Latin America

ON THE WORLD TODAY

ANYONE inexperienced in interpreting the underground rumors in Latin America might conclude that considerable trouble lies ahead on the Western Hemisphere front. There is angry distress in Mexico and in several of the Central American countries over food shortages and apparently uncontrollable inflation. Cubans, upset about their larders, are grumbling over the recent proclamation of meatless Fridays so that more Cuban beef can be exported to feed the gringo armies.

In South America, the chronically sick economies of the west coast countries, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, are suffering from the long pull of war deprivations. The popular ailments of low living standards and near-malnutrition become more wearisome as they grow.

Chile’s living budgets are unbalanced by heavy dollar accounts and almost excessive activity in the mining industries, as contrasted with a slump in agricultural outputs. The problem is not an easy one of exchanging dollars for normal living supplies. The government is constantly beset by the pressures of rival political groups — or groups within the administration itself — anxious to “cure” the national discontents by drastic authoritarian means.

Even Brazil, the most active of the Latin American republics as a war partner of the United Nations, is by no means happy. Food stocks are plentiful and fairly well distributed except in a few relatively minor regions. But the Brazilians, too, would like to see their standards of living go up, along with the considerable “money” and “wage” prosperity which the war has brought them. They are increasingly melancholy, in the Latin American manner, that the swelling merchant marine fleets of the Allies bring them so little to spend their money on, and so few machines and supplies with which to expand their domestic industries.

Signs of the hemisphere-wide psychological disturbance are appearing, too, in traditionally restrained Costa Rica. Almost six months ahead of scheduled 1944 elections, the political parties are already locked in one of the bitterest presidential campaigns in the republic’s history.

These symptoms reflect an inevitable process through which, in various degrees, all the Latin American countries are passing. The war has never been so real to them as it is to us. It was probably most real to them in the summer of 1942 when the perilous Nazi submarine offensive was sinking their ships and killing their nationals in the Caribbean and the South Atlantic. This was the period in which Mexico and Brazil declared war, not as a gesture of interAmerican coöperation, but out of a sense of raging patriotic grievance.

Since then, except in occasional minor U-boat operations, the fighting has moved far away from Latin American shores. So all types of Latin Americans tend to let down in their war enthusiasm. Furthermore, military successes in both Europe and Asia have now pretty thoroughly convinced everybody below the Rio Grande that Axis victory is no longer possible.

Siesta, fiesta

In a word, considering the war “in the bag” and feeling themselves further and further away from it, the Latin Americans tend to get bored. As their boredom increases, the persistence of the deprivations, sacrifices, and restraints of war irks and angers them. Since the danger seems to have passed, they want to get their own lives back to normal as soon as possible. They are increasingly short-tempered with their own governments, increasingly suspicious of the Allies, and indignant at the United States because no such restoration to normalcy can be permitted.

Latin America has already entered the post-war period — or at least a special post-war period of its own. It wants food and gadget shipments; it wants plans for social and economic and industrial readjustments carried out now. People feel aggrieved because they are not getting these things.

Inevitably this mass discontent is beginning to spill over. In New York and Washington, in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast ports, and in the Latin American Pacific coast colonies, you can meet almost any night this autumn plausible junta members overflowing with tips on conspiracies and potential revolutions back home. Twenty years ago, one might have been warranted in predicting from these signs a rash of revolutions from Cape Horn to Coahuila. Widespread discontents, unrest in the army and among the masses, the perpetual conspiring — there were all the makings. But, for reasons realistically connected with hemisphere power politics, such revolutions appear unlikely.

Why no revolution

1. Revolutions to be successful today, even in the smallest and most primitive of Latin American countries, need a fair quota of tanks, airplanes, armored cars, and other high-powered gadgets of mechanized warfare. The only way in which such munitions can reach Latin American centers is through the LendLease operations of the United Nations, particularly the United States, and there is no present indication that any revolutionary group will get any.

2. The existing governments of the Latin American republics are getting these tools of political stability, not necessarily in large quantities but sufficiently, because it is Washington policy — not to say Allied policy — to support all friendly governments now in power so long as they reasonably behave themselves in their relations with the United Nations.

No matter how many reservations Washington may entertain about the political morals of certain dictators, their enemies are not likely to receive the armaments necessary to upset these dictators, because, for the duration at least, the political stability of Latin America is rated as a vital war asset of the Allies. On this point, it seldom makes any difference to Washington if the elements who would like to unseat certain dictators are allegedly more “liberal" in respect to post-war aims for the hemisphere, or even more “on our side.”

3. Pro-Axis revolutions in Latin America are “out” for the duration, not only because military supplies for such movements are unobtainable, but far more as a matter of Latin American practical politics. To be sure, something like a pro-Axis revolution occurred in Argentina last June, in the army coup which overthrew the Castillo administration. But from it the revolutionary caudillos and would-be caudillos in all other Latin American republics have learned by now that the surest way to shut off shipments of vital Lend-Lease arms from the United States is to bring off a revolution tainted with pro-Axis leanings.

As the shrewder Latin American politicos realize, the Argentine Revolution was a fluke. It was possible to overthrow the Castillo administration simply because that regime — by reason of its “prudent neutrality” policies — was the only government in South America which was not already receiving Lend-Lease arms.

The Axis complains

Meanwhile, Nazi and Spanish Falangist agents are making the most of the food and price distresses of Mexico by blaming them, first, on the greed of the gringos, and next, on the policy of the gringos in keeping in power a Mexican government which has failed so far either to wrangle sufficient food supplies from its allies or to control inflation.

In Cuba and in the west coast South American countries, there are other food shortage openings of which the same elements are taking advantage. The governments have plenty of fire power with which to stand up against them, but as irritations mount, governments may need even more fire power to survive after peace comes. Then the question is likely to come up, in various troublesome incidents, of how long into the readjustment period coöperating regimes need to be supported.

Neither is the Lend-Lease method of hemisphere control likely to make things initially easier for Under Secretary of State Stettinius. He is already — certainly with no concrete specifications — under considerable suspicion among a good many Latin American political elements because of his big business background — “Big Steel” and Morgan’s. Hence, until Mr. Stettinius by persuasive words and a considerable record expresses an acute and practical sympathy for political and economic problems in the other Americas, it will be duck soup for the Axis propagandists and local dissident groups to try to identify him as a young man interested in using LendLease to build up a gringo business empire to the south.

It is noteworthy, in fact, that the first announcement of the Stettinius appointment was received by the press of Latin America with unusual silence. There are serious obstacles to be overcome as Latin America grows more sick of the war and yearns more heartily for its own brands of “normalcy,” and as certain methods for “managing” the hemisphere front become more open — and nothing is to be gained by refusing to face the difficulties. Which, of course, is not in any sense saying that Under Secretary Stettinius may not have the tact and the administrative talents to overcome them.