Latin America

ON THE WORLD TODAY

MEXICO is undergoing significant changes. In spite of appalling inflation difficulties, the Mexican Republic achieved a relatively large industrial expansion during the war, and private fortunes were piled up by home-grown free-enterprisers and stock traders.

The results are beginning to show up in the administration of Miguel Aleman, inaugurated President on December 1. In spite of the new administration’s overwhelming labor and radical support, the newly rich business elements have managed to move in close to the centers of power in the incoming government, and Alemán — one of the few civilian presidents in Mexican history, and the first president for thirty-five years who did not fight in the 1911— 1912 revolutions — has come close to appointing a businessman cabinet.

Successful industrialists and financiers have replaced leftist economists or shopworn revolutionary politicos in such key posts as the Ministry of National Economy, the governorship of the Bank of Mexico, and the top administrative spot in Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the government corporation operating the nationalized oil fields. The change effected by the Alemán administration parallels the restoration of free-enterprise ideology in the revised Truman administration.

In general the business groups appear to be aiming at increased tariff protection for Mexican products and at an enlarged freedom from government regulation and from labor union domination, which affect industry especially. Ostensibly in the interest of securing greater production and a “more abundant life” for the Mexican people, the financial and industrial leaders would like to see the boards cleared for an industrial and stock investment “boom or bust” experiment in the republic.

This is not saying, however, that the leftist revolution is in immediate danger of over-all liquidation. The new government is planning a vast program of land reclamation and agrarian resettlement, and Antonio Bermúdez, the successful Chihuahua distiller who has taken over the oil administration, has made it clear that foreign oil corporation management will not be invited back on any lease or royalty arrangement.

At the same time there is apparently to be a stronger emphasis on individuals and titles than on communal — ejido — principles in the resettlement program. Oil Administrator Bermúdez — who, incidentally, rode roughshod over an oil workers’ strike in his first month in office — insists that his major objective is to make Pemex pay.

In short, Mexico, which moved from the far left of President Lázaro Cárdenas to dead center with the accession of President Manuel Ávila Camacho in 1940, now appears to be taking another step. Unless some internal crisis upsets the direction chart, the Alemán government will lead her further to the right than she has been since Porfirio Díaz.

How fascist is Argentina?

Now that Perón, the behind-the-scenes manipulator of Argentine’s political development for more than three years, has been President for nearly eight months, it is possible to summarize his achievements. The most comprehensive way of putting it is to say that the machinery for operating a fascist economy, a fascist political state, and a fascist society in Argentina has been almost completely installed. The outstanding items are as follows: —

1. Through control over all loans and deposits in the republic by the central government bank, Perón has the fate of all large and small business in Argentina in his hands.

2. The government Institute for the Promotion of Trade has authority over exports and imports. It can decide what commodities can be exported from Argentina, in what quantities, and on what terms of exchange or barter. It can decide from what countries Argentina’s imports may come, and at present it is contemplating rigid restrictions on American machinery and luxury imports.

3. Perón has complete control of Argentine education from kindergarten through postgraduate courses in the universities. He appoints the rectors of the universities; his government appoints all educational executives and teachers, and prescribes courses of study. Hundreds of university professors and thousands of public school teachers have been dismissed during the past year for opposing total government authority over education, or Peron’s nationalistic principles of education.

4. Perón’s military training system, which takes both boys and girls under its wing from the age of twelve on, is a replica of the systems of Hitler and Mussolini.

5. A grandiose “five-year plan” just adopted by the Argentine Congress has as its main objectives the building up of the industries, armaments, and communications needed for Argentine military dominance in South America.

6. Argentine foreign policy toward neighbor states in South America accords with the worst totalitarian militarist traditions. A loan of $150,000,000 to Chile, recently, is conditioned on the building of free port facilities at Valparaiso, on the Pacific, and the construction of strategically invaluable railways and a vehicular tunnel through the Andes. Attempts were made to starve Bolivia and Uruguay into collaboration with Argentine political policies, and to bring about election victories for pro-Argentine political parties, by curtailing or shutting off food shipments.

7. Some of the façade of pre-Perón democratic institutions is still retained. Congress still functions, for instance, with overwhelming Perónist majorities — just as the Italian Parliament continued to meet in the early years of fascism under Mussolini.

8. The constitutional freedoms of party organization and of elections remain. But with the government in control of all business and economic activity in the republic, and with the hordes of indoctrinated youngsters pouring out annually from the Perónist educational mill, it will be increasingly difficult for the opposition to win an election against the Perón dictatorship.

9. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are nominally maintained, but government control of imported newsprint allotments and of the newspapers’ banking accommodations makes freedom of the press highly precarious.

10. Technically, the independent judicial system is intact, but at present four out of the five justices of the National Supreme Court are undergoing impeachment on the cynical charge that they legalized the “unconstitutional” acts of the provisional military government which opened the way for Peron’s rise to power and election.

Not all of this new machinery, especially in the economic fields, is in full operation as yet. But to set it in motion requires little more than the pressing of a few presidential push buttons. And in the Casa Rosada intimate advisers, like Heinrich Doerge, Ludwig and Rodolfo Freude, and Fritz Mandl, familiar with the workings of fascist machinery in Europe, are at Peron’s elbow to see that it runs smoothly.

Secretary Marshall and the Republican majority in Congress, in short, are not confronted simply with the rise of a new personal dictator in Latin America. They are confronted with a new kind of state in the American hemisphere — a state as antagonistic to the aims of United States hemisphere policy as Germany was, and one that is potentially as dangerous a troublemaker in Latin American affairs as Nazi Germany was in Europe.

Perón: partner or pariah?

Any real straightening out of the Argentine policy problem requires a truce in the months-old feud between Ambassador Messersmith and his chief, Spruille Braden, the Assistant Secretary of State in charge of inter-American affairs. Mr. Braden and Mr. Messersmith disagree on the question of whether the Perón administration has carried out its commitments to the other American republics and the United Nations to suppress Axis economic activities in Argentina and to deport Axis agents.

In the background, too, are even sharper disagreements: as to whether the Perón government is not imposing on the Argentine people a totalitarian fascist regime dangerous to the peace and security of the neighboring Latin American nations, and is not working so hard to destroy the unity of the American republics as to be an unacceptable partner in an all-American hemisphere defense program.

Assistant Secretary Braden believes that Argentina’s compliance with its anti-Axis commitments has been insufficient, and that evidence of totalitarianism and of deliberate inter-American troublemaking by Argentina is too glaring to be overlooked.

For almost a year and a half he has stood firm against including Argentina in a hemisphere defense treaty which, among other things, would make allotments and easy purchases of American arms available to the Peron government.

Ambassador Messersmith, on the other hand, considers that Argentina has lived up to her agreements to suppress Axis activities better than some other Latin republics now in high favor in Washington; that the fascist traits in the Peron state are either illusory or unimportant; and that, in the frequent charges that Perón is trying to organize an anti-U.S. bloc among the South American nations, the dictator has been wickedly maligned.

The Ambassador consequently believes that the Perón government should be accorded equal treatment with all other American republics in a hemisphere defense and rearmament program.

It is time to decide

Ambassador Messersmith’s Argentine position accords rather better with the Republicans’ attitude than does Mr. Braden’s. From the point of view of most Republican members of Congress, it is not the business of our foreign policy to protect the Argentine people from the brand of government which their duly elected president chooses to dish out to them — fascist or otherwise. But to ditch the Braden policy now would entail a considerable loss of face for the Administration.

Because of his freedom from partisan ties, Secretary Marshall may stand a better chance than his predecessor of escaping direct collision with the G.O.P. majority in Congress over the key problem in our Latin American policy. As a result he will be freer to support the “Braden line” than Mr. Byrnes could ever have been. General Marshall takes office sufficiently fresh from his experience with rightist totalitarianism in the Chinese Kuomintang to recognize it in Argentina.

There is the logical prospect, too, that General Marshall will maintain the basic foreign policies set by his predecessors. On the other hand, the lifelong habits of thought of a professional soldier might incline General Marshall to be more in favor of a military “understanding” with Perón than a civilian Secretary would be.

In any case, the General’s appointment appears to indicate an early end to the Braden-Messersmith feuding. A better organizer and a sterner disciplinarian than Mr. Byrnes, Secretary Marshall is unlikely to tolerate a situation in which one Argentine policy prevails in Washington and another in the Buenos Aires Embassy.

One thing at least remains certain. Neither the Democratic administration nor the Republican majority can hammer out a coherent hemisphere policy until the facts about the new Argentina are openly faced, and the decision made as to whether we are going to woo it or segregate it.