Sunny, Then Chile

"Is the U.S. ready to treat Latin America's 20 nations as equals, strengthening her flank in a great and historic continental combination?" This question dominated the official Peronista press as Henry Holland's airplane landed in Buenos Aires. As part of the process of answering, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State next morning talked privately with Juan Peron. Whatever the Secretary said (in fluent, Mexican-accented Spanish) and heard, the chat set a sunny tone for his visit.

At a banquet the night before he left, Holland offered a rich, buttery toast to Peron: "A great American, a great Argentine--" Peron ordered out his personal DC-4 to take Holland to Chile, and the Peronista press wrote: "We received Mr. Holland with a question. His attitude these past three days has been a full and satisfactory reply."

By contrast, the tone of Holland's visit to Chile was somber and serious. President Carlos Ibanez, bucking an anti-Administration majority in Congress, has been helpless to curb Chile's feverish inflation. Of a comprehensive economic program he offered. Congress passed only a sales tax. Unionists, 520,000 strong (in a country of 6,100,000), reacted to that with strikes. Starting in August, copper miners closed down the big mining industry, and government revenues from copper exports vanished. Ibanez forced the miners back to work by threatening to draft them into the army. Last week, fearing further inflationary walkouts, he decreed a mild form of martial law that empowers the government to arrest its opponents, unless they are Congressmen.

In four hours with Ibanez and his chief ministers, Holland got a restrained rundown on Chile's plight. They asked for no U.S. aid, but Chilean economists later told him that at November's hemisphere conference in Rio they will seek creation of a new development-loan bank and price supports for Latin American raw materials. Holland spoke up for broadened trade and private investments, and departed, soberly, for Bolivia.

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