Hitler in the Jungle

In Buenos Aires last week appeared a delegation from Presidencia Roque Saenz Pena, chief city of Argentina's cotton belt. To a Government already well-nigh frantic over the country's economic troubles the delegation put one more problem. Rains had ruined half the cotton crop, last hope of that curiously international, politically chaotic, economically devastated region known as the Argentine Chaco.

The Argentine Chaco is in the far north of the country, a subtropical continuation of the pampas. Few regions, even in Argentina, have been so nearly ruined by economic dislocation. Almost at a standstill are exports of quebracho bark and the tanning extract derived from it, and of the Chaco's famed, strange-sounding woods: algarrobo, lapacho, guayabo, guayacdn, caranday, ybird-pyita, nandubay, aguai, tatane, palo santo, palo de rosa, palo de lanza. And the "white gold," cotton, has proved fool's gold.

Even before the rains came, the Chaco had lost hope in cotton. Years ago credits were granted freely by the Government, by cotton manufacturers and brokers, by company-store almaceneros. These credits lured to the region the strange mixture of Central European immigrants who now make up the vast majority of the Chaco's population. But efforts to specialize the cotton failed; Chaco cotton had to compete in a glutted world market for cheap, ungraded cotton. Then war cut off one of the few sure markets, Germany. Calls came for interest payments that could not be met. Some people gave up, wandered off as homeless pickers. As land prices collapsed, others rebelled.

Robin Hood in the Jungle. Among those who rebelled was Segundo David Peralta, a bookbinder from Tucuman, who took to the jungle with a band that soon grew to 30 or 40 members. Objects of his wrath were the brokers and big companies, who not only dictated sales prices but sometimes charged as much as 30% interest on loans. Sweeping out of the jungle in organized forays, Mate Cosido* and his well-armed men have staged at least seven big holdups, netting over 90,000 pesos ($21,420). He distributes the loot among the neediest farmers and pickers, thereby assuring himself concealment.

Misery in the Jungle. Presidencia Roque Saenz Pena, 25 years ago a railway car on a Chaco siding, is today a city of 25,000 souls. Typical of the region is its population: 90% foreign-born, 80% Slavic. Its mayor, blond, blue-eyed, Jewish Jose Pavlotzky, was until recently one of the most popular characters in the Chaco.

But the Jews, Germans, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Russians (White & Red), Spaniards (Republican & Francoist), Italians, Croats, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Argentines, who were once united in a brotherhood of opposition to the cotton companies, have been torn apart by Nazi propaganda. The German organization, Opferring, enrolls not only Germans but Argentines, Poles, Ukrainians, Slovaks and Russians. The German Winterhilfe, for needy German colonists, gives very real help to farmers and croppers of other races. So people who once had nothing but dislike for the Nazi regime are beginning to say publicly that Hitler must be a great humanitarian because he helps people in the faraway Chaco while the Government in Buenos Aires does nothing.

Skillful propaganda, coupled with this aid, makes capital of the Chaco's misery. And the misery is real. Presidencia Roque Saenz Pena has 4.000 people on relief at $1.50 per person per year. Cosecheros (Argentina's Okies) pour in to work in the fields, but less than one-fourth of them find work. Company-store prices are double to treble the prices at ordinary stores, and the cosecheros are paid in bonos, valid only at these stores.

Good Neighbor's Problem. What the Argentine Government would do to help the Chaco was not known last week. The delegation that went to Buenos Aires suggested lowering the tree-felling tax to cut costs so that quebracho users would buy for inventory, thereby absorbing some of the unemployed in the quebracho industry. That would alleviate a little of the misery.

With the Argentine winter coming on, every colonist the Winterhilfe helps is a candidate for conversion to Naziism. Furthermore the colonists do not forget that Germany was their best customer before the war, that Spain recently contracted for 120,000 bales of cotton. If the U.S. wants to keep European Fascism out of South America, it may have to take corresponding action.

* Authorities differ on the spelling and significance of Peralta's nickname. Spelled Mate Cocido, it means brewed yerba mate, a native tea, on which the bandit lived during a prison term. Spelled Mate Cosido, it refers to a wound Peralta got in a brush with police, means, in slang, Sutured Conk.

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