Reverse Peace Corps

The U.S., which invented foreign aid and made it a permanent pillar of the nation's foreign policy, is about to savor the taste of bread cast upon waters. From Buenos Aires came word that, beginning next month, 15 altruistic Argentines will arrive in the U.S. to begin a Peace Corps in reverse, dedicated to the eradication of poverty, ignorance and disease in North America.

The Argentine contingent, made up entirely of girls, will be the first arrivals of some 100 "Volunteers to America" recruited from Asia, Africa and Latin America. They are coming to the U.S. in response to an invitation implicit in a 1966 message to Congress by Lyndon Johnson: "Our nation has no better ambassadors than the young volunteers who serve in the Peace Corps. I propose that we welcome similar ambassadors to our shores." With domestic poverty programs already showing signs of anemia, the transfusion should be beneficial.

At the same time, the visitors have much to learn about a side of Yanqui life that gets little publicity south of the border. One of the group, for example, is Estela Devoto, 22, a brown-eyed, bang-topped daughter of a wealthy Buenos Aires architect, who has worked as a welfare volunteer and is eager to fight poverty in the rural U.S. Her only exposure to the countryside to date has been on her father's 8,000-acre estancia 250 miles from Buenos Aires, where she rides a caballo criollo--an Argentinian equivalent of the American cow pony--among a herd of 2,000 Aberdeen Angus. She will probably be assigned to Appalachia.

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