At Punta del Este

Glowing with radiant orange anticollision paint, a U.S. Air Force 707 jet lifted away from Andrews Air Force Base one morning last week and set course for South America. On board was Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon and his 35-man delegation to the vital Alliance for Progress conference at Punta del Este, Uruguay. The delegates carried a rough outline of the shape of the Alliance and a ringing challenge from President Kennedy: "The hopes of millions of people throughout the Americas rest to a very large extent on the success of your efforts." As their jet winged south-southeast, they well knew that success was by no means assured.

Visit to Janio. The trip was broken at Brasilia, where Dillon, on behalf of Kennedy, invited Brazil's President Janio Quadros to visit the U.S. in December (Quadros accepted). Then Dillon was off to Punta del Este, where trouble immediately showed its hairy face. Among the 1,400 delegates gathered in the seaside resort was Castro's left-hand man. Che Guevara, who could be expected to use every weapon in his well-stocked arsenal to confuse* and defeat what he terms the "Alliance for Exploitation."

Che's presence at the meeting might well boost one U.S. goal--to convince Latin America's conservatives that the time has come for real social and eco nomic reform. Open opposition to the aims of Kennedy's Alliance for Progress is scarce, but wealthy landowners in many Latin countries assume that talk of reform must apply to someone else. In Guatemala, opposition by coffee growers and businessmen has managed to kill Conservative President Manuel Ydigoras Fuentes' attempts to initiate a much-needed income tax. In El Salvador, where the contrast between the barefoot poor and the well-manored rich is extreme, the influential El Diario de Hoy editorialized: "The last thing we need is a social revolution; what we need is greater mechanization."

Increasing the Chapters. Protests are louder still in Chile. Reacting to a report by Presidential Envoy Adlai Stevenson that "economic stagnation continues in Chile," Minister of Mines Enrique Serrano put the blame on U.S. copper companies, announced that Congress would get a bill requiring the companies to 1) increase production by 15% yearly. 2) refine all their copper in Chile, 3) build housing for their workers. According to Santiago Radio Commentator Francisco Olivares. the Alliance for Progress could be very simply defined: "The Latin Americans have a problem, and the U.S. has a problem. The problem of the U.S. has two chapters--Cuba and the desire to gain friends. The Latin Americans' problem has only one chapter: dollars."

As the Punta del Este conference got under way late last week, it was obvious that many other chapters would be discussed. Opening the historic meeting, Chairman Victor Haedo of Uruguay's nine-man National Council called it a "rendezvous with duty." Said he: "We cannot waste an instant to resolve what may unite us. America is facing one of ithe gravest moments of its history."

*Some confusion in Castro's own ranks was created by the defection of the Cuban consuls general in Buenos Aires and Montevideo shortly before Che arrived. They resigned and asked for political asylum in Argentina.

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