Latin America

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE air is clear this summer for a final showdown with the Argentine Republic. There is still, of course, in spite of the long list of offenses that the Argentine militarists have given us and our allies, no positive assurance that the showdown is coming. Plenty of powerful influences in Washington and elsewhere are still working against it. But the signs in Washington suggested, as July opened, that patience, along with tempers, was shortening.

With the coming of D Day a stiffer censorship than ever was clamped down on sections of the press favorable to the Allies, so that news of the successful landings in Normandy could barely be printed, and comments explaining the military importance of the invasion could not be published at all.

At the same time Nazi-controlled newspapers appeared day after day with screaming headlines announcing huge shore defeats and fleet losses by the British and Americans, so fantastic as to suggest that even Dr. Joseph Goebbels’s fables were being stepped up by his Argentine confederate. The Farrell government was ominously speeding up a huge program for enlarging its war establishment — increasing the army, rushing defense constructions and munitions manufacture, building barracks.

Interestingly, it developed that most of the work contracts for the new militarism were being given to influential German residents of Argentina, notorious for their Nazi sympathies and in many cases known to be party members. Spokesmen for the Farrell government tried to laugh this off with the explanation that these were the same German firms to wUich Argentina had previously given most of her military construction business. The climax came in a radio speech made by War Minister Juan D. Peron — reputed “boss” of the Farrell regime — on June 10, establishing a chair of National Defense Instruction at the University of La Plata.

Argentina on the warpath

In the face of Allied war aims for a stable peace and of all the peace-keeping machinery that has been built up among the American nations during the past generation, Colonel Peron declared that all the energies, wealth, industry, and production of Argentina must be dedicated to national defense. He called those who think that future wars can be avoided “Utopians” and their hopes of uninterrupted peace among nations a “mirage.”

Indicating a contemptuous indifference to the outcome of the present war, he announced that the same military dangers would confront Argentina in the post-war period whether the United Nations or the Axis won. The victors, in any case, the “boss” Colonel insisted, will quarrel over the peace table and in the future have “conflicting interests which might lead to a new conflagration among themselves.”

Against all these perils, the War Minister argued, in effect, the Argentine government must protect itself by establishing full — or totalitarian — control over the economic, political, and cultural lives of the people, so that the country’s military power to attain its objectives will be unquestioned. “If diplomacy,” he pronounced, “cannot attain the political objectives decided upon, then it undertakes to prepare the best conditions for achieving them by force.”

There were no direct threats in the speech against the territorial frontiers or the political independence of any of Argentina’s neighbors. But threats or no threats, there was no question about the meaning of it. Argentina, if Colonel Peron can run its policies, will go to war on the American continent any time it chooses.

Repercussions to this speech were not immediate. But toward the last week in June, Secretary Hull began having an unusual flow of visitors. Practically all the Latin American ambassadors sticking out the early summer heat in Washington passed in and out of the gloomy dignity of his office. Within a few days the meaning of these visits became clear.

United States Ambassador Norman Armour in Buenos Aires was called home for consultations. So were the Mexican, the British, and the Chilean ambassadors to Argentina — although Chile had stuck fast to her old neighbor in February by recognizing the new Farrell regime, while Washington and most of the Latin American countries gagged at it. Our State Department almost cheerfully omitted to discourage newspaper speculations that the ambassador was unlikely to return.

Argentina’s military rulers reeled slightly from the shock. Sudden overtures were put out from Buenos Aires about arranging for the return of Axis diplomats — technically out of their posts since last January, but considerably in social and political circulation — to their homelands. But these were received in Allied capitals with chilly indifference.

How much crackdown?

But the calling home of ambassadors is not a complete showdown, and nobody knows this better than the Peron-Farrell government. There was still, however, as Ambassador Armour arrived, a question of how complete the showdown would be.

From the very beginning of our wartime Argentine troubles our State Department has been in a quandary — indeed, in several quandaries at once — on this subject. Suspension of relations has not brought about a change in government. In fact, from some angles, suspension of relations has merely encouraged the super-nationalist leaders of the Peron-Farrell regime to put an extra flourish of exhibitionism in their super-nationalist cakewalks. There may be economic sanctions — such as trade restrictions and the freezing of funds.

But two objections to this course are strongly pressed in the State Department whenever the subject comes up for consideration. First, Great Britain needs Argentine food exports to supply both its armies and its home front. The Churchill government does not want Argentine import trade interfered with by any of the Allies to a point where it might discourage the free flow of these shipments. Second, the State Department fears that a stoppage of essential imports from the United States — and, so far as it could be contrived, from other members of the United Nations — might alienate the great body of liberal opinion in Argentina from its sympathies with the Allies and

unite it behind the totalitarian tub-thumpers in the present government.

All one can say now is that the developments of the past month and Colonel Peron’s indiscretions have noticeably strengthened the hands of the policymakers who believe that, before Argentina goes permanently totalitarian, even an expensive showdown may be worth the cost. On the other hand, especially in business circles interested in Argentina and their spokesmen, the argument is still being pushed that some kind of deal can be made with the Peron school of Fascism, by which Fascism and mutual trade advantages will be retained but the unregenerate will promise to be good boys in international politics. No matter how badly appeasement flops, there are always impressive arguments from interested quarters for a little more of it.

We recognize Bolivia

In any case, as a kind of preparation for rough weather ahead on the Argentine sector, the military junta now governing Bolivia was recognized by Washington and eighteen other American governments on June 23. The Bolivian palace revolution which brought the junta into power last December was largely Argentine fomented and, by the records of its leaders, essentially Fascist in its program.

But in the last few months, to satisfy Washington’s sense of correctness, civilian members of the cabinet with Fascist backgrounds became behind-the-scenes directors. And army officers, also with Fascist records in most cases but without formal membership in the pro-Fascist party, were given their places. Eighty-odd Axis agents were sent out of the country for internment — although some of their prominent colleagues have not been “found” yet — so that, in general, the State Department felt itself warranted in extending recognition on the ground that it had won a decision on points.

The real motive behind recognition, however, was to solidify the all-American front for the tighter struggle with the Argentine. Chile, Brazil, and Peru have been objecting on the quiet to the break with Bolivia ever since it was made in December, because suspension of diplomatic relations interfered with their border trade. Less directly concerned republics complained because they saw non-recognition being used in Bolivia’s case as a weapon of subtle political intervention.

Theoretically, by restoring Bolivia to the family circle, these fears and suspicions have been quieted. On the surface Chile’s “consultation” summons to her ambassador in Buenos Aires goes a little way to prove that solidarity in actions toward Argentina is slightly improved. But we shall see.