SOUTH AMERICAN SET-UP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 252, 21 April 1944, Page 12

SOUTH AMERICAN SET-UP

A Continent Where Everything Is. "Pro Tem OT Africa now, but South America, is the Dark Continent. It is true that news flashes, mainly concerning revolutions, successful or abortive, keep coming from there off and on. But they are of the brief and separated sort that only accentuate obscurity. Generally they refer to generals (some, very ~ strangely, with English names) who appear pro-Axis in one cable and pro-Ally in the next. Somehow, the United States comes in, too, "recognising" a Government in the morning.and in the afternoon cutting it in the street. And all this ig not normal local politics, we are told-though goverment by revolution sounds just ordinary South American to many of us-but involves Axis intrigues and fateful issues for the entire planet. So our contributor, A.M.R., provides a little background information to help to decode these cryptic

and a forest-that is South America reduced to its lowest terms. But the forest is the thickest, wettest, least inhabited and most extensive in the world-the entire Amazon basin, which, penetrable to-day only by mile-wide tributaries and the creek-tunnels up which the Indian rubber-prospector snakes his canoe, may possibly remain uncoriquered by mankind when Antarctica and the Sahara are already tamed. The range is also the world’s greatest, being exceeded in height by only the Himalayas, and is 4000 miles long, In places it swells into wide plateaux: as that around Quito, where, dead on the Equator, perpetual spring reigns between the Avenue of Volcanoes: and as that in Bolivia where the copper inhabitants of a treasure-house of metals look down at the clouds instead of up at them, put coats on when entering their houses and take them off to go out, and navigate their 150-mile-long lake in boats built of rushes, since it is miles above the tree-line. Culturally, South America is more homogeneous than any continent except Australia: Approximately half its area is takett by the United States of Brazil, Portuguese-speaking, but inhabited by reptesentatives of every race on earth. What we call "America" the Brazilians call "The United States of North America,’ a reminder to us that their own country is larger than the U.S.A. and potentially more productive. The Spanish-speaking half of South America consists first of the Pampas countries of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay centred round the Rio Grande de la Plata (Great River of the Plains), and second, the line of Indian-blooded republics that perch along the Andes, heads in the clouds, toes in the Pacific, and coat-tails dangling into the Amazonian stream. Everywhere South Americans tend to be poor, primitive, and chronically ill, Everywhere, except in the great modern cities at the one extreme and in the naked jungle villages at the other, they live as peons under landlords always proud and often wealthy. Everywhere idealistic military politicians rule with one @ye on their rivals’ intrigues inside the army and the other on foreign bankers. And everywhere underfoot, either in minerals or in the soil, slumbers great wealth. ; : Such a country is just made to be mine and market for imperial states. Naturally, therefore, the "have-not" gov- _ ernments sought here the colonial opportunities denied them elsewhere. With A PLAIN, a mountain range,

air, press, and radio services they pioneered an entry. By organising their fellow-countrymen who were already settled, they created "blocs" large enough to be sought after by the local politicians. (There are more Italians in Buenos Aires than in Rome, while Brazil has five million Germans and the only extensive Japanese colony in the world.) Trains and Trams for Food However, they were far from being first in the field. Foreigners had already nine billion pesos invested in Argentina alone, five and a-half billion of these being British (say £25,000,000). All Argentine railways and trams were Bri-tish-owned, The telephone system was Ametican. The canning and freezing works-as essential to Argentine life as daity factories are here-were British or American. These investments do not necessarily imply exploitation in the sinister sense, since without them South America’s export industries would never have developed and Rio and Buenos Aires would still be villages without water or sewerage (let alone telephones and electric power) instead of two of the world’s gteat cities. But they do, mean that neither Britain nor America was ptepared to see South American states become so much satellites of other Powers that they needed no further Anglo-American loans and could therefore with impunity default on those already ‘(continued on next page)

contracted. The temperate countries, Argentina and Uruguay, were moreover an essential source of food for Britain, and the tropical republics at least highly desirable suppliers of North America. Local Rivalries But the South American scene is nothing so simple as a bare battlefield between rival imperialisms, Local states have their own quarrels, as complicated and fierce as those of any backblocks village. For example, Brazil and Argentina have fought over what is now Uruguay. Bolivia was deprived of a corridor to the Pacific, and Peru and Chile fought over the spoils. Paraguay and Bolivia fought just before this war an almost’ incredibly primitive and bloody . series of campaigns for the Gran Chaco "desert." The local contest which complicates current news is that between Brazil and Argentina for the leadership of the continent. It finds expression in Argentine talk about "when Brazil invades us"meaning, as usual with such statements, "when we invade Brazil"; for all Argentina’s wealth is her top soil, and "patriots" accordingly dream of a lightning amputation of the southern tip of their neighbour’s enormous iron fields "to restore continental balance." It is this same jealousy that is behind Argentina’s resentment against the United States’ arming of Brazil-an unfriendly act "upsetting the continental balance,"

and they declare that is "bound to start a South American armaments race." The recent series of revolutions within Argentina’s neighbours (successful in Bolivia, unsuccessful in Paraguay) are simply an attempt to swing the balance back by acquiring, through puppet regimes, control of the Bolivian metals which the Indian President Penaranda had premised to the United Nations. And here too we will find almost full explanation of the three revolutions within six months inside Argentina itself that have exasperated the Allied leaders and bewildered their publics. David and Goliath It will not give us of itself a true explanation, even upon the background already sketched, because one further element in South American affairs yet remains to be mentioned. This is the temper of the Argentine people which makes them a pastoral David searching round for the right stone to slay (or at least drive across the Carribean) the Goliath of the North. It is a clash between two "missions"-that of the U.S.A. to protect (and curb) her little Latin protegees, and that of Argentina to lead her Latin brothers. Materially speaking, the United States is of course overwhelmingly the stronger. But Argentina has on her side suspicions of the Yanquis, dating from American annexation of half Mexico, occupation of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and Marine policing -E

of Nicaragua, which Roosevelt’s "Good Neighbour Policy" has not yet dissipated. Further, Buenos Aires, comparatively "white" and climatically energetic by South American standards, is indeed the publishing centre already of the world’s extensive Spanish culture, and may claim, now that France and Italy are defeated states, to head the Latin countries. Finally Argentina is in popular feeling overwhelmingly Radical (i.e. Liberal), although ruled with only token elections since 1930 by military representatives of the landowning caste. ’ The South American news, and especially that from Argentina, reads so queerly at present, and is so impossible to understand in terms merely of Proand Anti-Axis, because all these crisscrossing strands of desire have woven a net to break out of which no politician has yet succeeded. Because Castillo’s anti-American policy was depriving Argentina of the arms that Brazil was getting, Arturo Rawson threw him out last June. But when the United States weighed the reactionary composition of the new cabinet heavier than their proAllied words, their military comrade Ramirez had to throw them out in turn and "take steps" towards shutting the German Embassy. But the psychological necessity not to accept United States States "instruction" diverted these steps from reaching their goal. Then another (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) revolution became essential and now General Farrell rules-pro tem. Everything is pro tem. in South America until the Future arrives as, their own proverb to tha contrary notwithstanding, one day

} it will.

A.M.

R.