Promise Kept

As part of its $1.3 billion highways bill for the present session, the U.S. Congress last week authorized $4,000,000 for a 200-mile road linking Nicaragua's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It was a great victory for Nicaraguan Dictato Tacho Somoza, convalescing in Boston after a major abdominal operation. "I am awfully happy," said Tacho. "Nicaragua is the best friend the U.S. has--and I love that road. It can transport troops across the isthmus if the Panama Canal should be blown up."

Tacho first got the promise of the road from President Roosevelt just before World War II, when the Good Neighbor policy was blowing hot. On a visit to Washington in 1939, Tacho reminded his hosts that the U.S. had never built the interoceanic canal across Nicaragua for which it had obtained rights 23 years earlier. But, he said, Nicaragua's wounded pride might be restored by a 6-ft. barge canal linking the principal cities with the Atlantic. According to Tacho, Vice President Jack Garner tipped the scales in his favor by turning to F.D.R., highball in hand, and drawling: "Why don't you give this boy his ditch?"

When engineers later advised Roosevelt that such a canal would cost too much, Tacho offered to settle for a transisthmian highway. Roosevelt agreed.

With funds from a special White House emergency kitty, a right of way was hacked out of the jungle from San Benito on the west to Rama near the east coast. Then the war ended, and it was up to Congress to vote funds to finish the job. Year after year, Congress refused to meet an obligation that Roosevelt had contracted in his most offhand executive manner without consulting a single member of the Senate or House. Year after year, Tacho ponied up $30,000 a month to keep the road from going back to bush. This year Assistant Secretary of State Edward G. Miller told the House committee: ". . . The terms of an executive agreement . . . will not be honored in full until the road . . . is finished from San Benito to Rama, and until a survey is completed from Rama to El Bluff [on the east coast]." Relenting at last, Congress agreed to provide for Tacho's "F.D.R. Highway."

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