Catching Fire

Most good will visits are forgotten as soon as the dignitaries depart, the confetti is swept up, and the trucked-in crowds are trucked back where they came from. But President John Kennedy's three-day foray into Latin America seemed to be leaving a somewhat more lasting imprint. Those who saw him, in Caracas and Bogota, appeared genuinely touched by his charm, his obvious good intentions, his interest in them, and his pretty young wife. But more important, they--and indeed the entire hemisphere--responded to a message he brought.

Journeying south to ignite the still uncaught fires of the Alliance for Progress, Kennedy said the expected things, and want beyond platitudes in declaring that violence and tyranny could not do as well as democratic methods in reforming society. That part of his message, with its implied indictment of Castro, he put most clearly at a state dinner in Bogota. Warning against "those who tell us that the only road to economic progress is by violent Communist revolution," Kennedy pointed to Western Europe, free and prosperous, and then to the contrast of Eastern Europe, grim, grey and captive. "They promise free elections and free speech and freedom of religion. But once power is achieved, elections are eliminated, speech is stifled, and the worship of God is prohibited."

"We Must Prove." To Latin America's millions of miserably poor, Kennedy declared challengingly, "We must prove that free institutions can best answer their implacable demand for social justice, for food, for material welfare and, above all, for a new hope--hope for themselves and for their children."

Kennedy freely admitted that in the past the U.S. had made "many mistakes" in its Latin American relations. That gave him license to ask bluntly for a similar admission from others. "The leaders of Latin America, the industrialists and the landowners are, I am sure, also ready to admit past mistakes and accept new responsibilities," said Kennedy, and he added: "For unless they are willing to contribute your resources to national development, unless they are prepared not merely to accept, but to initiate, basic land and tax reforms, unless they take the lead in improving the welfare of the people of your country--then that leadership will be taken away from them, and the heritage of centuries of Western civilization will be consumed in a few months of violence."

Warm Response. It was not the kind of message to go down well among some well-off Latinos, who are not in an initiating mood, but the message got a good reception among the campesinos Kennedy wanted to reach and won him the warmest press response given a U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, to whom he was often compared.

Completely won over, Brazil's influential 0 Estado de Sao Paulo called Kennedy's visit "one of the greatest events in the history of the American hemisphere. He is a real soldier, a soldier of peace.'' "A patriotic crusade," cried Mexico City's Ultimas Noticias, and even some sections of the Yankee-baiting press changed their tone. In Buenos Aires, a powerful, anti-Yankee Peronista leader was forced to admit: "After Bogota's clear and courageous speech, there is nothing to do but applaud and support Kennedy and his alianza all the way."

As the ripples spread out. Argentina's President Arturo Frondizi made a special point of scheduling a stopover in Florida for an "informal chat" with Kennedy on his way home from a Far Eastern tour. In Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico, there were stirrings about wanting a Kennedy visit soon. Confetti and speeches do not a firm alliance make, but the beginnings were promising.

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