"The Problem of Our Time"

As recently as five years ago, a birth-control conference would have been unthinkable in South America. Yet there it was last week, in Colombia's rising industrial city of Cali, and on hand for the discussions were 70 edu cators, sociologists, medical men, government welfare workers, demographers and Catholic priests from 20 countries. "The problem of our time," said former Colombian President Alberto Lleras Camargo, "is that through new drugs we have managed to control death. But we have not been able to control the giving of new life. And the result is a grave crisis of overcrowding, unemployment, slums, misery and violence." With an annual growth rate of 3.5% (v. about 2% for India and Red China), Latin America's population has ballooned to 240 million, and is expanding faster than any other in the world. In Venezuela, the population has doubled (to 8,400,000) in the past 20 years, compared with a U.S. increase of 39%. In the meantime, food production is rising only 2% a year, reflecting in part the heavy migration of peasants from the farm to the city. "Something must be done," warns Brazilian Economist Glycon de Paiva. "Without population control, any real economic development is impossible." Rhythm & Abortion. Part of the problem is Latin America's Roman Catholic tradition, which opposes any means of family regulation except the rhythm method. Unfortunately, that form of birth control has proved far too sophisticated for Latin America's widely uneducated masses. Another factor is machismo, a he-man complex that makes sexual prowess and large families--in or out of wedlock--a matter of male pride. In some areas of Latin America, a man who has fathered only five or six children may be regarded by his friends as something of a laggard, if not bordering on impotence. Many women resort to abortion as a form of birth control. For every birth in Uruguay, there are three abortions. In Brazil, some 2,000,000 women a year have abortions. Argentina has even begotten an industry of 6,000 registered midwives, most of whom specialize in illegal abortions. "Some women," claims one Buenos Aires physician, "see nothing extraordinary in having four or five abortions." Pills & Clinics. Throughout Latin America, the church still opposes most forms of birth control. But in some areas, individual priests are quietly going their own way. In Venezuela and Peru, they are participating without fanfare in government information programs; in Colombia, one is helping pre pare films and slides for family planning. And in Brazil, some even dispense birth-control devices to peasants. Last November, Chile's President Eduardo Frei launched a massive birth-control campaign in Santiago's squalid shanty towns, setting up a dozen clinics to distribute contraceptive pills. In December, Peru's President Fernando Belaunde Terry set up a "Center for the Study of Population and Development" to analyze the country's population problems. In Brazil, a private foundation-sponsored group plans to organize about 600 birth-control information centers.across the country. To help countries help themselves, the Alliance for Progress is investing $1,400,000 this year in 30 cooperative population studies throughout the hemisphere. "Time is of the essence," says former Alianza Deputy Coordinator William Rogers, who last year created a "population unit" within the Alianza. "As the population expands in Latin America, programs and efforts that in one decade might have enormous consequences for the future may be too little and too late a decade hence."

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