Latin America

ON THE WORLD TODAY

IN THE freezing early morning dark of the High Andes about a week before Christmas in La Paz, Bolivia, there took place what looked, on the surface, like a standard Latin American palace revolution. There were spatters of gunfire about outlying barracks and a rush of picked men on the presidential dwelling. President Enrique Peñaranda left on the next airplane bound for Chile.

By early afternoon it was possible for a revolutionary junta to proclaim itself as a new government. It did so, naming a young army officer, Major Gualberto Villarroel — politically almost unknown, but a Chaco War hero — as Provisional President; and a very important Bolivian political leader, Dr. Victor Paz Estenssoro, an economist, as Finance Minister.

And yet these almost routine proceedings — Bolivia has revolutions substantially in this pattern every few years — confronted the United States and the United Nations with one of the most puzzling and potentially dangerous situations they have had to face in Latin America since World War II began.

The new government’s official statements breathed economic collaboration with the United Nations to whose war plans Bolivian tin, tungsten, quinine, and rubber are vital — and devotion to their cause. The new rulers pledged free elections in 1944 to the Bolivian people and relief for the grievances of the Bolivian tin miners.

The government appointed as its Washington agent Dr. Enrique de Lozada, who resigned his important post as special adviser on Latin American affairs to Nelson Rockefeller, in the Office of the Coördinator of Inter-American Affairs, in order to take the job. A former Bolivian diplomat and Williams College professor, Dr. de Lozada has been pleading for more than ten years with audiences in the United States for a liberal political solution of Bolivia’s problems. Since coming to Washington, he has probably advised Vice President Wallace on his progressive Latin American views quite as intimately as he has Mr. Rockefeller.

Furthermore, when Dr. de Lozada made it a condition of taking the job, that his government disclaim antiSemitism and recognize Soviet Russia, the junta back home promptly sent him a passionate denial of anti-Jewish policies, and instructions to find some Russians and start negotiations for recognition.

Our State Department deliberates

Known facts in the background of the situation held the State Department in Washington on the uneasy seat past the turn of the year. Dr. Paz Estenssoro, the true chief of the revolution, was mixed up a little more than two years ago in a plot to overthrow the government, with the Nazi Minister to Bolivia, Ernst Wendler, and Bolivia’s military attaché in Berlin, Major Elias Belmonte. Within a few weeks of his present coup, Paz Estenssoro was in Buenos Aires, in contact there with old Nazi friends and with important members of the Fascist and pro-Nazi military junta now governing the Argentine.

A number of the new Finance Minister’s associates in the coup group at La Paz, such as Alberto Taborga, former head of the national traffic police organization of Bolivia, — which actually functions as a highly ruthless national constabulary, — had many Nazi connections of recent years.

Because of the suspicions aroused by these shady circumstances, Secretary of State Hull took the position, a few days after the coup, that there would be no recognition for the new regime in Bolivia until the question of its ties with the enemy — and, by implication, with the Argentine military Fascists — had been cleared up. By mid-January, only Argentina had recognized the new Bolivian government.

Wars in the making

The Argentine military Fascists, for their part, consider that, in building up a bloc of anti-United States “strong” governments in lower South America, they have practical interests which transcend anything that might happen to the Nazis. Such a bloc, under Argentine leadership, could conceivably break up the whole program of inter-American collaboration, in the peace as well as during the war, destroy United States influence in Hemisphere matters south of Panama, and eventually, perhaps, challenge Brazil to a struggle for hegemony over South America

The idea of a coast-to-coast sphere of influence has been an old dream of Argentine “imperialists,” dating from long before World War II and even before the coming of the Nazis. Through the Chaco War of 1932-1935 and in many of its relations afterward, Argentine diplomacy has worked subtly to transform Paraguay and Bolivia into friendly satellite states.

Over in Chile, several interesting persuasions are under way. Argentine diplomatic and political agents are known to be infiltrating into Chilean army and conservative circles, spreading the propaganda that a ‘strong government”—Argentine-authoritarian style — is what Chile needs in order to preserve the security of the republic.

Again, on the Nazi pre-war plan. Chileans are being encouraged to vacation in Argentina, where special concessions on foreign exchange and Argentine food abundance are being utilized to convince them that a “strong” militarist government is the best cure for the acute economic distresses of South American societies.

Finally, Argentine ideas are being circulated quietly among army leaders in Peru, to the effect that only the United States and her United Nations connections are holding back Peru from a conquest of Ecuador; and that a “strong government” coup could rather easily correct these difficulties.

One indication of how seriously the danger is being taken, incidentally, is to be found in the recent action of President Vargas of Brazil in converting most of the boundary territories of the republic into military districts. It is perfectly true — and the Brazilian government’s political scouts and diplomatic informants certainly know it — that the Argentine plan for luring half the continent into a federation of “strong governments” has no assurance of succeeding as yet.

Brazil’s move to arm her borders suggests that she considers her involvement in a South American balance of power war — or series of wars — within the range of possibility. The Brazilians are inclined to take no chances.

Furthermore, casual as it may appear in the situation, Washington policy is not inclined to allow this kind of dynamite to go off in South America. And this consideration, fairly plainly, played a part in bringing forth, late in December, one of the most revolutionary recommendations for political collaboration in the whole history of inter-American diplomacy.

The Inter-American Committee moves

Within less than a week after the Bolivian coup, the Inter-American Committee for the Political Defense of the Western Hemisphere — the basic organization for fighting fifth column activities in the republics — proposed a resolution from its headquarters in Montevideo: that for the duration of the war, new governments established by force in the American continents be refused diplomatic recognition until the other American republics have had a chance to consult together and inform themselves of each new government’s loyalty to the United Nations. The governments to be called into consultation, by the terms of the resolution, are to be limited to those which have either broken relations with the Axis or declared war upon it; thus Argentina is excluded.

From Washington, on December 21, Secretary of State Hull sent word back to the Committee that he “wholeheartedly approved" the resolution, and intimated that the United States was ready to start the consulting. By January 7, Mr. Hull could announce a considerable exchange of information among the nineteen anti-Axis countries.

To keep the peace

Technically, of course, the resolution proposed a war measure only. In practice, too, the joint consultation method of recognizing revolutionary governments will work only if it is accepted, and participated in, by all the republics which are now fully active members of the inter-American power concert.

But if it is adopted, such a procedure looks forward to a form of “pooled diplomatic sovereignty” among the American nations, which could offer immense advantages, both immediate and long-range, to the security and peace of the Hemisphere. If such a method should work efficiently during the war, it could easily, by a change of a few words in the Montevideo Resolution, apply to post-war conditions.

A method of the sort foreshadowed by the Montevideo Resolution would not necessarily exclude from recognition a government established by force in order to overthrow dictatorship or tyranny, or to remedy great social and economic abuses.

In other words, an arrangement could be worked out by which all violently established aggressive or threateningly nationalistic governments in the Hem isphere could be denied recognition — and the priceless survival advantages of recognition — until their sister republics could decide, upon mature judgment, to admit them into the privileges of the interAmerican concert of republics.