Good Partners

We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas . . . And, in cooperation with other nations, we should foster capital investment in areas needing development.

Harry Truman's "bold new program" seemed tailor-made for Latin America. All 20 Latin American republics are "underdeveloped." They have been crying for economic help ever since war's end, when the flow of U.S. dollars southward slowed to a trickle. Would the "bold new program" solve their problem?

Part of the answer lay with an eight-man committee coordinating the work of 25 different U.S. Government agencies. Headed by Assistant Secretary of State Willard Thorp,* the committee has been at work for the last three weeks fleshing out the plan's bare bones.

Thorp's committee has found that providing technical assistance to underdeveloped nations is no problem. Since 1938, the U.S. has spent close to $100 million doing just that for Latin America. This year, under the sponsorship of the State Department's Institute of Inter-American Affairs and the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, some 460 experts are on loan to Latin American governments.

Five Years More. IIAA has also sponsored 41 cooperative programs for passing on U.S. know-how to Latin Americans in agriculture, education, public health and sanitation. Most of them, like Brazil's great SESP public-health program (TIME, Sept. 13), have contributed to Latin American development and have also served as striking examples of what could be done. All have been jointly financed by the U.S. and the cooperative governments. Since the war, many have languished for lack of funds, but this week President Truman urged Congress to give IIAA a $50 million transfusion--enough for five more years.

Thorp's committee was concerned only with the know-how part of the program. Elsewhere in Washington, men were trying to figure how best to coax U.S. capital. Some of the proposals:

P:Relaxation of the tight loan requirements of the World Bank and the Export-Import Bank.

P:Some limited form of investment guarantee by the governments involved.

P: Bilateral agreements pledging other governments to respect (i.e., not to expropriate) foreign capital.

Whatever came of these and other recommendations, one thing was obvious: Latin Americans will get no dollar handouts on the Marshall Plan scale, and they might as well accept the fact. One Latin government had already done so.

Three weeks ago, Chile's wide-awake President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla announced that his government welcomed Harry Truman's plan. He began holding daily cabinet sessions on the subject, and told Under Secretary of Economy and Commerce Raul Fernandez to draw up a brochure for presentation to the State Department early in March. It will list the industries Chile hopes to establish, specify which parts of the country are best suited to each, and how much of what type of capital each will require.

The Pure in Heart. Chile was already attracting U.S. investment. Last fortnight the Chilean government announced that U.S. firms were scheduled to put up $135 million for Chilean industries. Five million would be spent on a plant for manufacturing thread. Anaconda Copper had begun to spend a whopping $130 million--the largest single investment in Chile's history --on a new copper extraction process.

Chile was almost unique. Elsewhere in Latin America, the U.S. still faced the man-sized job of convincing yanqui-baiting nationalists that its heart was pure. Only when latinos came to look on the U.S. as their Good Partner as well as their Good Neighbor could Harry Truman's plan fully succeed.

*For further news of Assistant Secretary Thorp, see INTERNATIONAL.

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