latin American continues that a case in point is that of the international food firm, Heinz, which withdrew from Mexico last year because it said its Mexican operation had lost $32 million. The firm has now been renamed and the National Finance Administration, which has taken it over, sold shares to private interests, among them peasants in the northwestern states of Mexico. All the same, the nationalist left has objected to Echeverría's decision on the general principle that the private sector is quite strong enough already and the government should not go out of its way to tip the balance further against itself. "Why otherwise" one commentator asked, "had business circles greeted the decision with such delight?" That from the newsweekly, Latin America. 

La Prensa of Lima, Peru reports on the Latin American Foreign Minister's Conference in Bogota, Colombia. Although some observers, including the Cubans, characterized the meeting as premature, a degree of consensus was developed among the foreign ministers, and the meeting concluded with a declaration of mutual agreements in the form of an eight-point agenda for a further meeting next February in Mexico City.

The most important points are the unanimous support of all Latin American and Caribbean countries for Panama's efforts to win full sovereignty over the canal zone, the need for the United States cooperation in controlling interference by multinational corporations in domestic politics of countries in which they have investments, and the need to eliminate economic sanctions as a weapon of foreign policy against countries in the region, and the need to reorganize the entire inter-American system, especially the need to change the structure of the United States' relation with Latin America.

The Peruvians were particularly emphatic in their calls for Latin American solidarity with countries that expropriate the assets of multinational corporations. The Peruvian position is consistent with their concerns earlier expressed at the Latin American organization of energy. That from Le Prensa of Lima, Peru. 

Excélsior of Mexico City reports that opinion in Latin America is divided on the effects of the reduction of Arab oil production. For 48 hours after the announced reduction of oil production in international economic circles, it was considered very unlikely that Latin America would suffer effects of the energy crisis. It was noted that the countries developed industrially in the region, such as Mexico and Argentina, are almost self-sufficient in petroleum. The only exception would be Brazil, the principal importer of hydrocarbons in the Latin American region. 

However, according to Excélsior, the director of the Mexican oil concern affirmed that Mexico cannot withstand a world energy crisis, although it would not be affected in the same manner as other countries. In Venezuela, with less optimism than the international economic circles of Buenos Aires, authorities of the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons are studying the shortages in countries such as Brazil and Colombia. It was indicated that there are cases in Central America in which electric plants and hospitals could be closed for lack of fuel. 

According to Excélsior, in Argentina, the State petroleum monopoly assured that the country can be self-sufficient in fuel for 15 more years, although the volume of reserves necessitates the search for substitutes already. Venezuela, the principal producer and exporter of petroleum in the region, is being pressured by its regular customers, the United States and Europe, to not reduce its normal deliveries, which reach the neighborhood of 3 million barrels daily. The United States is the principal purchaser of Venezuelan petroleum. 

The Venezuelan minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons noted that his country is actually almost at the limit of its extractive capacity. That is, there is no possibility that Venezuela can increase its production. The reserves of the country decrease at the rate of 1,200 million barrels annually. 

According to Expreso of Lima, Peru, in Peru the possibility is now under study of reducing the consumption of petroleum used in the industrialization of sugarcane production. Also, the price of gasoline will be increased. The Lima paper Expreso, which is the voice of the Peruvian government, recently accused monopoly producers in the capitalist system for the actual crisis in petroleum. 

Expreso emphasized that the United States has calculated reserves for 60 years and can at this moment satisfy its internal demands, but the monopolies live at the expense of resources from other countries and prefer to unleash a crisis now in order to later obtain more profits, according to Expresso. The world petroleum crisis should be thus more a political emergency than an economic one. According to Expreso of Lima, Peru, and Excélsior of Mexico City. 

According to the Mexico City Daily Excelsior, Mexico's delegate to the OAS foreign minister's meeting proposed expanding the concept of attack, which appears in the Rio Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance to give the word an economic connotation. The Mexican representative denied the charge made by the Peruvian delegate that Mexico did not support the treaty. Peru proposed changing the concept of attack to that of aggression, including economic aggression. Peru also proposed establishing differences between intercontinental and extra continental aggression.

Pointing out that making this distinction was the only way for Latin America to avoid becoming an instrument of the military politics of the United States. Argentina partially supported the Peruvian proposal and Mexico, Brazil, and the United States opposed it. Excelsior goes on to say that a subcommittee on reform of the OAS approved a declaration of principles on the right and sovereignty of the states to control over their riches, natural resources, and maritime resources. A motion of the US stating that the sovereignty of a country over its resources should not affect the sovereignty of other nations was flatly rejected by almost all the delegates.

Excelsior reports that the US State Department revealed today that at next year's Inter-American Conference of Foreign Ministers to be held in Mexico, it is likely to present a program for the development of energy resources in Latin America. Excelsior also states that in Paris, European analysts warned that the oil scarcity could provoke an economic catastrophe in Latin America if the neighboring nations respond by exploiting the continent's oil resources irrationally. 

One of the most prominent stories from Mexico in the world press in 1973 was the May kidnapping of the US consul, Terence Leon Hardy, in Guadalajara. Tension was already high early in May as a result of the police shooting of four students in the May Day demonstrations in Puebla, east of Mexico City. The pueblo university rector and student bodies were calling for the resignation of the state's right-wing governor and ultimately won their demand.