Annotations for Countries: Panama

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.

Shifting from the diplomatic to the military front, Campainha, a weekly newspaper published by Brazilian exiles in Santiago, Chile, describes with concern the increasing militarization in Brazil. When General George Underwood, commander of the Panama Canal Zone, traveled to Brazil last year to discuss Latin American problems, particularly the internal politics of Peru, Chile, and Uruguay, General Sousa Mellow of the Brazilian military stated, "The General Underwood's visit with us reinforces the spirit of our presidents, who examined together the problems of the world which gave Brazil and the United States responsibilities to maintain the continuation of democracy." The statement by General Mellow demonstrates the purposes of the Brazilian arms race to assume the responsibility along with the United States of "maintaining democracy" in Latin America.

Campainha continues, "The warlike capacity of the Brazilian armed forces has already far surpassed the necessities of maintaining territorial boundaries. This excess capacity constitutes a danger for other Latin American countries to the extent that it seeks to create conditions to impose its leadership in Latin America. There is reason to believe that this could include intervention in countries that become unreceptive to Brazilian and North American models of development. The Brazilian preoccupation with entering the group of nations, which possess nuclear arms, reflects this objective. An agreement with the German Brazilian Commission of scientific and technical cooperation was signed last November, to further promote research in nuclear energy and the construction of missiles. Also, last year, Westinghouse Electric began constructing the first nuclear power plant in the country with a potential capacity of 600,000 kilowatts."

Campainha continues, "That the installation of arms factories in Brazil continues rapidly. Dow Chemical had proposed that their Brazilian plants begin producing napalm, which would be used in Vietnam. The so-called end of that war has postponed Dow's production of napalm in Brazil, but for how long?" Campainha asks. Print Latino reported last July that the Italian manufacturer Fiat, was trying to convince the Brazilian government to build a military aeronautics plant in Brazil. A similar offer was received from the French firm Dassault, which tried to sell its patent for the construction of its mirage jets in Brazil. Although in its propaganda, the Brazilian military government insists that the massive arms purchases are only in keeping with their intention to "modernize the army." Realistically, this arms race has one objective, to enable the Brazilian army to repress liberation movements both within and without that country.

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.

Juan Perón's electoral victory in Argentina and the political embarrassment suffered by the United States in Panama in March indicate a new willingness on the part of Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America to assert themselves. This has left Brazil, one of the United States' strongest supporters in the hemisphere, in an increasingly isolated position. This week's feature from Rio de Janeiro's Opinião discusses the possibilities of and fundamental reasons for a diplomatic realignment, which seems to be taking place in the Western Hemisphere.

Opinião asks, "Does some antagonism exist between Brazil and the rest of Latin America? Is Brazil the second-largest country in the Americas trying to exercise a type of sub imperialism in the hemisphere? And with the rush of huge foreign firms to Brazil, is that nation not transforming itself into a type of bridgehead over which the companies will carry out their actions in the hemisphere or is it exactly the opposite of all this? While Brazil transforms itself rapidly into a modern industrialized nation, are the majority of neighboring countries bogged down without direction in a swamp of under-development, looking for a scapegoat to explain their own failures and afraid of Brazilian development? Are they not the ones who are conspiring to encircle Brazil?"

As strange as these questions seem, they have influenced the actions of a good number of nations of the continent. Ever since President Nixon affirmed at the end of 1971 that as Brazil leans, so leans the rest of Latin America. Accusations and denials of a pretended hegemony have been issued with frequency from Brazil as well as from its neighbors. At the end of March, for example, an important leader of the Peronista party denounced a Washington Brasilia access and the ambition of the Brazilian government to try and exercise a delegated leadership and serve as a bridge for the entrance of an ultra capitalistic form of government incompatible with the interests of Latin America.

Opinião continues by noting that the declarations of the Peróneus leader are perhaps the most dramatic in a series of events which appear to be separating Brazil more and more from Spanish America. In Panama, the Panamanian foreign minister, speaking at the close of the United Nations Security Council meeting, talked about the awakening of Latin America and referred to the almost unanimous support of neighboring countries for panama's demand that the United States withdraw from the canal zone. To this same meeting, the Brazilian foreign minister had sent a telegram of evident neutrality, asking only for just and satispharic solutions to the problem of the canal.

After the meeting of the Security Council, the ministers of Panama and Peru announced that they are going to suggest a total restructuring of the Organization of American States, the OAS. Brazilian diplomacy, however, has systematically supported the OAS, which is seen by various Latin nations as an instrument used by the United States to impose its policies on the continent.

It was the Organization of American States which legalized the armed intervention of a predominantly American and Brazilian troops in the Dominican Republic in 1965. The Organization of American States also coordinated the political, economic, and diplomatic isolation of the Cuban regime within the Americas. Another event in February of this year can also be interpreted as a tendency away from Brazil's foreign policy, this time in the economic sphere. President Rafael Caldera announced that Venezuela, one of the richest nations in Latin America, and until recently, closely tied to the United States, would join the Andean Pact, an association formed in 1969 by Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.

The pact was one of the solutions devised by the Andean nations to overcome the obstacles to regional integration found in the Latin America Free Trade Association. These nations saw the association as an instrument for large European and American firms, based in Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, to realize their transactions more easily.

Opinião continues. "Today when the Argentinians have already announced that their intention to join the Andean Pact, where there are significant restrictions on foreign capital. Brazil is preparing a plan destined to permit the survival of the Free Trade Association. Thus once again, moving in the opposite direction of its Spanish-speaking neighbors. At the same time Brazil faces another political problem in the Americas. During the past decade, various nationalistic governments have appeared on the continent with widely divergent tendencies, including Chile, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, and most recently Panama and Argentina. This new situation has given rise to a policy of coexistence, which is termed by the diplomats as ideological pluralism. This pluralism accepts the collaboration among governments of different natures and is opposed to the ideological frontiers against communism practiced by the Organization of American States, an idea which seems to orient Brazilian diplomacy to the present day."

Opinião speculates that Peronism could be the new element which will separate Brazil even more dangerously from the rest of Latin America. Representatives of the government elect in Argentina have already announced their intentions to denounce accords reached by the Brazilians and the present Argentine government over the utilization of the water of the Paraná River. At the same time, many nations in Latin America believe Brazil is trying to create its own sphere of influence. As typical examples, they cite the cases of Paraguay and Bolivia. The latter nation received $46 million in aid from Brazil last year while during the same period, the United States contributed only a little more, 52 million.

Opinião concludes that Brazil's economic growth, obvious favor in the eyes of American business and government officials, and the search for areas of influence, all indicate the emergence of a Brazilian sub imperialism in Latin America. There are two interpretations of this new phenomenon however as Opínion notes. "One sees Brazil always acting in accord with American interests while others feel it is acting for its own ends." To explore the subject further, Opínion offers three special reports from its correspondence on relations of Brazil with the rest of Latin America.

Opinião diplomatic correspondent filed the following report. "The idea of a diplomatic plot against Brazil is at best speculation. Concretely, Brazil's diplomacy in Latin America is in great difficulty, and therefore, there exists a possibility of isolation. The announcement of Brazil's foreign minister that he will visit the Andean Nations implies a recognition of this possibility and is an evident effort to avoid a total collapse. But the basic reason for the phenomenon is in Brazil's fixation with instruments of policy considered outmoded, such as the Latin American Free Trade Association and the Organization of American States, even the North Americans since this and in a recent interview, William Rogers, the United States Secretary of State, suggested a transformation of the OAS, the Organization of American States. However, Brazil clings to these old organizations."

Opinião correspondent continues. "In mid-March, the Brazilian Department of State announced that it was preparing a plan to save the Latin American Free Trade Association and that Brazil saw this as indispensable to the solution of Latin America's commercial problems. Other Latin nations feel, however, that the 12-year-old association has done nothing to fulfill its promise and has benefited the great Latin American firms, the only ones with the power, organization, and dynamism necessary to take advantage of the concessions granted to encourage industrial development. The consequences of the Free Trade Association agreements have been that the multinational corporations have established a division of labor among their Latin American factories. Through the agreements, they trade with one another and even win new markets while benefiting from suspensions of tariffs."

The Brazilian idea of integration through the Free Trade Association appears therefore as an attempt to create an ample market for multinational corporations. An OAS study of the continent's economy in 1972 affirms that 90% of all manufactured goods produced are made by subsidiaries of American firms. These firms export 75% of their products to other Latin countries and over half of this commerce is, in reality, internal trade between different branches of the same corporation. It is therefore clear why United States corporations are so interested in Latin American free trade. It opens a market too attractive to be ignored. Brazil's efforts to save this free trade area are not likely to find support in the rest of Latin America. As to Brazil's fixation on the Organization of American States, the recent meaning of the United States Security Council in Panama seems to have decreed the end of that obsolete instrument. The president of the OAS was not even invited to speak at the meeting.

One Latin American commented that the OAS evidently no longer had any importance in the solution of Latin American problems. With the demise of the Organization of American States, the rigid ideological stance of Latin America, born of the Cold War, will also disappear. Opinião correspondent concludes that, "Latin America is now going to assume its own personality in the pluralistic context and this is the reality which Brazil must recognize if it wants to avoid the total collapse of its Latin American diplomacy."

But the battle is really not against Brazil as some poorly informed or cynical editorialist pretend. Opinião correspondent says, "The battle is against the action of the great imperialistic powers that transformed Brazil into a spearhead for their interests." He says, "In this rich dialectic of Latin American history, the presence of a Brazil, overflowing with economic power and ready to join the Club of the Great Nations, encountered the Treaty of Cartagena, which created the Andean Pact in an effective agreement, which integrates six nations and imposes severe restrictions on foreign investment. The Peronists want to join this pact, and given the economic structure of the Andean region, it is clear that Argentina's entrance constitutes a necessary contribution to the solution of problems which affect the viability of the agreement."

Opinião analysis continues with a report on the significance of the elections in Argentina for the rest of the continent. Perón's triumph in the March 11th elections was the most important fact of the past few months in Latin American history when there were many decisive events. When Perón launched his party's platform in December of last year, he ended his message to the Argentine people by prophesizing, "In the year 2000, we will be united or we will be subjugated." The Argentine people believed this and when they elected Perón's party, they not only voted against 17 years of military inefficiency, but also, with a consciousness of the importance of historical development, and opted for the union of Spanish-speaking America. It was not only Perón's program, which created a consciousness of the problem. Undoubtedly, the country's geopolitical awareness was a direct consequence of Brazil's emergence as a power with pretensions to hegemony on the continent.

Argentina has the space, resources, and experience to supply all that is lacking in the Andean Nations, but it has above all, a tradition of popular masses who are profoundly committed to militant, Peronist, nationalism, which could function as the true backbone of the new attempt to integrate Spanish America. The emergence of a nationalistic type government in Uruguay, seen as a distinct possibility since the Peronista victory, is probably the next step and what Opinião reporter thinks is inevitable. The creation of one great Latin American country stretching from ocean to ocean, the only organization capable of confronting the multinational corporations and Brazil, which is being manipulated by the multinationals.

The final part of Opinião's report is an interview with Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, an important figure in Perón's party and considered the probable next foreign minister of Argentina. Sorondo notes that this is a special time in Latin America, a time when new historical forces are at work and new configurations are emerging. He stated that it is necessary to converse, to dialogue, and to seek new forms of understanding, but the Argentine did not confine himself to diplomatic platitudes. He reiterated his opposition to what he termed the Brasilia Washington Axis.

Sorondo called this axis, "An obstacle for the unification of Hispanic America and a bastion of melting national firms interested in maintaining the dependence and backwardness of the Latin American peoples." He concluded by saying that the subject will require the future Peronist government to recuperate the Argentine predominance in the region and to discuss with neighboring countries modalities of economic interdependence and to impose energetically the imposition of an ultra capitalistic domination manipulated by huge companies without nations that are establishing themselves in Brazil. This report was taken from Opinião of Rio de Janeiro.

Many Latin American newspapers commented this week on the surprising degree of unity displayed at a UN Economic Commission for Latin America, ECLA, gathering during the last week of March in Quito, Ecuador. The wire service Prensa Latina reports that the Latin America of 1973 is not the Latin America of 1962. No longer is it Cuba alone that engages in vast economic and social transformations in this hemisphere, and ECLA must be prepared to face this new stage. This was the gist of the statements made by Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, head of his country's delegation to the 15th meeting of ECLA, which took place in Quito. The Cuban minister cited as facts which prove the new situation in Latin America, the process of construction of a socialist economy in Chile, the Peruvian revolutionary process and the results of the UN Security Council meeting held in Panama recently.

Rodriguez said, "We Latin Americans have come to an agreement at least on what we don't want, and that is backwardness, illiteracy, hunger and poverty, which are prevalent in practically every society in the region. Without an ingrained desire for development, without the determination and the will for development of the peoples, development is absolutely impossible," he added. He went on to say that one cannot demand sacrifices from people where 5% of the population receives 43% of the national income and 30% barely received 10 or perhaps 15%.

The head of the Cuban delegation said, according to Prensa Latina, that "accelerated development under the existing conditions implies in investments that the peoples cannot tackle for a lack of resources. After affirming that, here is where international financing comes into play." He said that "As far as the great capitalist economic powers are concerned, their help should not be considered as a gift, but rather as restitution for all the pillage the Latin American peoples have been subjected to." He added, "Such financing will never be obtained without the people struggle." This report from the Latin American wire service, Prensa Latina

Chile's participation in last month's ECLA meeting is reported in the Santiago weekly, Chile Hoy, which said that, "In clear language, the Chilean delegation to ECLA described the causes of the low level of economic development in Chile in recent years. The directions undertaken by the Allende administration, the successes of these strategies, and finally, the obstacles which block this path. In our judgment," said that Chilean delegation, "a number of historical errors were committed during this century in our country, which led to negative results for the Chilean people."

"In summary, we can point out seven fundamental errors. First, the surrender of basic natural resources to foreign capital. Secondly, a narrow base for the national economy with only one industrial potential, copper, generating a national external dependence, financial, commercial, technological, and cultural dependence. Third, land ownership remained in the hands of a few large landowners. Fourth, manufacturing was concentrated in the hands of a few monopolies. Fifth, Chile fell into intense foreign debt, $4 billion through 1970, the second largest per capita debt in the world, behind Israel. Sixth, establishment of a repressive state, which maintained an unequal distribution of income within the framework of only formal democracy. And seventh, the limited economic development was concentrated geographically in the capital of Santiago creating a modern sector while the rural provinces stagnated."

Chile Hoy goes on to say that, "Demonstrating the historical failure of capitalism in Chile, the Chilean delegate showed that in the 1970 presidential elections, two candidates who won over 65% of the votes suggested two different reforms. The Christian Democrat Reform had the goal of a socialist communitarian society, and the popular Unity's goal was the gradual construction of a true socialist economy. Since the popular unity won the election, there have been distinct revolutionary changes in the government's two and one half years in power, the recovery of national ownership of natural resources, the elimination of industrial monopoly through the formation of the area of social property, which is creating the mechanisms for workers' participation, nationalization of the finance and foreign commerce sectors. The Chilean state now controls 95% of credit and 85% of exports as well as 48% of imports. Further changes are that large land holdings have been expiated."

"The reformed sector now represents 48% of arable land, and with the passage of a new law during 1973, the second phase of agrarian reform will begin. Also, changes in international relations shown in the widening of diplomatic and commercial agreements, Chile is less dependent than before, and the diversification of our foreign relations permits us to say with pride that we are no longer an appendix of anyone. In addition, a vigorous internal market has been created raising the buying power of the people redistributing income and increasing national consumption." Chile Hoy further states that, "We are alleviating the burden of the inherited foreign debt. We hope that during 1973, we obtain the understanding of friendly countries in order to relieve our international payments problems." This report on Chile's statement at the ECLA gathering is from the Santiago Weekly, Chile Hoy.

The British News Weekly, Latin America gives a more detailed account of the main issues of the ECLA Conference. "The most remarkable feature of the meeting of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, ECLA, which ended in Quito at the end of March, was the degree of Latin American unity. The mutual distaste felt by the governments of Brazil and Central America on the right and Chile and Cuba on the left was no secret, and since development strategy was what the discussion was all about, a good deal of mutual recriminations might have been expected, but mutual interest prevailed. Faced by the economic power of the world's rich and particularly the United States, every Latin American country appreciated the need to stick together. Indeed, there seems to have been a tacit understanding that Latin American governments would not criticize one another. As a result, nearly all their fire was concentrated on the US with a few broad sides reserved for the European economic community."

"In fact," says Latin America, "only the United States failed to vote with the rest, including even the Europeans for the rather gloomy report on Latin America's development strategy over the past decade. One of the reports Chief criticisms was directed at the growth of Latin America's enormous external debt, now estimated at around 20 billion dollars, and it called for refinancing and even a moratorium on payments in certain circumstances. This of course affects the US first and foremost, as did the criticisms of private investment and the financing of foreign trade. But the United States ambassador refrained from the hard line retaliations that had been expected by the Latins. Instead, more in sorrow than in anger. He urged them to look at the advantages of private investment and pointed out that the US imported more Latin American manufactured goods than any in other industrialized country, and instead of voting against the report, he continued himself with abstaining."

Latin America continues commenting that, "The United States was also in the firing line with the resolution denouncing transnational companies for the enormous economic power which is concentrated in them and allows them to interfere in national interest as has happened in some cases. This echoed the resolution approved at the security council meeting in Panama and coincided with the Senate hearings in Washington on the attempt by IT&T to finance a CIA operation against Dr. Salvador Allende in 1970.

There was also considerable interest in the proposal put personally by the Chilean delegate, who emphasized he was not speaking for his government, that the United States and European members of ECLA should be expelled. This proposal is unlikely to be carried through, but is symptomatic of the Latin American desire to have an influential body of their own to look after their own interest without interference. It was notable too that all Latin American governments, whatever their political coloring, felt able to support the recommendation that social development and reforms should accompany economic development, something which would appear to run counter to current Brazilian development strategy," concludes the weekly Latin America.

Another hemispheric meeting with important consequences for US Latin American relations was the Organization of American States meeting the first week of April in Washington. Mexico City's Excélsior comments that, "The Latin American OAS members who have recently reasserted their continental solidarity in Bogota, Panama, and Quito are now seeking US isolation from their affairs. The most recent assembly during the first week of April officially called in order to examine political, economic, cultural and administrative problems also dealt in a radical way with the entire inner American system, with the hope of reducing the influence exercise by Washington. At the last three assemblies in Bogotá, Panama and Quito, Washington was accused of many actions detrimental to Latin American interests, and subsequently manifested a rather hostile attitude towards the accusing countries. Came voting time, and the US abstained."

"The most recent OAS assembly began and operated in the air of uncertainties," says Excélsior, "primarily because all members, including the US, realized that some fundamental structural modifications must be made, but no one was sure how to go about initiating them. The central debate centered on two issues. Venezuela challenged the validity of the OAS mission by inviting the entire assembly to reflect on the political nature of the institution within the international perspective. The second point was brought up by OAS Secretary General Galo Plaza, who proposed a revision of the inner American cooperation system. More specifically, he proposed the prevention of unilateral services and agreements, which often have detrimental results. For Latin America. The US attitude was one of surprise, but the problem they said was not insurmountable." This comment from Excélsior in Mexico City.

The Jornal do Brasil from Rio comments on the opening of the OAS meeting. "The days are long gone when the organization of American states with its orthodox image and its ideological and political unity constituted one well-tuned orchestra under the constant and undisputed direction of one director. Ideological pluralism is the order of the day in Latin America, and there is no longer any way the United States or anybody else can impose unity. The Jornal's editorial goes on to say that Brazil, though it is not encouraged or even liked the development of ideological pluralism in Latin America, must accept the facts and learn to live with them. Brazil cannot turn its back on the continent through lack of interest or resentment at the turn of events because Brazil belongs with Latin America."

The problem at the OAS meeting, therefore will be to establish new objectives for the organization. Ideological pluralism has made the OAS unfit for many of its former task, such as military planning on a hemispheric scale. However, the organization still can be used for presenting a united Latin American view to international groups on certain issues such as the demand for a 200-mile fishing limit. The Jornal do Brasil concludes that, "The OAS must change, but still can be useful to Latin nations."

This week's feature deals with the recent discovery of the Nixon administration's collusion with the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, IT&T, to overthrow the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende. But surfacing also is the discovery that the US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency massively financed efforts, which led to the defeat of Allende's bid for the presidency in 1964.

Further discoveries have shown that the US government is presently working in collusion with the US-based corporation, Kennecott Copper Company, to affect a worldwide embargo on nationalized Chilean copper in an attempt to ruin the Chilean economy and topple the Allende government. The Guardian reports that US Senate hearings on efforts by the Nixon administration and US corporations to sabotage the Chilean government of Salvador Allende have begun to have repercussions. Two weeks ago, Allende announced the suspension of economic talks between Chile and the US In light of revelations during the Senate hearings on the Nixon administration's collusion with IT&T to overthrow Allende's popular Unity government.

The most important new development has been the report that the top level National Security Council allocated $400,000 to the Central Intelligence Agency for propaganda to be used against Allende during the 1970 Chilean presidential election campaign. Other testimony has revealed that IT&T offered a $1 million fund to help defeat Allende. Edward Gerrity IT&T Vice President for Corporate Relations offered the excuse that the fund was to promote housing and agricultural grants to improve Chile's economy, but former CIA director John McCone testified that he had transmitted an IT&T offer of the money to block Allende's victory to the CIA and the White House. Former US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry refused to comment on this or other questions at the hearings, including IT&T memos, which claimed Korry was instructed by the White House to do all short of military action to prevent Allende from taking office.

The most important new development has been the report that the top level National Security Council allocated $400,000 to the Central Intelligence Agency for propaganda to be used against Allende during the 1970 Chilean presidential election campaign. Other testimony has revealed that IT&T offered a $1 million fund to help defeat Allende. Edward Gerrity IT&T Vice President for Corporate Relations offered the excuse that the fund was to promote housing and agricultural grants to improve Chile's economy, but former CIA director John McCone testified that he had transmitted an IT&T offer of the money to block Allende's victory to the CIA and the White House. Former US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry refused to comment on this or other questions at the hearings, including IT&T memos, which claimed Korry was instructed by the White House to do all short of military action to prevent Allende from taking office.

The Guardian further states that IT&T is now trying to collect a $92 million claim with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, OPIC, a US government-sponsored institution designed to reimburse companies which have overseas assets nationalized, but at the subcommittee hearings show that IT&T helped provoke the nationalization. OPIC will not have to pay on the claim. The details of IT&T's 18-point plan designed to ensure that the Allende government does not get through the crucial next six months were exposed in IT&T memos uncovered and released in March, 1972 by columnist Jack Anderson.

At that time, according to both IT&T and the Chilean government, both sides were near agreement on compensation, but the Anderson revelations of IT&T's attempts to overthrow the UP led the Chilean government to break off the talks. The UP government is now preparing to nationalize the Chilean telephone company, in which IT&T owns a major share worth about $150 million dollars. A constitutional amendment allowing for the nationalization is now going through the legislative process, although the government has been operating the company since 1971. In addition to its share in the phone company, IT&T owns two hotels, a Avis car rental company, a small telex service, and a phone equipment plant in Chile.

Talks on renegotiations of the Chilean debt to the US and on the resumption of purchased credits to Chile began last December and resumed in March. The next day the talks were suspended by the Chilean government in response to the latest revelations. Chile owes the US about $60 million for repayments of debt from November 1971 to the end of 1972, out of a total debt of $900 million dollars. Another controversial question, which the Chilean foreign minister says is now holding up an agreement, is the question of compensation for US copper companies whose holdings have been nationalized. Under a 1914 treaty between Chile and the US, the disagreement on copper compensation could be submitted to the international panel for non-binding arbitration. Chile has offered to use this means for arriving at an agreement, but the US refuses. This report is from The Guardian.

But US efforts to thwart the development of socialism in Chile are not a recent phenomenon. In a Washington Post news service feature, the post claims that massive intervention by the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department helped to defeat Socialist Salvador Allende in the 1964 election for president of Chile. American corporate and governmental involvement against Allende's successful candidacy in 1970 has been the controversial focus of a Senate foreign relations subcommittee investigation into the activities of US multinational companies abroad.

But the previously undisclosed scale of American support for Christian Democrat, Eduardo Frei against Allende six years early makes the events of 1970 seem like a tea party according to one former intelligence official, deeply involved in the 1964 effort. The story of the American campaign, early in the Johnson administration, to prevent the first Marxist government from coming to power in the Western hemisphere by constitutional means was pieced together from the accounts of officials who participated in the actions and policies of that period.

The Washington Post concludes, "Cold War ideology lingered, and the shock of Fidel Castro's seizure of power in Cuba still was reverberating in Washington. 'No More Fidels' was the guidepost of American foreign policy in Latin America under the Alliance for Progress. Washington's romantic zest for political engagement in the Third World had not yet been dimmed by the inconclusive agonies of the Vietnam War. 'US government intervention in Chile in 1964 was blatant and almost obscene,' said one strategically-placed intelligence officer at the time. 'We were shipping people off right and left.

Mainly State Department, but also CIA, with all sorts of covers.' A former US ambassador to Chile has privately estimated that the far-flung covert program in Frei's behalf cost about $20 million. In contrast, the figure that emerged in Senate hearings as the amount IT&T was willing to spend in 1970 to defeat Allende was $1 million." This from the Washington Post News Service.

The most recent tactic used against the Allende government by the Nixon administration and the US corporations has been an attempt to impose an economic embargo against Chilean copper. The North American Congress on Latin America, NACLA, reports that, "Since the Kennecott Copper company learned of the Allende government's decision to deduct from its indemnification the excess profits Kennecott earned since 1955, the company's position has been that Chile acted in violation of international law. The Allende government determined the amount of excess profits by comparing the rate of profit the nationalized companies earned in Chile to the return on capital invested elsewhere."

NACLA reports that Kennecott first tried to get satisfactory compensation by litigating in Chilean courts. When this failed, it threatened actions abroad in a letter directed to the customers of El Teniente Copper. In essence, Kennecott resolved unilaterally to try to coerce Chile to pay Kennecott for its properties. Kennecott's strategy has transformed a legal issue into a political and economic struggle. The loss of its Chilean holdings inflicted a heavy loss on Kennecott. In 1970, Kennecott held 13% of its worldwide investments in Chile, but received 21% of its total profits from those holdings. The corporation earned enormously high profits from its El Teniente mine. According to President Allende, Braden's, Kennecott subsidiaries, profits on invested capital averaged 52% per year since 1955, reaching the incredible rates of 106% in '67, 113% in '68 and 205% in '69. Also, though Kennecott had not invested any new capital, it looked forward to augmented profits from the expansion of production in its facilities due to the Chileanization program undertaken by the Frei government.

Although Kennecott was hurt a great deal in losing the Chilean properties, it did not lose all. In February '72, Chile agreed to pay $84 million, which represented payment for the 51% of the mines bought under the Chileanization plan. Chile also agreed to pay off the loans to private banks and to the export import bank that Kennecott had negotiated to expand production in the mines. Further, Kennecott has written off, for income tax purposes, its equity interest of $50 million in its Chilean holdings. Generally, such deductions not only mean that the US taxpayer will absorb the company's losses, but also that attractive merger possibilities are created with firms seeking easy tax write-offs.

Nevertheless, the Chilean expropriations came at a particularly bad moment for Kennecott because the corporation was under attack in other parts of the world. Environmentalist questioned Kennecott's right to pollute the air in Arizona and Utah, and other groups attempted to block Kennecott's plans to open new mining operations in Black Mesa, Arizona and Puerto Rico. On the legal front, Kennecott is contesting the Federal Trade Commission's order to divest itself with a multimillion dollar acquisition of the Peabody Coal Company. In all of these cases, Kennecott has taken an aggressive position to protect its interest at home and around the world. In September, 1972, Kennecott's threats materialized into legal action, asking a French court to block payments to Chile for El Teniente copper sold in France.

In essence, Kennecott claimed that the expropriation was not valid because there had been no compensation. Therefore, Braden was still the rightful owner of its 49% share of the copper. The court was requested to embargo the proceeds of the sales until it could decide on the Braden claim of ownership.

The NACLA report continues, "To avoid having the 1.3 million payment embargoed, French dock workers in Le Havre, in a demonstration of solidarity with Chile, refused to unload the freighter. The ship sailed to Holland where it immediately became embroiled in a new set of legal controversies, which were ultimately resolved. Finally, the odyssey ended on October 21st, '72 when the ship returned to Le Havre to unload the contested cargo. Copper payments to Chile were impounded until the court rendered a decision on its competence to judge the legality of the expropriation. Chile was forced to suspend copper shipments to France temporarily. The legal battle spread across Europe when Kennecott took similar action in a Swedish court on October 30th. Most recently, in mid-January 1973, Kennecott took its case to German courts.

NACLA states that, "It is not easy to ascertain the degree of coordination between Kennecott and the US government on their policy toward Chile." The State Department told us in interviews that Kennecott is exercising its legal rights as any citizen may do under the Constitution, but a reporter for Forbes Magazine exacted a more telling quote. When asked if there had been any consultation between Kennecott and the State Department, the State Department spokesman said, "Sure, we're in touch from time to time. They know our position." The Forbes reporter asked, "Which is?" The spokesman replied, "We're interested in solutions to problems, and you don't get solutions by sitting on your hands."

In fact, US government policies and Kennecott's actions fully compliment each other. They share the same objectives and function on the same premises of punitive sanctions and coercive pressures guised in the garb of legitimate legal and financial operations. Kennecott's embargoes will necessarily serve as a factor in the current negotiations between Chile and the US government. Whether or not the government was instrumental in Kennecott's actions, the United States now has an additional powerful bargaining tool. The Kennecott moves were denounced by all sectors of Chilean political life as economic aggression violating national sovereignty.

Other Latin American nations have also condemned Kennecott. Most significantly, CIPEC, the organization of copper exporting nations, Chile, Peru, Zaire, and Zambia, which produced 44% of the world's copper, met in December 1972 and issued a declaration stating they would not deal with Kennecott and that they would refrain from selling copper to markets traditionally serviced by Chilean exports. Such solidarity is important because it undercuts the Kennecott strategy in the present market where the supply is plentiful. Kennecott cannot deter customers from buying Chilean copper if they have nowhere else from which to buy.

Even within the US, the embargo has not proven totally successful. The Guardian reports that there have been some breaks among the US banks, Irving Trust, Bankers Trust, and the Bank of America are carrying on a very limited business with Chile and various companies continue to trade on a cash and carry basis. In a number of respects, US policy has backfired. If the US will not trade with Chile, its Western European competitors will fill the markets formally controlled by US companies. The US pressure has also helped to intensify the anti-imperialist reactions of a number of South American countries within the US and its multinational corporations. The Panama meeting of the UN Security Council is just one example of this.

Every week brings new defeats for the US strategy in South America. At the recent session of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America in Quito, Ecuador, South American countries unanimously condemned US economic policy toward the continent. The resolution was based on a detailed report showing how South America suffers great economic losses because of unequal trade agreements with the US. This report from The Guardian.

Moving on to news of other less covert diplomacy by the United States. Opinião of Brazil reports that the United States Department of Defense has announced that General Creighton Abrams, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will soon visit several countries in Latin America.

Opinião reports from Rio de Janeiro that Brazil will be one of the nations visited by Abrams, and says that there are two theories in diplomatic circles to explain the reasons for the trip.

The first and simpler one is that Abrams is laying the groundwork for President Nixon's visit to Brazil later this year. The Brazilian press has reported rumors of this trip for some time now, and Opinião feels it is certain that Nixon will visit Brazil to consolidate political, economic, and financial ties between the two countries.

Opinião continues, explaining that the second interpretation of Abrams visit is more complex. Some see it as the start of a diplomatic counteroffensive on the part of the United States against the growing ideological pluralism in Latin America, represented especially by Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Panama. Observers feel that Spanish American nations are trying to cut the economic ties which make them dependent on the United States. And that the US and the person of General Abrams will be trying to stem the rising tide of anti-Yankee feeling, probably with the help of Brazil, which feels itself more and more isolated from its Spanish-speaking neighbors, that from Opinião.

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.

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.

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. 

Excélsior also reports that Algeria was converted into the capital of the Third World last week when it became the seat of the fourth conference of the Organization of Non-Aligned Countries. Statement from the Latin American countries of Cuba, Peru, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad-Tobago, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina joined heads of state from more than 70 other Third World countries. Mexico, Panama and Ecuador and Venezuela participated only as active observers. 

The organization represents a major front of underdeveloped nations against today's superpowers. Since 1970, when the Non-Aligned Movement began relating its position to the realities of the global economic system, its conferences have become increasingly relevant and outspoken. It is the first such event at which Latin Americans will have a dominant impact. Latin America's reluctance to identify itself with the movement in the past in part had to do with its ignorance of African and Asian struggles and its willingness to identify its future development with that of Europe and the United States. Another powerful force was the fact that Latin America could scarcely be defined as non-aligned since the Monroe Doctrine. 

The Non-Aligned Countries' fundamental objective of unifying the struggle against colonialism and racism was sounded in these generally approved recommendations. The right to sovereignty over their own national resources, the regulation of developmental investments, common rules of treatment for foreign capitalists, regulations over exporting of foreign profits, and concrete means to control the operations of multinational corporations. 

The struggle for the economic nationalism was a dynamic theme enunciated by the Latin Americans. Chile exhorted the Third World to form a common front to restrain the excesses of multinationals and affirm their rights to nationalize foreign corporations when necessary for the public interest. 

Peru advocated the adoption of a worldwide plan to give coastal countries a 200-mile jurisdiction over their ocean shores as a means of affirming maritime rights. Panama reiterating its stand against imperialism harshly attacked the United States for its possessions in the canal zone. The idea proposed by the Peruvian Prime Minister Jarrin that the US-Russian detente signifies a solidarity of terror, threatening the Third World with economic aggression was generally approved. 

Also met with hardy acceptance was Castro's announcement that he has broken diplomatic relations with Israel. He condemned Israel for its continued occupation of Arab lands. At the same time as they unified their struggle against new forms of dominance and exploitation, the Third World countries agreed to the necessity of assuming their own responsibilities, analyzing their weaknesses and strengthening their countries in order to defend themselves against the imperialist and economic aggression. That from Excélsior. 

The Guardian of New York City reports that, the U.S. support for the Chilean military Junta is coming out more clearly. The latest economic move to bolster the dictatorship was the announcement by the Department of Agriculture that Washington is giving a $24 million credit for the Junta to purchase wheat. This is eight times the amount of commodity credit offered to President Salvador Allende's government in its three years of governing Chile. 

It has been revealed that just before the September 11 coup, a delegation representing Chile came to Washington seeking credit for the purchase of 300,000 tons of wheat and returned empty-handed. Even for its client regimes, the U.S. government is not overly generous. The Junta will have to pay back the credit in three years with a 10.5% interest.

The Guardian continues saying that the wheat deal is designed to help the Junta keep the middle class happy by putting more goods on the market. Observers in Chile have said that even though large amounts of black market goods were released into the open market after the coup, there were still bread shortages. In another move in support of the Junta, the United States seized a Cuban ship in the Panama Canal, October 10th, at the Junta's request.

The ship had been unloading a cargo of sugar at Valparaíso at the time of the coup and was attacked by Chilean air and naval units supporting the coup. The Junta claims that the sugar belongs to Chile. This article on Chile from The Guardian. 

There has been much controversy since the September coup in Chile about the role of US military assistance and training in the support of military dictatorships in South America. An article in The New York Times last week described perhaps the most important US military training institute for the Latin American military. Scattered across South America and the Caribbean are more than 170 graduates of the United States Army School of the Americas, who are heads of government cabinet ministers, commanding generals, chiefs of staff, and directors of intelligence. 

The school has graduated 29,000 officers and enlisted men since its establishment here in Panama City in 1949. The Inter-American Air Forces Academy, the Navy's small craft instruction and technical team, the Army School, and Army and Air Force programs for nation building, relief, and welfare are key elements in the United States Army Southern Commands program to maintain good relations and influence in Latin America. The Chilean military, which took over control of that country last month, had six graduates of the Army School of the Americas in higher ranks. 

The New York Times points out that General Omar Torrijos Herrera, the chief of Panama's government, the deputy commander of the National Guard, the chief of staff, and four deputy chiefs of staff are all graduates. Four members of Argentina's command were graduated from the Canal Zone School, and 19 other senior officers have attended military schools in the United States. The commandant, Colonel William W. Nairn, said, "We keep in touch with our graduates, and they keep in touch with us." 

"The school offers 38 separate courses," says the Times, "all of them conducted in Spanish. Last year, about 1,750 officers, cadets, and enlisted men from 17 countries attended courses. The school's four instructional departments deal with command, combat operations, technical operations, and support operations." 

According to The New York Times, this year the school is offering new courses in urban counterinsurgency and counterinsurgency tactics, but there is a wide variety of other course rangings from industrial management to break relining. The school is located at Fort Gulick on the Atlantic side of the Canal Zone. 

According to the Army Digest magazine, the school teaches various measures required to defeat an insurgent on the battlefield as well as military civic action functions in an insurgent environment. Military cadets undertake a week-long maneuver known as the Balboa Crossing, in which they trek across the Isthmus from Pacific to Atlantic shores on a simulated search-and-destroy mission, putting into practice what they have learned about guerrilla warfare and jungle living. 

The United States apparently profits from this military training arrangement as well. According to Army Digest, "Training Latin Americans in US military skills, leadership techniques, and doctrine also paves the way for cooperation and support of US Army missions, attachés, military assistance advisory groups, and commissions operating in Latin America." This description of the US Army School of the Americas from the magazine Army Digest. 

The British weekly, Latin America, and the Cuban publication, Grama, report on the irritation provoked in Panama by the detention of Cuban and Soviet ships by canal zone authorities. Acting under a U.S. federal court order, the U.S. officials detained the two merchant ships on their way through the canal. The court ruling was made after an application from the Chilean military government, which complained that the ships in question had failed to deliver the cargos contracted and paid for by the previous Allende administration, according to Grama. 

Latin America noted that the ensuing explosion of wrath in Panama was virtually unanimous. Condemning the detentions as ambushes, the Foreign Ministry pointed out that even the hated 1903 treaty firmly stipulated that the canal must be neutral, unaffected by political disputes and capable of providing a free, open and indiscriminate service to all international shipping. The canal was equivalent to the high seas, the Ministry said, and its authorities had only limited jurisdictional rights, specifically linked to the operation of the canal. Furthermore, United States federal courts had no jurisdiction over such matters in the canal zone, which was formerly Panamanian territory. 

The British weekly, Latin America, continued that the incidents threw a shadow over the rising tide of optimism over the renewal of negotiations on a new canal treaty. Panamanian hopes have in fact been rising ever since Ellsworth Bunker was appointed Chief United States Negotiator three months ago, and expectations were further stimulated by sympathetic words from Henry Kissinger on his appointment as Secretary of State last month. Unless quick action is now forthcoming from Washington, the atmosphere for the forthcoming negotiations will have been badly polluted, according to Latin America. 

From the internal point of view, however, the issue is not altogether inconvenient to General Omar Torrijos, the country's strongman. Following government moves to open a second sugar cooperative and for the public sector to enter the cement manufacturing business, private enterprise has been bitterly attacking the administration.

The pressure of inflation, though not likely to reach more than 10% this year, according to government sources, has caused some discontent which could be exploited by the government's opponents, and conservatives have attacked agrarian reform schemes which they say have caused a drop in food production. There was also criticism of the government's low-cost housing program, which would benefit small rather than large contractors, and there were even attacks on the National Assembly voted into office in August last year as undemocratic.

Latin America's coverage of Panama continues to note that a planned 24-hour strike by business and professional people for the beginning of last week, timed to coincide with a new assembly session, was called off at the last moment, and the situation is now somewhat calmer. But it was noted in Panama that the Miami Herald published an article entitled, "Will Panama Fall Next?", speculating that after the Chilean coup, Panama might be the next objective of local forces that seek return to a previous form of government. 

If any such emergency were likely to arise, a renewed dispute with the United States over the canal would be a good rallying cry. That report on Panama from the London Weekly Latin America, and from Grama of Cuba. 

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. 

The News Loop Weekly Latin America states that the release of two ships, one Cuban and one Soviet, from detention by the Canal Zone authorities earlier this month was an excellent augury for the arrival of Ellsworth Bunker in Panama this week and the start of the first serious Canal Treaty negotiations since the 1968 military coup the. Ship's detention at the behest of the Chilean Junta for turning back after the September coup in Santiago, and so failing to deliver goods bought by the Allende government enraged the Panamanians as a typical example of how, in their view, a Latin American political dispute in which Washington has an interest can impinge on the supposedly free traffic through the Panama Canal controlled by the USA. In the Panamanian view, such things could not happen if it controlled the canal itself. 

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Ellsworth Bunker will confer for a week with Panama's foreign minister Juan Antonio Tack. They will discuss Panama's insistence on a new Panama Canal Treaty to replace the 1903 treaty hastily negotiated by the US with the then two-week-old Republic of Panama. Egged on by President Theodore Roosevelt, Panama had just torn away from its mother country, Colombia. As Secretary of State John Hay wrote a friend at the time, the United States had won a treaty "very satisfactory to the United States, and we must confess, not so advantageous to Panama." 

Repeatedly down the years efforts to draft a new treaty that while protecting the vital interest of the United States, would give the proud small Republic of Panama less cause for complaint and more financial rewards have failed. Sometimes the stumbling block has been the influence in Congress of the 40,000 American Zonians who want no change in their comfortable colonial style of life. Sometimes it has been the posturing for home audiences by Panama's politicians. However, by 1964, the stalemate erupted in anti-American riots that killed four Americans and 22 Panamanians. In 1967, president Lyndon Johnson offered new treaty concessions, but they were unacceptable to Panama. Now in January comes the 10th anniversary of the rioting. 

Mr. Tack and his chief, General Torrijos Herrera, Panama's strongman, both want a new treaty. The Latin American foreign minister's meeting at Bogotá recently unanimously voted to back Panama's request for a new treaty. And last March's United Nations Security Council session in Panama clearly favored the idea. Although the United States vetoed a resolution that called on the parties to work out a new accord. Since then, the US and Panama have steadily narrowed their differences. Actually, appointment of Mr. Bunker is seen widely as an indication that Washington is now prepared to compromise and work out a new treaty. 

Panama is willing to allow the US to operate and defend the existing canal, which cost $387 million to build and which opened to world traffic in 1914. It has no objection to the United States improving the present canal with a new set of locks that might cost $1.5 billion or even building a new sea level canal that might cost $3 billion, take 15 years to build and 60 years to amortize, but it wants a definite treaty to end in 1994. The United States, for its part, has been holding out for guaranteed use for at least 85 more years, 50 years for the present canal, plus 35 years if a new canal is ever built.

Panama also wants an end to US sovereignty in the Canal Zone, that 53-mile channel with about 500 square miles on either side that cuts the small country in half. Panamanians traveling between one part of their country and the other must submit themselves to United States red tape, United States Police, United States jurisdiction. This rankles, and virtually all of Latin America now backs Panama.

Panama is reported willing to grant the United States two major military bases to defend the canal, one at the Atlantic end, one at the Pacific, but it wants to eliminate the nine other US bases and place all 11,000 US military personnel in the country on a status of forces agreement such as the United States has with Spain and many other allied countries. United States negotiators stress that Panama derives an annual $160 million merely from the presence of 40,000 Americans on its soil. But a recent World Bank study has pointed out that this now represents only 12% of Panama's gross national product and that this 12% is the only part of the gross national product that is not growing. This report is from the Christian Science Monitor. 

In Bolivia, the regime of general Hugo Banzer has been beset by economic chaos, social unrest, and threats of an ultra-right coup during the past year. Many analysts interpreted Banzer's decision of last July to hold free elections in 1974 as a sign of the weakness of his government. The instability of the situation in Bolivia is further underscored by Banzer's recent unexpected announcement that he will not be a candidate for office in next year's promised elections.

General Banzer, an impeccable conservative and anti-communist, who was trained at the School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone and in the United States, came to power in 1971 by means of an unusually bloody coup against the left-wing government of Jose Torres. At that time, he received an outright grant of $2 million from the United States and has done little to disturb US officials during his term of office.

At the beginning of 1973, Bolivia was still reeling from the effects of a 66% currency devaluation enacted a year ago. At that time, the government froze wages while the cost of living rose 50%. To make matters worse, President Nixon announced in March of this year that the General Services Administration would start selling its large stockpile of metals, bringing down the price of 10, upon which the Bolivian economy depends, by 13 cents a pound. In an attempt to ward off a new crisis, Banzer lifted the wage freeze and left open the possibility of upward adjustments.

At the same time, however, the price of wheat, meat, coffee, and potatoes went up. The economic situation has given rise to protests by consumers and small merchants, the Underground Trade Federation and the 5,000 small and medium tin mine owners have also staged protests. In October, 89 labor leaders were arrested for plotting to overthrow the government leading to strikes involving 40,000 trade union workers.

Banzer has also failed to keep the support of the two main political parties upon which he has depended in the past. The moderate National Revolutionary Movement, the MNR, and the ultra-right perhaps misnamed, Bolivian Socialist Falange, FSB. In May, Banzer reshuffled his cabinet to give the moderates a slight political advantage. His recent decision of late November to reshuffle his cabinet again, this time in favor of the conservatives, led to the complete withdrawal of the support by the more moderate MNR.

It has been suggested that the MNR will seek to form some alliances with leftist groups. Banzer's recent announcement that he will not be a candidate for office in 1974 suggests that the situation is out of his hands and that Bolivia may look forward to a period of rule by the ultra-right.

Excélsior of Mexico City reports that the United States and Panama have agreed on eight points of a new treaty concerning the Panama Canal. General Omar Torrijos of Panama, who has been negotiating with US Ambassador-at-large Ellsworth Bunker, has described the agreement as non-colonialist. 

While Prensa of Lima, Peru provided background noting that Panama has long considered the canal a natural resource that is exploited by a colonial power. Panamanian Foreign Minister Juan Antonio Tack has stated, "The main aspiration of the Panamanian nation is to have a Panamanian canal." Panama has been at the negotiating table with strong international backing. It had the support of the non-Aligned Nation Summit Conference, the recent Latin American foreign ministers meeting in Bogota, and the UN Security Council, whose vote last March in favor of Panama was vetoed by the United States. 

President Nixon recently asked Congress to approve legislation that would first allow Panama Street vendors to sell lottery tickets inside the canal zone, and second, turn over two US military airfields in the zone to the government of Panama. Foreign Minister Tack welcomed the proposed surrender of the military installations, but he was quick to add that the gesture was strictly a unilateral US initiative and not a product of negotiations between the two countries. Panama considers the massive US military presence in the canal zone illegal and has called for the elimination of all US bases. 

The Pentagon finds this unacceptable. The 500-mile-square canal zone is a virtual US garrison complete with 11,000 troops and 14 military bases and training centers, including the Pentagon Southern Command Headquarters. Southcom is the communications and logistics center, which directs and supplies all US military activities in Central and South America. The Canal Zone military schools, including the US Army School of the Americas, and a Green Beret Center, have trained over 50,000 Latin American military men in the last 20 years, most notably in counterinsurgency and internal security programs. 

The announcement that an agreement had been reached does not settle all these questions, but it does seem to be a breakthrough. Henry Kissinger announced in Washington that he would go to Panama at the end of January to sign the treaty. There are some indications however, that the treaty will meet opposition in the US Congress. Senator James McClure has sent a telegram to President Nixon asking him to reconsider what he calls "this incredible proposal."

One of the controversial points in the return by stages of full Panamanian sovereignty in the canal zone. Panama will gradually gain control of postal, police and tribunal services. Water and land that aren't indispensable to the functioning of the canal will also be returned to Panama. Whether or not Panama will ever have total control of the canal, however, remains to be seen. That report on the United States Panamanian Treaty is taken from Excelsior of Mexico City and La Prensa of Lima, Peru. 

According to Marcha of Montevideo, Uruguay, many Latin American officials are dismayed at the Nixon administration's choices for ambassadors to Mexico and Argentina. Two of the most critical posts in Latin America, both men, Joseph Jova appointed ambassador to Mexico and Robert Hill appointed to Argentina have been criticized for their close connections with the CIA, the Pentagon and the United Fruit Company. 

Hill, a close friend of President Nixon recently chose to resign from his post as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs rather than comply with a Senate order to sell his extensive defense industry stock holdings 

According to Marcha, Hill's political career began in the State Department in 1945 when he was assigned to US Army headquarters in New Delhi, India. His job actually served as a cover for an intelligence assignment for the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA. Throughout the rest of his career, he continued to work closely with the US intelligence community, including the CIA. Marcha describes his biography as a satirical left-wing caricature of a Yankee imperialist. A former vice president of WR Grace and a former director of the United Fruit Company, Hill personally helped organize the overthrow of the Nationalist Arbenz's Government, which threatened United Fruit's investments in Guatemala.

As Marcha details, "Ambassador Hill is particularly criticized for his participation in the CIA instigated overthrow of President Arbenz in 1954." The history of that coup centers to a large extent on the United Fruit Company. Arbenz and his predecessor worked hard to change the inequalities in Guatemala's social structure. Free speech and free press were established. Unions were reorganized and legalized. Educational reforms were enacted.

One of the most wide-sweeping and inflammatory changes was the Agrarian Land Reform Program, which struck directly at the interest of the United Fruit Company. The program called for the expropriation and redistribution of uncultivated lands above a basic acreage, while exempting intensively-cultivated lands. Compensation was made in accord with the declared tax value of the land. The appropriated lands were then distributed to propertyless peasants. 

Immediately afterwards, the McCarthyite storm burst over Guatemala. Arbenz was accused of being a communist agent and as such was thought to be a danger to the power of America and the security of the Panama Canal. The plan to overthrow Arbenz was concocted by the CIA. A Guatemalan colonel, Castillo Armas, was found to head up a rebel force in Honduras, in Nicaragua, and was supplied with United States arms. Marcha says that at the time of the coup, Hill was ambassador in Costa Rica and formed a part of the team that coordinated the coup. In 1960, he was rewarded by being elected to the board of directors of United Fruit. 

Hill has long enjoyed close relations with President Nixon, and in 1972 he returned from Madrid, Spain where he was serving as ambassador to work on the campaign for Nixon's reelection. Joseph Jova, the appointee as ambassador to Mexico, also shares with Hill a spurious background. The Mexican paper El Dia accused Jova of deep involvement in a successful 1964 CIA campaign to prevent the election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile. Jova was deputy chief of the United States Embassy in Santiago, Chile at the time. This report on the new United States ambassadors to Mexico and Argentina has been compiled from Marcha of Montevideo Uruguay and Mexico City's Excelsior.

Two weeks ago, the chief of the Panama government Omar Torrijos made an official visit to Argentina and Peru, Excélsior of Mexico reports. During a two-hour conference in Buenos Aires with President Perón, Argentinian support was expressed for the claims of Panama regarding the canal. Perón declared that the US must leave the canal zone to Panama unconditionally, colonization must be done away with. All Latin American countries must unite as a continent to face this problem. Perón ironically added that American and British positions were rather weakened by the oil crisis and that the American Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger's new policy must apply to South America as well as to the States. This article from Excélsior, Mexico City's leading daily. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For today's feature, we'll be talking with Christopher Roper, an editor of Latin America Newsletter, the British Journal of Latin American Political and Economic Affairs. Mr. Roper is touring the U.S., gathering material for articles on current United States foreign policy towards Latin America, which is the topic of our feature today.

Mr. Roper, your Latin American newsletter claims to be completely independent of government and big business. It carries no advertising. And you say you're free to give a, more or less, consistent and reliable view of Latin America. How is the newsletter's view of Latin American events different from that of the major commercial United States press, say, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal?

Well, I think in the first place, we are looking at the continent from day to day and week to week, and we don't just pick up the stories when they become sensational news. Our news doesn't have to compete with news from Asia, and Africa, and Europe or the energy crisis. We are steadily dealing with—there is an article on Argentina every week, an article on Brazil every week. I think the second important point is that we rely entirely on Latin American sources. I think the United States and British news media rely very heavily on their own reporters who go down there who haven't lived all their lives in those countries that they're visiting, although they're very familiar, that they don't look at it from a Latin American perspective. I think this is perhaps the central point which differentiates our journal from any other. 

I think the final point is that, we rely entirely on our subscribers for income. As soon as we cease to provide credible analysis, as soon as our facts, our reporting can be shown to be at fault, we will start to lose subscribers. I think the fact that over the last four years, something like 90% of them resubscribe every year is an indication that we're still on the right track and that's why we make this claim. 

How would your treatment of an issue like U.S. foreign policy differ from what most United States press agencies would say? I mean, for instance, would you say that basically, U.S. interests are compatible with the interests of Latin Americans? 

Well, we try to look at this, again, from a Latin American point of view, and it is quite clear that there has been a consensus of criticism of the United States from Latin America, again, over the last four or five years. In fact, probably ever since 1961, was the last time one can look back to a period of any harmony. You have to go back before the Cuban blockade. You have to go back to Kennedy's statement of the aims of the Alliance for Progress, which did at that time, receive very widespread support in Latin America. It was only when it proved to be a disappointment, and some would say, a fraud and a sham, and that you had the Cuban Intervention, you had the Dominican Republic Intervention.

You have had the treatment of Peru in 1968. I think, in the light of those events, and of course Bolivia, that people in Latin America lost faith. Though even today, Kennedy is the one name that elicits any affection among Latin Americans generally. And they don't accept that the seeds of subsequent failure were already present in Punta del Este in 1961.

How would you characterize then the editorial point of view towards Latin America of most of the United States press sources? What interests do they represent? 

Well, they represent the very broad interests of the United States government. I think that, it's quite evident if you travel a lot in Latin America, that you find that the Washington Post and the New York Times reporters spend more time in the United States Embassy, than they do talking to the Chilean, or the Peruvian, or the Brazilian people who they're visiting. They fly about the continent, staying in expensive hotels on tight schedules. And, if you're wanting to understand Latin America at all, you certainly should go by bus, and probably you should walk, because that's how most of the people in Latin America get around. 

And when, for instance, Mr. Kandell of the New York Times visits poblaciones in Chile and comes back and says that the people there had said that they hadn't been shot up by the military, one can just imagine the scene of this very gringo looking man walking into the población and speaking in a very heavily American accent, and asking them whether they've been shot up. And of course, they say, "No, no, no. Nothing happened to us here." And, he goes back and ticks another población off the list. And, charts it up as another excess of leftist reporting in Chile. But, I don't think it really reflects the reality of what is happening in Latin America. The people who are filing reports for us are people who lived in those towns and cities, and probably were themselves shot up. 

Mr. Roper, getting back to the question of current U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America, there's been a lot of press speculation recently that Cuba is changing its attitude toward the United States. From your interviews and discussions with State Department and other officials in this country, do you have any idea about the possibilities of US attitudes changing towards Cuba and about the possibilities for eventual reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries? 

Well, undoubtedly, the Cubans would like to see an end to the blockade. They want better relationships with Latin American countries. Any Latin American country that has shown itself in the slightest bit well-disposed towards Cuba over the last five years has been given the warmest possible encouragement by the Cubans. This includes, as well as the Chilean, it's the Peruvians, and the Panamanians, and even the Argentinians. And certainly, friendly relationships have always been maintained with Mexico, even when the Cubans have had very serious political differences with Mexico.

I think that the Russians too, I think as part of the detante, Mr. Brezhnev and Mr. Kosygin would like to see the United States softening its attitude towards Cuba. I think that within the State Department, there are many voices who are arguing that the whole of U.S. policy towards Latin America, if there is going to be a new spirit in forming those relations, then the question of Cuba needs to be exorcised, if you like, to use a current word.

I think that Dr. Kissinger himself has argued very strongly that the old attitude to Cuba must come to an end. But, as one senior State Department official said to me, he said, "Mr. Rebozo has more influence than Dr. Kissinger on this particular question." Mr. Bebe Rebozo, who is a close friend of Mr. Nixon, has extensive interests with the Cuban exile community in Miami. Mr. Nixon has a strong emotional attachment to the exile community in Miami. His valet is a Cuban exile. And it was quite clear to me in Washington that people in the State Department weren't expecting any change. They all said that Kissinger might pull it out of the hat, but they couldn't see it. And I think that he may discuss it in Mexico City. He may, as it were, have lifted a finger. But, rather as with the Panama Canal, all the rough stuff is still ahead. 

Kissinger is undoubtedly trying to deflect attention from these previously very divisive issues. He can't solve the Panama Canal, because the United States military won't let him. He can't solve the question of Cuba because the President of the United States won't let him. But he's trying to say, "Let's bypass those issues and let's see if we can establish some dialogue on a new basis." In some ways, the timing is good. The Chilean question has been settled, more or less, to the satisfaction of the U.S. government. They took three years to engineer the coup in Chile. 

Now, that's behind them. And I think this was very important in timing the Mexican initiative, Dr. Kissinger could not have a meeting with the Latin American foreign ministers until Chile was out of the way, as it were. He said on his way back from Panama, after not settling the Panama question, but at least postponing the Panama question of at least establishing a basis for future negotiations. When a reporter asked him if the United States would recognize Cuba would end the blockade on Cuba, he said, "Why should we make Castro seem more important than he, in fact, is?" This is very much the Kissinger line. "Let's sweep these things out of the carpet and try to find a new relationship." I think, at least at a public relations level, he may be very successful. 

Besides Chile and Cuba, as you've just outlined, one of the most serious disputes the United States has had with any Latin American country in the last five years has been with expropriation of U.S. firms in Peru. What can you say about current U.S. foreign policy towards Peru? 

Well, I think the most significant thing is that the man who has been negotiating with the Peruvian government on behalf of President Nixon is Mr. James Green, who's the head of the manufacturer's Hanover Bank and represents a vast web of private sector economic interests. So, it's very hard to know whether he's negotiating on behalf of the Council of the Americas, which is the main lobby for United States business interests in Latin America. Or whether he is in fact negotiating on behalf of the State Department. It's inextricable, this web of public and private interests in Latin America.

I view the whole question of a new policy with some skepticism. I think that, the only way in which the outstanding questions can be solved is by the Peruvian government abandoning some of its earlier positions. It is going to have to give in to the demands of foreign investors if it wishes to maintain good relations with the United States.

And this is not just a question of getting further foreign investment, it's a question of getting development assistance from the Inter-American Development Bank, from the World Bank. All these things are dependent on the goodwill of the United States government, and the goodwill of the United States government is dependent on the goodwill of the private sector investors. We were told that the agreement between the United States and Peru would be announced in January that all the substantial outstanding points had been covered. This has turned out not to be so.

When I was in Washington last week, they were still saying they hoped for a favorable outcome, but it's clear that the Peruvians are being more steadfast than they might've been expected to. They were very badly frightened by what happened in Chile. I think many governments in Latin America were very badly frightened, which is another reason why Dr. Kissinger feels this is an appropriate moment to act, because to a certain extent, the governments down there are cowed. But the Peruvians are, I personally am happy to say, withstanding some of the demands that are being made on them.

And the kind of demands go well beyond just the mere treatment of investment. They include things like, the Peruvians are being asked not to trade with mainland China. Even though the United States itself is creating new relations with China, it doesn't want its client states in Latin America to trade with China. And it was making Chinese trade one of the very crucial aspects of the Peruvian and United States relations.

So, I think it's a very good example of what one might call the United States relations with a nationalistic, but certainly, not communist state in Latin America. And it's a very good example of why Latin American relations with United States have historically been so difficult, and I believe will be continue to be so difficult, perhaps until the end of this decade.

For today's feature, we've been discussing United States foreign policy in Latin America with Christopher Roper, an editor of Latin American newsletters, the British Independent Journal of Latin American Political and Economic Affairs. 

Our stories this week include a report on the recent foreign minister's meeting in Mexico City, a story of right-wing rebellion in Córdoba, Argentina, an account of the appointment of John Hill as United States Ambassador to Argentina, and a report on press censorship in Uruguay. 

From the Mexico City daily, Excélsior. A block of countries refusing to give across the board backing to Henry Kissinger's international policy, began to take shape here as Latin America's foreign ministers, except for Cuba, arrived in Mexico City for the Organization of American States ministerial meeting. Three groups emerged early in the meeting. First, the nationalist independent group made up of Venezuela, Peru, Panama, and Argentina. Second, a moderate group headed by Mexico and Colombia. And third, the pro-U.S. group, headed by Brazil and made up of Uruguay, Bolivia, and Chile.

The countries in the first group, who are opposed to any kind of U.S. paternalism in its relations to Latin America, were responsible for defeating Henry Kissinger's pre-conference proposals. Kissinger wanted to include on the agenda a discussion of the so-called energy crisis and of the world political situation. It is generally agreed that by refusing to take these subjects up, Latin America declared its independence in these matters. Kissinger will therefore be unable to speak for Latin America in post-conference discussions with other countries.

Many analysts predicted that the Latin American nations would assert their independence even more strongly during the course of the meeting over such matters as United States intervention in Latin American affairs, control of the operations of multinational corporations, transfer of technology to developing countries, and the admission of Cuba to the Organization of American States. But according to editorials from the Mexico City daily Excélsior, the Latin American nations neither asserted much independence, nor won any meaningful concessions from the United States. 

The general reaction of the Latin American press to the Tlatelolco Conference was expressed by the scorn and derision in this editorial from Mexico City's Excélsior. As had been expected, the chancellor's meeting at Tlatelolco brought no concrete successful results, at least from the point of view of Latin America. Although a conference communique stated that there was acceptance of ideological pluralism, the meeting was weakened by the anachronistic U.S. economic blockade of Cuba.

The promises of non-intervention and economic cooperation resulted in nothing which did not already exist before the meeting. "In fact," said Excélsior, "the only concrete decision reached by the conference was a plan to convene another meeting in April in Atlanta." Excélsior concluded by pointing out that the main reaction of the news agencies covering the conference was that the meeting was the most chaotic of all meetings of the American states.

The British News Weekly, Latin America recently ran the following background of current negotiations between the United States and Panama. On his recent whirlwind visit, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Panama's Foreign Minister signed an eight point agreement of principles providing for the eventual restoration of Panama's territorial sovereignty over the Panama Canal and the 550 square mile zone surrounding it.

According to this agreement, a new treaty will be negotiated that supersedes the existing one signed in 1903. The original treaty gave the US control of the canal "in perpetuity". The new treaty will contain a fixed termination date for US jurisdiction over the canal, likely to be about 30 years from now, and it will provide for Panama's participation in the administration, protection and defense of the waterway in the meantime. 

The agreement indicates that some progress has been made in the long stalemated negotiations over the canal, but enormous problems lie ahead. At the heart of these problems lies the US military presence in the canal zone, which the Pentagon is committed to maintaining. At the same time, political developments to the left and right of the government of Panamanian President, Omar Torrijos, which reflects problems created by the US military presence and economic penetration, threatened his government. 

Torrijos came to power in a military coup in 1968. Inspired by the Peruvian model of military nationalism, he has consistently spoken of the importance of Panamanian control of the canal and the country's other natural resources. Three years ago, he said, concerning the US presence in the canal zone, "The Americans must pull out with their colonial tent." 

But under the Nixon Administration, US military activity in the zone has been greatly stepped up. Almost the entire US counterinsurgency force for Latin America, including military training centers and a jungle warfare school is housed in the zone. It is also the headquarters for the US Southern Command, SOUTHCOM, which coordinates all US military and intelligence activities throughout Latin America, supervises all US military assistance programs and maintains a communications and logistics network for US forces. It was originally created to defend the canal zone itself, but a State Department official recently told Congressman Les Aspin that the only justification for SOUTHCOM is for an intervention force in Latin America. 

Another important element of US military presence in Panama is the US Army School of the Americas. Many of the leaders of Chile's current military junta and the Chilean Director of Intelligence are graduates of this school, according to Latin America. Documents recently made available to the North American Congress on Latin America describe the activities of the Army School. According to the documents, the major purpose of the program is to train and select Latin Americans in curating out counterinsurgency missions for the repression of national liberation movements.

There is a heavy emphasis on intelligence operations and interrogation techniques, as well as the teaching of US Army doctrine ideology. In response to the growing wave of guerilla activity in Latin American cities, new courses have been developed on urban guerilla warfare and sophisticated criminal investigation techniques. Classroom exercises range from the selection of labor union informers to methods of protecting leaders from assassination temps to the recovery and deactivation of explosive devices. 

Because of the sensitive nature of these operations, it is unlikely that any other Latin American country would allow the Pentagon to set up operations within its borders. In a period of growing nationalist feelings, no Latin American regime could afford to so visibly compromise its integrity. 

According to Latin America, the growing importance of the military presence in the canal zone has deadlocked negotiations for some time, but growing pressure from the left in Panama has forced President Torrijos to step up the pace of the talks. That pressure peaked during Kissinger's visit when a government authorized demonstration by the Student Federation turned into a militantly anti-US confrontation led by the outlawed peoples party, the Communist Party of Panama. 

At the same time, Torrijos is under increasing attack from the right in Panama. According to the New York Times, a growing sector of the national business community has become so disgusted with Torrijos' current domestic policies that they have withdrawn their support for him and hope that his treaty aims come to nothing, so as to further destabilize his government. Under Torrijos' rule, business has prospered in Panama.

There are now 55 banking houses in the country with deposits of $1.5 billion. They're pumping $100 million a year into the economy, but businessmen have become increasingly disgruntled since October of last year when Torrijos ordered construction of low income housing and cut short a high rise building boom. This has led to anti-government demonstrations, including a march of the empty pots by middle and upper class women. 

Latin America continues saying that Panamanian officials fear that the US may take part in new efforts to bring about a coup in concert with these right-wing forces if Torrijos succumbs to mounting leftist pressure. John Dean's senate testimony implicated Watergate plumber, E. Howard Hunt, in plans to assassinate Torrijos just after the US elections in 1972. The mission was scrapped, but Panamanian officials took it seriously enough to interrupt canal negotiations. In recent weeks, at least 11 right-wingers have been arrested on charges of plotting against the government. 

Like other nationalist leaders in Latin America, Torrijos is faced with a three edged problem. One, a growing socialist and anti-imperialist movement that is demanding that he live up to his nationalist principles. Two, a national bourgeoisie whose support is mercurial and divided because of its economic dependence on the United States. And three, the United States itself, which is dedicated to preserving and expanding its interest in Latin America.

The Latin American military plays a central role throughout Latin America in maintaining a political stability that is favorable to the US and canal zone operations are important for developing the military's essential allegiance to capitalist ideology and the US itself. It is against this backdrop that the negotiations over the canal zone take place. The outcome of the negotiations and the political activities in Panama and the US that surround them will have a profound effect on the future of all Latin America. That report from the British News Weekly, Latin America. 

In a recent article entitled "Central America: Made Martyr by The Big Fruit Company", La Opinión, an Argentine newspaper reports on the US-based Standard Fruit Company. Standard Fruit unilaterally suspended its import of bananas from Honduras in reprisal for an agreement Honduras made establishing an export tax on bananas of $1 per case. According to Standard Fruit, the agreement will bring Honduras unemployment and cause a drop in wages, as well as affect banana production in all of Latin America's other banana-producing nations. The decision, reports La Opinión, was made public by Standard Fruit following an interview which several of the corporation's highest officials had with Honduran President López Arellano. 

Officials spokesmen have stated that Honduras remained firm in defense of its recent agreements, reached collectively with Panama, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Colombia. Standard Fruit alleged in a press statement that the rise in the export price of bananas will diminish North American banana consumption, thus making it necessary to adjust the supply in order to compensate for the new situation.

Standard Fruit announced its intention to take such action at a recent meeting of Latin American banana producers held in Honduras. During the meeting, a Standard Fruit official warned all of the various representatives that it would suspend all banana shipments out of Honduras if the $1 tax was agreed upon. The threat, which would hurt, especially Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras, was ignored by all of the representatives present. 

Following the meeting, a Costa Rican newspaper, Latin, reported on the reaction to Standard Fruits actions by Costa Rican President José Figueres. Figueres labeled Standard Fruit's operations colonialist. The Costa Rican President also said that Standard Fruit was the only foreign fruit company which had refused to pay the $1 export charge. Addressing his country in a national television broadcast, Figueres stated, "It is a typically colonialist attitude and has caused us great difficulty. However, we will not alter our approach and we'll do what must be done." 

Standard Fruit's hardline policy, reports La Opinión, is due to two chief factors. Standard Fruit fears that competitors will move in and capture its market when its prices rise. The company also fears that the banana producers, if not dealt with firmly, will pursue with greater interest their recent tendency towards trade with Socialist nations. 

This report on the banana trade in Central America was taken from the Argentine daily, La Opinión, and the Costa Rican paper, Latin. 

In Colombia, there will be few excuses for Alfonso López Michelsen if he fails to make a success of the administration he will form when he assumes office in August. Having won comfortably over half the votes in the recent elections, and with a Liberal majority in Congress, he has fully achieved the mandate he sought from the country. The only fly in the ointment was that although this was the first meaningful contest between Colombia's two traditional parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, since their National Front agreement was established 16 years ago, nearly half the electorate failed to vote. 

The fact is, however, that the electors were offered a significant choice between the reformism of López Michelsen, diluted or not, and the development a la Brazil of his Conservative rival Alvaro Gómez Hurtado. In an astute speech when his victory was announced, López Michelsen promised that despite his total victory, he would honor the agreement to share government posts between Liberals and Conservatives. But he strongly implied that he would be calling only on the moderate wing of the Conservative party, and in fact, the Liberals are jubilant that the reactionary Gómez Hurtado wing looks as if it may be finished forever. 

What does seem clear is that López Michelsen succeeded in hitting exactly the right note in the current state of Latin American politics. It is evidently of some importance that another constitutional regime after Venezuela should have strengthened its position at a time when others further south are either looking shaky or have been violently overthrown.

But perhaps more important is the opening that López Michelsen has created at a time when similar political openings have emerged in such diverse countries as Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, and Argentina. Even if they're largely rhetoric in a number of cases, they are not without significance domestically. Clearly the talk of agrarian reform, a better distribution of wealth, a break between state and church, new divorce proposals and so on from López Michelsen has helped to create a new situation in Colombia, whether it is all carried through effectively or not. 

Equally important is the impact on the country's position abroad. The nationalism, which characterizes, say, the Acción Democrática government in neighboring Venezuela is likely to be closely reflected in Bogotá. Indeed, López Michelsen has referred to his friend, Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, and the two country's policies are likely to be closely connected during the next four or five years. This must mean more power to the Andean group and rather stricter though perhaps more secure conditions for foreign companies operating in Colombia. Among other things, it may mean a review of such deals as the projects to develop the country's coal, gas, and oil reserves in conjunction with the United States and Brazil. 

For Peru in particular, the Colombian election result must be wholly satisfying. Support from another Andean country will be very welcome at a time when external threats seem manifold. Panama and Venezuela, too, will be pleased. Prospects now look better than ever before for a settlement of the longstanding dispute between Colombia and Venezuela over territorial waters. 

One possible solution suggested by López Michelsen was the joint development by the two countries of the natural resources, mainly oil, under the seabed. If they work closely together, Colombia and Venezuela will clearly be an important political force in the Southern Caribbean, more so at a time when the major power in the area, the United States, is suffering from an almost daily decline of government. This, from the British news weekly, Latin America.

El Nacional of Caracas Venezuela reports that newly elected president Carlos Pérez announced plans on April 30th to nationalize the US-dominated iron ore industry and a broad range of other foreign-owned companies. Among the companies to be nationalized are Orinoco Mining Company, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel, and Iron Mines, a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel. The two mine and export most of Venezuela's iron ore.

Since Pérez's party has a majority in the congress, the nationalization appears certain. Pérez also called for the nationalization of all supermarkets and department stores, including the CADA chain owned by the Rockefeller family and Sears, Roebuck. These and other companies involved in internal services will have three years in which to sell 80% of their stock to Venezuelans. Venezuela already has plans to nationalize foreign owned oil companies in the next few years. 

President Pérez met with labor leaders on April 30th to explain the measures. He said department stores would be nationalized to prevent salaries climbing by stairs, while prices take the elevator. He said salary increases will range from five to 25%, with the highest increases going to those who now have the lowest incomes. And Pérez promised the delivery of free milk to pregnant mothers, babies, and primary school children. This, from El Nacional of Caracas, Venezuela. 

International Bulletin reports that US Senate opposition to the negotiation of a new Panama Canal treaty is rekindling an old and potentially explosive conflict between the United States and Panama. A coalition of 35 conservative Senate Democrats and Republicans, dead set against returning the waterway and the Canal Zone to Panama, is prepared to block ratification of a new treaty. The nationalist government of Omar Torrijos is equally determined to regain sovereignty over the territory ceded in perpetuity to the US in a 1903 treaty. "If negotiations fail," says Torrijos, "we will be left with no other recourse but to fight." 

After 70 years of ownership and control of the 550 square mile Canal Zone, last February, the US, under pressure from the United Nations and Latin American foreign ministers, acknowledged Panamanian sovereignty over the canal and the adjacent strip of land and agreed to work out a timetable for their return. The US made this historic promise in an eight point statement of principles signed by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Panamanian Foreign Minister Juan Antonio Tack. "There is opposition in both our countries to a reasonable resolution of our differences," Kissinger acknowledged. But he predicted that this was the first step toward a new era in inter-American affairs, says International Bulletin. 

So far, the only Panamanian opposition to the agreement has come from right-wing business leaders in the National Civic Movement, which includes the Kiwanis Club, the Lions Club, and the Chamber of Commerce. The majority of the country's one and a half million people, including the National Student Federation, the unions, and the National Guard have expressed strong support for the agreement and the campaign to eradicate what they view as a colonial enclave in their country. But in the United States, where the canal dispute has attracted little public attention, the Panama Canal lobby in congress has rejected the Kissinger-Tack Agreement. A number of conservative senators and congressmen expressed dismay that Kissinger had signed away Teddy Roosevelt's canal. 

Representative Daniel Flood of Pennsylvania called the agreement a sellout and surrender. And Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and John McClellan of Arkansas have put together a coalition of 35 senators, capable of defeating ratification of any new treaty, that would abrogate US rights and interests in the zone. Senator Gale McGee of Wyoming, who introduced a countermeasure to the Thurmond-McClellan resolution, states, "The opposition is serious in terms of its sentiment and emotionalism, but none of it was addressed to the facts in the case. Rather, it was an appeal to Teddy Roosevelt and the days of the Rough Riders and the digging of the canal, that episode in our history." 

Senator Thurmond said that he is against any treaty revision that would, "sacrifice United States sovereignty." "Under the 1903 treaty, we obtained sovereignty and perpetuity over the property," he said. "We bought it and paid for it. It's ours, and I don't favor giving it away." However, critics of the 1903 treaty say that Roosevelt stole the canal by gunboat diplomacy. After arranging a revolution in Panama, sending in the United States Marines and signing a treaty with the United States created government, Roosevelt bragged, "I took the canal while Congress was still debating what to do." 

His Secretary of State John Hay admitted that the treaty was not so advantageous to Panama. Thurmond also claims that the canal would not be safe in the hands of the Panamanians. "Panama has such unstable governments," he said, "that, if the canal ever got in their hands, we don't know whose hands it would be in the next morning." He added, "They've got some unreasonable people down there, and the government is far to the left. And I think it'd be dangerous for this canal to get in the hands of anyone else. It ought to stay in the hands of the United States." 

Congressman Flood, who has led the fight to protect US military and economic interests in the Canal Zone for over 20 years, went further, charging that Panama's Foreign Minister is a communist as red as your blood. Flood says, "Juan Tack is the devil in the peace, the brains behind the operation. Tack is palsy walsy with Castro and the Reds, and he will do anything the Soviets tell him to do." Flood lashed out at the Kissinger-Tack agreement, calling it "a blueprint for an abject surrender and a piece of diplomatic trickery." 

Thurmond and McClellan would like to see the United States investment in the zone increased. Thurmond thinks the United States could build a free trade port on Panama's Atlantic Coast, as an inducement to discourage the Panamanian drive for sovereignty. "It is to Panama's advantage, really, that the United States should maintain control. Panama has fared very well from it. It has improved their economy and raised their standard of living. We pay big salaries down there," said Strom Thurmond. The United States pays Panama about $2 million a year for use of the canal, though the US takes in over 100 million annually in shipping revenue. 

According to International Bulletin, the waterway is not all that is at stake in the battle over who controls the Canal Zone. The Pentagon has turned the entire zone into a virtual military garrison, complete with 14 bases, a Green Beret school, a counterinsurgency training center for pro-US Latin American military units, and 11,000 US troops.

Panama wants the US military out, except for those military installations absolutely necessary for the defense of the canal. The eight point agreement supports the Panamanian position, and so does Congressman Les Aspin of Wisconsin, who said his staff was told by a State Department official that the only justification for the Southern Command, headquartered in the zone, is for an intervention force in the Western Hemisphere. 

"The last thing in the world we'd need to do", said Aspin, "is to start intervening militarily in the internal affairs of Latin American countries." Aspin has called for abolition of the entire Southern Command. Senator McGee voiced, "The Senate liberal position that the US military presence in the zone is overblown, but that there is a realistic national security interest in the canal, even after closing down old France Field, there are 14 to 15 military installations in the area. That is much too much," says McGee. McGee concluded, "Most of the military installations there are going to be the subject of negotiation with the thought of retaining only those that are basic to the international defense of the canal." 

The right wing opposes any decrease in the overwhelming United States military presence in the zone. McClellan said he thinks it is important, not only to the defense of the United States, but to the defense of the whole Western Hemisphere. Thurmond concurred, "It is vital to our national defense. Most of the goods that went to Vietnam by boat, 80% of them went through the Panama Canal. It is vital to the free world that the United States keep control of the canal." 

In 1964, says International bulletin, US troops shot and killed 20 Panamanian demonstrators and wounded more than 200, when they tried to raise their flag on Canal Zone territory. McGee and Mars fear a repetition of the incident, if a new treaty cannot be hammered out. Kissinger and his State Department want to avoid a confrontation with Panama that might jeopardize US ties with Latin America. Although critics have also suggested that Kissinger may be using right wing congressional opposition as a bargaining lever in the negotiations. Kissinger and liberals in Congress, like McGee, are prepared to acknowledge Panamanian sovereignty over the canal and zone, but they want to delay the actual date of the turnover as long as possible and to maintain as many US facilities in the zone as they can. 

Foreign ministers from 24 Latin American countries told Kissinger, in Washington last month, that Senate efforts to go back on the eight point agreement are unacceptable. Thurmond, Flood, and McClellan all say they won't be affected by the OAS policy or Panamanian blackmail. Even Senate liberals, like McGee, don't like the foreign heat. "I don't think the OAS stand will influence the course of events here quite so much," McGee said. "I think sometimes we're set back a little bit here by too many speeches in Latin America, that are publicly directed towards the Congress, but it was only after international pressure was brought to bear on the United States, beginning in 1973, that Washington moved to resolve the smoldering canal conflict." 

Panama's Chief of State Torrijos summed up Panamanian US relations this way, "70 years of colonialism, 10 years of negotiations, five years of nationalist revolution. Result? No hits, no runs, no errors." He says, this is, "the last chance for a peaceful settlement to the canal dispute and that the time has come for the US to recognize the basic Panamanian right to self-determination." This report on the US Senate debate on the Panama Canal Treaty from International Bulletin.