Mission to Rio

Secretary of State Dean Acheson will pay his first official visit to Latin America next month. Accompanied by Edward G. Miller, his personable assistant for hemisphere affairs, Acheson will fly to Rio de Janeiro on a good-will mission.

One purpose of Acheson's trip is to assure Latin American countries that the U.S. has not forgotten them. Latinos vividly remember the days of Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles, when contacts between the U.S. and its sister republics were closely maintained at the top level. On the strength of such relations, the U.S. drew heavily on Latin America in World War II for essential raw materials, afterwards worked with the Latino delegates in founding the U.N. and in establishing, at Rio in 1947, a regional security system that became the model for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But as the U.S. devoted more time to the Korean war and European rearmament, high-level U.S.-Latin American exchanges became less frequent. Latinos have not been happy about it. One result: they have not cooperated in the Korean war as U.S. and U.N. officials had hoped they would.

Under Dictator Getulio Vargas, Brazil was a loyal ally in World War II, providing air bases and sending a 25,000-man unit to fight on the Italian front. Now Vargas is back as Brazil's constitutionally elected President, but his country has held back from joining U.N. forces in Korea. Recently, at a time when a special U.S. mission was in Rio to talk over important development, loans, his administration decreed money-transfer regulations considered irksome to foreign investors. Acheson and his advisers believe it is high time to re-establish personal contacts between Vargas and top U.S. officials. The Secretary's visit, they expect, will open the way for a state visit by President Vargas to the U.S. later this year.

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