Arabian Nights in B.A.

The "Committee of 21"--delegates from the U.S. and its 20 neighbor republics of the hemisphere--met in Buenos Aires last week to talk once again of Latin American economic development. To the U.S., the Latin American spokesmen said in effect: The gulf between your standard of living and ours is so broad that it threatens liberty and democracy in our countries. The U.S. reply: We deplore the gap, and last year sent $736 million in aid to close it. But you must help by showing some of the initiative that enabled our 13 original colonies to build from poverty to prosperity.

Taxpayers: Rich . . . The committee grew out of the "Operation Pan America'' that Brazil's President Juscelino Kubitschek proposed last June as a way of repairing the damage done by the stones flung at U.S. Vice President Nixon in Lima and Caracas one year ago. Kubitschek's idea man and delegate, Augusto Frederico Schmidt, frankly sees the committee as one more chance for Latin America to play Scheherazade to the U.S.'s sultan. "Every night," explained Schmidt, "we have to tell the U.S. a story so that we can continue to live. Perhaps after a thousand and one nights a happy marriage will result."

The tone of the Latin American speakers at last week's meeting verged on the desperate. Said Argentine President Arturo Frondizi: "The destiny of democracy is at stake." Cuba's Fidel Castro dramatically showed up and won cheers with a blatant demand for $30 billion over a ten-year period. "I realize this means a sacrifice for the U.S. taxpayer," he cried. "But they are so much richer than we are."

... Or Burdened? The U.S. has done much. Last year the lending power of the Export-Import Bank (which does 40% of its business in Latin America) was boosted from $5 billion to $7 billion. The U.S. agreed before last week's meeting to contribute a major share in the initial $1 billion capitalization of a new Inter-American Development Bank. But the U.S.'s Delegate Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, pointing to "the very heavy burden which the American taxpayer today bears in order to create a defensive shield for the U.S. and for the hemisphere," urged Latin Americans to woo private capital.

Chile's Hernan Videla Lira raised the menace of Red trade. "Moscow," he said, "has definitely stated that it is attempting the economic conquest of the free world and, in this way, imposition of its political conditions." But despite hundreds of proposed deals--including 176 to Brazil alone in 1958--Iron-and Bamboo-Curtain trade runs around only 1% of Latin America's total. And Communist loans to all of Latin America so far total only $8,000,000.

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