Why It Happened

Four hours after he reached Washington, Vice President Richard Nixon called to his Capitol office the newsmen who had traveled with him to Latin America and said: "The riots were a symptom. The real, basic question is why it happened."

There was surprisingly unanimous agreement throughout the hemisphere on one point: the Reds had exploited an already rotten situation. Said Puerto Rico's Governor Luis Munoz Marin: "The Communists must have taken advantage of a feeling among certain groups well beyond the small number of Reds there are."

"You Cannot Be Loved." For some of the ill feeling that emerged there could be no remedy. The U.S. had grown to a position of world power similar to ancient Rome or 19th century Britain. Historically, strength excites fear and dislike. "You cannot be a basic power and be loved," said Ecuador's U.S.-educated ex-President Galo Plaza, with whom Nixon talked at length in Quito.

Another hate-building emotion that the U.S. cannot do much about is Latin American embarrassment over the political immaturity shown in the frequency of revolutions. Another is envy, and although the U.S. can help, it cannot bring the economic millennium full-blown to Latin American nations, raising their combined gross national product fourfold to the U.S. level.

Moreover, many noisy attacks on the U.S. are simply irrational. Nationalists denounce U.S. firms for "exploiting" the countries with investments, then charge that the U.S. hinders industrialization when its investors hold back. The U.S. was roundly condemned 13 years ago for intervening in Argentina when its ambassador criticized Dictator Juan Peron, is today condemned for not having intervened against Venezuelan Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez.

But Nixon found out that anti-U.S. feeling is rooted in more than the emotional and the irrational. Since World War II, the U.S. has scored bad errors in policy, diplomacy and economic relations.

Dictator-Coddling & Neglect. The charge that most impressed Nixon is that the U.S. has let itself seem more and more the friend of hated dictators. Thrown in his face again and again were such questions as, "Why did Eisenhower give Perez Jimenez the Legion of Merit? Why was that ruthless dictator admitted to the U.S. with such ease after he fell?" Nixon concluded that his unhappy reception in Caracas was a direct result of "ten years of dictatorship" associated in the public mind with the U.S.

Nixon also found poor performance in Latin American diplomacy -what Latinos call "blah-blah" Pan-Americanism. The Presidents' Conference in Panama in 1956, sponsored and attended by President Eisenhower, is scorned as "just a gesture" by U.S. friends such as Galo Plaza. Except for Communist crises -the Red threat to Guatemala -Secretary of State Dulles is virtually inaccessible to hemisphere diplomats for serious discussions. He is criticized for staying at the 1954 Tenth Inter-American Conference in Caracas just long enough to jam through an anti-Communist resolution, and fly home, leaving the question of economic relations, dear to the hearts of the other delegations, to be handled by subordinates.

Dulles says: "Never before in history has the U.S. paid as much attention to its Latin American relations." As evidence, he cited his practice during world crises of personally briefing the Latin American representatives on developments. But with something close to unanimity, Latin Americans look back with nostalgia to the first years of Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy when U.S. isolationism from the rest of the world made an exception of the hemisphere.

Economic Strains. Economically, the U.S. is under fire in Latin America as heedless, preachy and discriminating. Like it or not, the U.S. is involved in improving the lot of a people half of whom never slept in a bed, never had enough to eat, never went to school. To this revolution of expectations, the U.S. contributed the vision -the good life seen in American movies and magazines -and is expected to help realize it. Galo Plaza recalled last week that "in the small shop at my farm near Quito 15 years ago, the staples sold to the Indians were brown sugar, salt and local cigarettes. Today the Indians want and can buy mineral water, Bromo-Seltzer, Lucky Strikes, aspirin and Coca-Cola."

The revolution needs capital -and Latin America feels shortchanged as compared to European and Asian countries, some of them former enemies. Of total U.S. aid and loans, Europe received $18.8 billion, Asia $4.3 billion, Latin America $2.9 billion. Of the $3.6 billion voted by the House last week, Latin America got just $100 million. In 1957 straight loans to Latin America by the Export-Import Bank, chief U.S. lending agency to the area, were only a little more than half the 1953 figure.

For the last few years the U.S. has replied to such appeals mainly by urging the virtues of the free-market economy. From the Latin American view this amounts to hypocrisy; the U.S. maintains artificial levels for its own farm commodities by price supports at home and dumping surpluses abroad. And free-market fluctuations can nearly wreck such one-product economies (see BUSINESS) as that of Chile (copper), Peru (lead and zinc), Brazil and Colombia (coffee). Moreover, the prices of the manufactures Latin America buys from the U.S. stay high.

The U.S. also appears preachy in its doctrinaire insistence that Latin American countries make private foreign capital more welcome. The Latinos think they have as much right to operate a mixed economy, combining public and private capital, as the U.S. or Canada. Says Brazilian Editor Hernane Tavares de Sa: "You make loans for railroads, for docks, for industry. Why can't you make a loan to our government oil company? Can't you understand -we want to exploit our oil ourselves? To everybody in Brazil, it looks like oil companies are dictating your Government policy."

As a lightning rod for a sudden series of bolts of discontent, Nixon's tour served a useful purpose, although the purpose was ironically different from the "good will" that was its original goal. His ordeal showed that international Communists had invaded the hemisphere with a vengeance and were capable of precise, cold-war operations in South America. It also showed that they were capable of spitting on a woman, an act that would cost them heavily in a continent that prizes manners. Latin Americans got a lesson in the excesses of nationalism. And for the U.S., there could no longer be illusions, complacency or high-level brushoff in U.S.Latin American relations.

This week in Venezuela, in the wake of the Red-led anti-Nixon riots, Communism turned into a full-blown political issue. Reflecting the outrage of the Roman Catholic Church and other conservative factions, the two civilian members of the ruling junta -Industrialist Eugenio Mendoza and Civil Engineer Bias Lamberti -demanded enforcement of Venezuela's anti-Red law to curb the burgeoning Communist Party. The three military members, reflecting the unrealistic tolerance of all major politicians, refused. Mendoza and Lamberti quit, bringing on a tense political crisis.

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