Parley on the Plata

Most bullish of South American countries when World War II broke out were the nations below the bulge of Brazil. Remembering the boom times of World War I, marred only by a slump in Brazilian coffee, confident they would never be drawn into actual conflict, they hoped to make a pocket supplying Europe's war machines.

But they had not counted on the devastating stalemate of blockade and counter-blockade. Their total foreign trade, instead of breaking upward, sheered off. Surpluses piled up. Fortnight ago, in Montevideo, their delegates sat down at a round table to figure a way out. Present were representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia; as observers, the U. S., Chile and Peru. The meeting called itself the first Regional Conference of the Plata River.

The weft which bound their interests together was the Plata network (see map) of rivers flowing across an area nearly half the size of continental U. S. The Plata itself is a muddy, shallow estuary funneling down from a 25-mile-wide neck above Buenos Aires to a 138-mile-wide mouth in the Atlantic. Into it flow the Uruguay and the Parana-Paraguay rivers. The Uruguay cuts south from Brazil for 1,000 miles, separating the northern tongue of Argentina from Uruguay and Brazil. To the west is the 2,200-mile Parana. Starting in the highlands of southern Brazil, it curls around the low hills in Paraguay's southeastern corner, where the Guarani Indians first named it "Mother of the Sea," then heads south through Argentina to the Plata. The Paraguay rises in the sluggish swamps of the Mato Grosso, flows between heavy stands of quebracho trees through the heart of Paraguay, joins the Parana where it enters Argentina.

One-Way Waterway. Twelve months a year freight service reaches 1,700 miles up the Parana-Paraguay, 650 miles farther than the run from New Orleans to St. Louis on the Mississippi. Since existing rail lines are long and expensive, connect the Plata nations to Buenos Aires but not to each other, it is the only transportation system linking all the Plata basin. But the Plata bloc has used this waterway almost exclusively to carry trade abroad. Canned and frozen beef from Uruguay's frigorificos (packing plants) and saladeros (salting plants), as well as most of Uruguay's wool, go to Europe. Argentina sends its flaxseed (84% of the world trade total), its wheat (23%), its corn (71%), its beef (50%) abroad. Bolivia's copper, lead and silver go abroad and most (80% ) of its tin--mined amid the ruins of the Inca Empire in the Andes--goes to Britain. Beef and wool from southern Brazil go to Europe. Except for some Parana pine exported from Brazil to Argentina and Uruguay, exports of mate (South American tea) from Brazil and Paraguay to Argentina, and imports of Argentine cereals by Bolivia, Argentina's middleman business in Paraguayan imports & exports to Europe is the only sizable intra-Plata commerce.

One-Way to Two-Way. To switch this one-way traffic into a two-way stream of commerce, the Plata Conference delegates had first to pump new life into the shriveled economies of Bolivia and Paraguay, still exhausted from their disastrous Chaco War. Both are landlocked and need lower freight rates as well as freeport zones to cut transportation expense. Both need a reduction in customs barriers, freer currency exchange in order to sell Bolivian oil, Paraguayan lumber, tobacco and quebracho extract (for tanning hides) in the Plata market. In return they could buy more food and textiles from Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil.

With a splashing panegyric to democracy Uruguayan Foreign Minister Alberto Guani opened the conference: "Our present effort at local development does not signify isolation; it is simply a link in the chain of larger progress." Then for eleven days subcommittees tussled and wrangled.

By last week the delegates had begged and bartered their way to nine conventions, one recommendation, 16 resolutions. Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil agreed to negotiate bilateral treaties with Bolivia and Paraguay, granting them special but unspecified concessions to ease their geographical handicaps. To keep the concessions in effect, the seaboard nations agreed not to demand the same benefits from each other under most-favored-nation clauses in existing treaties. Other conventions and resolutions began the internationalizing of the Plata system. Unrestricted passage of cargoes and passengers up & down the Plata was guaranteed. Preferential transport rates for the goods of Plata nations were to be put into effect. Freeport zones were to be constructed. The recommendation even urged consideration of an eventual customs union of the Plata countries.

Like the Havana Conference, the meeting on the Plata offered no cureall. Its eventual accomplishments would depend on the actual concessions granted to Bolivia and Paraguay, the ability of all the Plata nations to work together in a new economic frame. But it showed that realistic South American politicos were looking for a healthier way out of their troubles than borrowed U. S. dollars alone could give. It also showed (and was perhaps intended to show) that when it came to conferences, South Americans could call their own without yanqui assistance.

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