Role of the Spokesman

A most pragmatic politician-statesman is Argentine President Arturo Frondizi, a man whose goals, once set, stay set. Characteristically, the goals Frondizi set for his journey to the U.S. and the U.N. last week were rigid--but realistic. He was determined to convince highly placed North Americans of his unwavering commitment to Western democracy, and he aimed to convince them that his kind of Argentina is worth helping. At the U.N. he resolved to cement his role as the independent-minded spokesman for Latin America now that Brazil's Janio Quadros has come a cropper. Frondizi could count the trip a success on both scores.

"Frank & Blunt." A "breakfast meeting" with President Kennedy stretched nearly into lunch, and the talk--called "frank and blunt" by an official--was plainly fascinating. Frondizi thanked Kennedy for past U.S. aid, outlined future needs. Unlike many such pleas, Argentina's request was backed by accomplishment. Maneuvering his way past leftist and nationalist road blocks, Frondizi opened the government-monopoly oilfields to private foreign companies; in two years they produced so much oil that Argentina no longer spends $300 million annually on petroleum, even has the beginnings of an exportable surplus. Frondizi is unloading wasteful, government-run enterprises from lumber mills to shipyards, has ordered featherbedders slashed from the government's railways. Foreign currency reserves are up sharply; unemployment is virtually wiped out. At the end of three hours and 20 minutes of talk, Kennedy was visibly impressed with both Frondizi and his record. Said the U.S. President to his Argentine guest: "Now I know why you've been able to survive so long."

Nothing Hostile. In his performance at the U.N. General Assembly, Frondizi was no less adroit, carefully tuning his remarks to his audience. He quickly identified himself with the world's underdeveloped nations ("No backward country is fully independent"); he showed proper concern about Castro's Cuba by calling for "representative democracy in the entire American continent," then softened the sting by again insisting on absolute nonintervention.* As for the cold war, said Frondizi, "when we proclaim the fact that we are members of the Western and Christian world, we are not doing so in order to create antagonistic blocs or pit one group of nations against another."

The speech sounded fine at home, where Argentines felt an unaccustomed pride in their austere, crisis-ridden and not very popular President. Nor did it hurt when Frondizi showed himself highly human by ducking out of his hotel one evening, taking a taxi over to Broadway and 46th Street. He dropped into a cafeteria, ordered a steak and a beer, then strolled on Broadway, licking an ice-cream cone and rubbernecking like any tourist.

* He also catered to Cuba by playing down a newly discovered batch of Cuban diplomatic documents detailing plans for undermining Argentina's givernment.

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