The Conference

For months, Bogota (pop. 450,000) had been sprucing up, and by this week it was as ready as it ever would be for the opening next Tuesday of the Ninth Conference of American States, the first full-dress Pan American pow-wow in ten years.

In the refurbished National Capitol, the government held rehearsals, while sightseers by the thousands crowded in to see the decorations. Hotels, pensiones and even some private dwellings were booked up for about 500 delegates and assistants, who will jam the 410-year-old Andean city (altitude: 8,700 ft.).

The Job. The conference was called to straighten out kinks in the Inter-American system, to formalize acts taken at five special conferences*held in the war years since the last plenary meeting at Lima in 1938. Major item in the agenda: a new Organic Pact of the Americas, which would give the Pan American Union more power, place political and military matters under its wing.

There would also be discussions about European colonies in the New World (Guatemala, fresh from a tiff with Britain over Belize, wants them declared a menace) and about recognition of de facto governments (one de facto regime, Nicaragua's, will be represented at Bogota). But the chief talk will be about money.

The Talk. Latinos, watching the U.S. plan to spend billions of dollars to aid Europe, generally feel that their own needs are being overlooked. ERP's promise of dollar-financed purchases in Latin America, mostly from Argentina, do not satisfy them. They want U.S. dollars to build up home industry, raise cellar-low living standards. The most the U.S. was prepared to offer on the eve of the conference was an increase of $500 million in Export-Import Bank lending authority, and an easing of the bank's rules so that more dollars could flow southward. There might be World Bank help, too. The U.S. intended to tell Latinos that their best bet was U.S. private investment, that to get it, Latin American governments would have to assure U.S. investors that they would not be hamstrung.

The Men. For the work at Bogota, there will be top-flight statesmen on the job. Crisis-harried George Marshall will head the U.S. delegation, with Cabinet-rank support from Commerce Secretary Averell Harriman, Treasury Secretary John Snyder. Export-Import Bank Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr. will be there, and John J. McCloy, World Bank president, though not a delegate, plans to be on hand. The diplomatic backfield will be sparked by Assistant Secretary for Political Affairs Norman Armour.

Among Latin representatives: Pan American Union's Director Alberto Lleras Camargo, working on his home field (he is a Bogotano), Argentina's Foreign Minister Juan Bramuglia, Brazil's ex-Foreign Minister Joao Neves da Fontoura, Mexico's Foreign Minister Jaime Torres Bodet. They did not know how long the parley would last, but they were prepared for a good many weeks in Bogota.

*Panama, 1939; Havana, 1940; Rio de Janeiro, 1942; Chapultepec (Mexico), 1945, and Quitan-dinha (Brazil), 1947.

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