Triumph in Bogota

A dozen years after George Marshall went to Bogota and bluntly told the U.S.'s Latin American neighbors that as compared to Europe they had no priority for U.S. aid, the U.S. last week returned to the same city and picked up the pieces. On this occasion, the third meeting of the two-year-old Committee of 21 on economic development, Washington sent its best delegation in Latin American memory, headed by Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon, who brought along the new $500 million Eisenhower plan.

The meeting opened against a background of Castro-incited unrest, as 400 raging demonstrators tried futilely to charge the hall. Next day the ranking critic of the U.S., Brazilian Delegation Chief Augusto Frederico Schmidt, led off by charging that the Eisenhower plan--which is devoted to such social objectives as low-cost housing, improved education, land reform--is not enough. Schmidt, Brazil's gruff businessman-poet, is the man who devised Brazil's Operation Pan American, a much more grandiose idea. Said he: "We cannot eliminate the old enemies of this hemisphere with temporary tactics." Was $500 million all the U.S. planned to spend for social reform? Did the Eisenhower plan mean that the U.S. was abandoning basic, long-range attempts to raise productivity? Would the U.S. provide longterm, low-interest capital loans repayable in the area's soft currencies?

Erasing the Doubts. The prestigious U.S. delegation, headed by Dillon and including U.S. Inter-American Development Bank Director Robert Cutler, ICA Latin American Chief Rollin Atwood, Development Loan Fund Managing Director Vance Brand, Assistant Treasury Secretary Graydon Upton, listened, argued, learned. Dillon's speech erased most of the Latin Americans' doubts.

"Our fundamental task at Bogota," said Dillon, "is to outline the route by which the peoples of the Americas can achieve the material progress they desire without any sacrifice of fundamental freedoms. We must bring fresh hope to the less privileged, help them to replace a hovel with a home, to acquire ownership of land." The Eisenhower plan is only "a first step. We expect to continue our support with new funds." He spoke directly to Schmidt's fears: The new social reform program is "in addition to, and not in substitution for, assistance for basic economic and industrial development."

Never before at an inter-American conference had the U.S. coupled such exalted goals with such hard promises of hard cash--loans for long terms, loans at low interest, loans in both hard and soft moneys, loans for social development. Dillon and his men sought out the delegates, spelled out the changed U.S. posture. They urged the Latin Americans to create an attractive climate for foreign investors and local capitalists, but made it clear that Washington no longer insists on private capital as the all-purpose solution for development woes.

Blocking the Cubans. By the end of the second day, Ecuador called for a Latin American vote of thanks to the U.S. Oldtime Critic Schmidt joined in: "Brazil is grateful to the U.S." Dillon walked around the meeting table in Bogota's Military Club, seized Schmidt in a back-patting hug as delegates applauded.

Cuba's contribution to the meeting was a proposal by Harvard-educated Economy Minister Regino Boti that Latin Americans finance their development by confiscating the $9 billion in U.S. private investments. Complained Boti: Dillon's proposal was the same old "palliative to blind the people to U.S. aggression." At this, Colombia's Development Minister stood up and said: "It has been said by a delegate that there is nothing new in the U.S. position. Nothing could be further removed from reality." At week's end, with its work almost finished, Bogota was shaping up as the best week's work by the U.S. in Latin America since the war.

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