Look Left, Look Right

Aside from Cuba's predictable rage, the angriest reaction to the decisions taken at Punta del Este last week came not from the left but from the right. Returning home from the 21-nation conference at the Uruguayan seaside resort, the foreign ministers of the nations that had been willing to talk but not vote against Castro heard from some bitterly disappointed elements of their press and public.

Arriving in Quito, Ecuador's Foreign Minister faced expulsion from his strongly anti-Communist party. In Rio the anti-Castro press was in an uproar and a group of Deputies wanted to haul Foreign Minister Francisco San Thiago Dantas on the carpet to explain himself. Nowhere was the clamor louder than in Argentina, where the outraged leaders of the three military services threatened to overturn the government of President Arturo Frondizi.

Traditionally dominant--and conservative--in Argentine politics, the military had made things hot for Frondizi last August when he entertained Cuban Economic Czar "Che" Guevara at a private meeting. Now the three service chiefs, Army Secretary Brigadier General Rosendo M. Fraga, the navy's Rear Admiral Gaston C. Clement and the air force's Brigadier General Jorge Rojas Silveyra, accused Frondizi of "reneging" on his promise to take a firm stand against Cuba. They demanded that he fire his Foreign Minister and break diplomatic relations with Cuba forthwith.

Frondizi has survived 34 full-scale crises in his 3 1/2 years in office, and seems to have an instinctive sense of how much ballast to throw overboard in order to stay afloat. He conspicuously ordered home his Ambassador to Cuba, and apparently that was enough. But as a large section of Buenos Aires' press continued to deplore Argentina's performance at Punta del Este ("Lamentable," "Deplorable," "We are ashamed"), the military chiefs stood firm. Eventually, Frondizi gave in, or seemed to. In a communique he insisted that Argentina was not "breaking solidarity," that it fully agreed about "the absolute incompatibility of the Marxist-Leninist regime with the Inter-American system," and that his government would "comply strictly" with the majority decision at Punta del Este.

Next day, possibly to forestall a similar explosion from the left, Argentina's nimble President turned around, in a defiant speech defended Argentina's go-slow approach to the Cuban problem. Frondizi blamed "reactionary sectors" in the U.S. for conspiring with "their direct and indirect agents in Latin American countries to foster insurrection against the national governments which fight for the dignity and independence of their peoples."

It was this careful weighing of domestic politics in two of Latin America's greatest states that finally shaped the dialogue of the diplomats at Punta del Este.

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