Ninth in Bogot

aTHE HEMISPHERE

In Bogota's narrow, crowded streets, diplomats needed half an hour to drive ten blocks to the opening session of the ninth International Conference of American States. It took them hardly longer to get down to business, once they convened in the refurbished brownstone Capitolio Nacional. For these representatives of the 21 American republics, two issues overshadowed all others: 1) U.S. economic aid for Latin America, the subject latinos held most vital; 2) Communism in the hemisphere, and how to deal with it.

As soon as Colombia's ruddy-faced Foreign Minister Laureano Gomez had been elected conference president, the economic issue was opened. It was Mexico's eloquent Foreign Minister Jaime Torres Bodet who ripped into it. "Of course [European] reconstruction is urgent," he argued, "but is development less urgent when the peoples who seek it live as misrably as most of those who clamor for reconstruction?" Latin America's Indian millions, he thundered, are "the martyrs of peace."

Talk of the Town. Half a dozen latinos jumped to embrace Torres Bodet as he went back to his seat. That night he was the talk of every cocktail party in town.

Next day George Marshall answered for the U.S. His Government, he said, would ask World Bank loans for Latin America, and make fresh funds available for new loans from the Export-Import Bank. But the kind of economic development Latin America needed, he said, was simply beyond the U.S. Government's capacity. His suggestion for latinos: invite private capital to help. To show that this need not mean economic bondage, he cited the use the U.S. made of foreign capital in its i gth Century industrialization.

Heroes in Common. Then Marshall put aside his manuscript and really laid it on the line. With an obvious reference to Torres Bodet, he said quietly: "I feel that what has already been said, and I suppose is yet to be said, refers ... to my country. ... I have also the feeling that there is very limited understanding of the tremendous responsibilities and tremendous burdens . . . the people of my country have undertaken . . . and that you profit by it as much as we do."

Turning to the 30-ft. mural behind him depicting Simon Bolivar's inaugural in 1821 as Colombia's President, George Marshall recalled that Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. had died leading U.S. troops on Okinawa in World War II. That Buckner, who gave his life, bore "the name of your great Liberator," he said, "certainly indicates something of our common purpose and our common bond."

Latinos applauded, but only Peru's Victor Andres Belaunde and two Nicaraguans shook the Secretary's hand. Everybody was a little stunned at Marshall's plain no on the question of U.S. economic aid. Said a Brazilian next morning: "For me, the conference ended yesterday."

Hour for Decisions. In the past, the U.S. had shown little desire to bind hemispheric countries to joint action against Communism. But on the conference's first day, Delegate Marshall pointedly asked for debate on "the problem of foreign-inspired subversive activities." Chilean Chief Delegate Juvenal Hernandez had already plumped for an anti-Communist front. Despite Argentine and Mexican opposition, an anti-Communist resolution was in the works.

There were other items on the agenda: a new hemispheric charter, the colonies question, a joint military staff committee. But now that economic debate was knocked in the head, it began to look as though the conference could handle them all in much less time than originally planned. At week's end, some of the delegates were even talking about getting up to New York for the U.N. General Assembly's Palestine session on April 16; the more conservative guessed they would adjourn by May 1.

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