Not So Simple

In an unusually critical speech, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico John Gavin recently warned journalists of the Inter-American Press Association of the dangers of a one-sided presentation of the issues in Central America. Excerpts:

It is difficult to read much of the [hemisphere's] press without concluding that the only intervention going on in the world is being carried out by 55 U.S. advisers in El Salvador. Never mind that there are several thousand [Cuban and East bloc] military advisers in Nicaragua. And 40,000 Cuban troops in Angola and Ethiopia. Never mind that there are well over 1 00,000 Soviet combatants attempting to impose a Communist regime on the unwilling people of Afghanistan. Never mind that U.S. rifles whose serial numbers identify them as equipment left behind by our troops in Viet Nam have been intercepted en route to insurgents in El Salvador. Those facts seem to be discarded.

I wonder if we can say with confidence that today the North American and Latin American press is not prey to manipulators. Throughout both continents, the charges by Cuba that freedom is threatened by dictators of the right is common fare for readers and watchers of the news, while [Fidel] Castro's prisons are full of poets and political dissidents.

I don't think the situation in El Salvador and Central America is a simple one. And I don't think I have to tell you that neither does my Government. We don't think that the problems there result simply from outside intervention. There are social and economic problems of long standing that must be resolved. We are seeking more economic aid for El Salvador than military aid. In Nicaragua, we would like to see . . . pluralism and representative democracy and freedom of the press. We do think that there is a chance for self-government to emerge in an area that has long lived without it. We regret the success that antidemocratic forces have had in convincing too many people that a Marxist-Leninist victory would amount to self-government, that guerrillas are always supported by the majority, that no civilian casualties are caused by the rebels and that leftist victories are always inevitable . . . We don't think that the declarations of the Nicaraguan junta, Soviet press agencies and Fidel Castro should go unexamined by the press. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.