Democratic Demonstration

The U.S. and democracy rolled back a sneak offensive of Argentina and totalitarianism last week. The occasion: a conference on "Coordination of Police & Judicial Measures," called to implement resolutions of the Rio Conference. The scene: the hall of Buenos Aires' democratically elected Municipal Council, which the Castillo regime had removed (TIME, Oct. 20) and replaced by hand-picked stooges.

Liberal democrats got the wind up. They feared that, under pretext of driving Nazi and Japanese spies out of Latin America, the conference might set up a hemispheric Gestapo against leftists, liberals and labor,* that it might "coordinate" the right of asylum out of existence. But they counted without the U.S. delegation.

The Rio Accord which brought the 'Police Conference into being was specific in its exclusively anti-Axis purposes: to scotch "systematic espionage, sabotage, and subversive propaganda .. . inspired by or under the direction of member States of the Tripartite Pact." Nevertheless, the Argentine Government, whose actions against the Nazis have been empty gestures but which has been carrying out a witch hunt against Communists and labor, wrote into one of last week's resolutions the distorting phrase, "Nazis, Fascists, and Communists." In an attempt to stampede the conference, the Argentine Gendarmeria Nacional made the timely "discovery" of a 9,000-member "Communist" organization in the Chaco, where any labor-organizing of the exploited semi-serfs in the quebracho camps is promptly smeared as Communist. The delegates smiled politely, remained unimpressed.

After a final five-and-a-half-hour wrangle between Argentina's waspish Eusebio Gomez, and the U.S.'s bland Carl Bernhardt Spaeth, Argentina's amendment was rejected (only Chile abstaining). With what grace it could, Argentina asked that its "reservations" be noted.

The U.S. had given a practical demonstration worth a dozen speeches on democracy.

*Two months before the conference, the Castillo government ordered the deportation or imprisonment of 27 Argentines and 32 foreigners, whom it accused of Communism, because they favored aid to the Soviet Union; closed newspapers and publishing houses of similar tendencies. A lower-court decision, later reversed, ordered the children taken away from two parents who once attended a Communist meeting.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.