Stones--and a Warning

In Lima's broad and sunny central plaza, the Vice President of the U.S. reverently laid at the base of a monument to Liberator Josee San Martin a wreath whose entwined flowers depicted the Peruvian and U.S. flags. Outwardly Richard Nixon was at ease and confident; inwardly he had to consider warnings from Peruvian police and his own security people to skip the next stop on his program, Lima's 400-year-old University of San Marcos.

As Nixon pondered, Communist Student Leader Gustavo Valcarcel and about 2,000 party-line followers were boldly trying to slam shut the school's main gates, only to be foiled by a disapproving majority of the students. Valcaarcel redeployed his hot-eyed troops, in the street, barring entrance to San Marcos, and waited.

"Go Home, Viper!" The wreath-laying over, Nixon said to his Secret Service chief: "We are going to San Marcos." Soon his white convertible neared the sweating demonstrators, whose faces twisted with hatred as they cried, "Nixon is a viper!" Nixon turned to an aide, said: "I think we ought to take it on," got out of the car. He briskly shook some outstretched hands, shouted over the angry roar: "I came to talk with you! Have your leader come out and talk."

What came, instead of Communist Valcaarcel, was a shower of stones. One grazed Nixon's neck. "Go home, Nixon!" a youth screamed into the Vice President's ear. "I'll go home," Nixon answered, "but first why don't you come and talk with me? You are cowards! Come here and talk." But by then, stones had hit some of Nixon's aides. He withdrew. Valcarcel & Co. stampeded to the Plaza San Martin and shredded the flowers that formed the U.S. flag in the wreath. Catching up with Nixon again as he walked toward his hotel, they spat on him and threw garbage.

For violence and discourtesy, Nixon's reception at San Marcos set melancholy records. But it differed only in degree and cynically competent organization from student reaction in Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia, and the international Communist pattern was plain to see. The leaflet-spread slurs at the Vice President, e.g., "Nixon Dog!", the party-line taunts, e.g., "Insolent representative of monopolistic trusts," "What about the Negroes in the South?", and the phony causes, e.g., "Free Puerto Rico," *were everywhere the same. The aim: implanting throughout the world the propaganda theme of hatred for the U.S. in its own backyard.

Neglected Neighbors. Real grievances as well as Communist leadership went into South America's anti-Nixon demonstrations, and Peru (pop. 9,900,000) has its share of troubles. Historically, Peru is a firm U.S. ally. Conservative President Manuel Prado is pro-U-S.--and so is the big, left-of-center APRA Party, which in a marriage of convenience put Prado into office two years ago.

But except for a small, close-knit oligarchy, Peru is poor; laborers in Lima get $1 a day. Poverty breeds envy of the rich U.S., and a distrust of capitalism. Noted Nixon after a look at Peru: "South America is not going to support a system of free enterprise if the system appears designed primarily to maintain the status quo and protect the wealth and good life for the few." The U.S. has also suffered prestige setbacks from Sputnik and Little Rock, and from its take-'em-for-granted attitude toward its hemisphere neighbors. Latin Americans widely credit the U.S. with favoring hated strongmen; Venezuela is currently irked because Washington gave a U.S. visa to ex-Dictator Marcos Peerez Jimeenez.

To these smoldering grudges, the U.S. recession has added new coals. Peru, for example, fears Congress' threat to raise lead and zinc tariffs, which would throw 35,000 Peruvian miners out of jobs and slash the country's dollar supply. The Communists, exploiting the anti-U.S. opening, have raised the membership of their illegal party to more than 30,000.

Vanished Blandness. After the stones flew, most of Peru was embarrassed; NIXON STONED IN PERU headlines contrasted markedly with the fun-and-games note of his visits earlier in the week to Paraguay and Bolivia. Lima's Foreign Ministry sent Nixon its regrets, and the San Marcos Student Federation condemned the attack as "barbaric." Nixon deplored the "violent and vocal minority that denied freedom of expression, without which no institution of learning deserves the word 'great.'" In Ecuador, where he went next, university students, traditionally anti-Peruvian, elaborately pointed out to Nixon that Ecuadorian manners are better. This week in Colombia, a crowd cheered him at the airport, but a Communist-led squad of students burned his picture outside his hotel.

The Vice President's fifth foreign tour could no longer be a bland good-will mission in the manner of his round-the-world trip of 1953 or his visits to the Caribbean in 1955, the Far and Near East in 1956, Africa in 1957. The dividends instead would be the fair warning of Communist progress in Latin America and of the urgent need for U.S. attention, plus the admiration that Dick Nixon earned by his own show of calmness and courage.

*A "free, associated commonwealth" under the U.S. flag, Puerto Rico has a standing offer of independence from the U.S., has chosen 2 to 1 in elections to retain its present status.

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