Mann for the Job

It seemed hardly the thing for one Texan to do to another. But President Johnson went right ahead and handed to Thomas C. Mann, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, what has come to be considered the most miserable job in Washington: Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. Yet in choosing Mann, 51, Johnson did what most previous Presidents only talked about--he provided the power and backing needed if things are to get done.

Said the President: "Because I want Mr. Mann to be the one man in the Government to coordinate the policies of this hemisphere after consultation with the Secretary of State, I am going to make him not only the Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Latin American affairs, but Special Assistant to the President . . . We expect to speak with one voice on all matters affecting this hemisphere. Mr. Mann, with the support of the Secretary of State and the President, will be that voice."

Weight of Numbers. The words were among the most sensible any U.S. President has uttered about Latin America since Herbert Hoover proposed the Good Neighbor policy in 1928.* Until now, Inter-American Assistant Secretaries--including Mann himself in 1960-61--have been little more than a long, grey line of well-meaning but frustrated fellows. President Kennedy tried to solve the problem by sheer weight of numbers. In no particular order, and often simultaneously, he divided Latin American responsibility among the likes of old Roosevelt Brain-Truster Adolf A. Berle, Speechwriter Richard Goodwin (who coined the term Alliance for Progress), Mann's first-tour successor as Assistant Secretary, Robert Woodward, Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Brother Bobby, Alianza Coordinator Teodoro Moscoso, Woodward's successor Edwin M. Martin, and White House Aide Ralph Dungan. Confused, and with their flanks often turned by ex-officio Kennedy advisers, key State Department Latin America experts left in droves. It got so bad that, at the end, Kennedy had ordered a thorough re-evaluation of policy and policymaking. Johnson carried on the reevaluation, intensified it, and acted by putting Mann in charge.

The Awakening. There was no discernible disagreement with Johnson's decision, largely because Mann, in the course of a long career, has built a record of arriving early at right decisions. Born and raised in Laredo, a border town with a population 85% Mexican, Mann grew up bilingual and unbigoted; as halfback on Laredo High's unbeaten 1927 football team, he called signals in both English and Spanish. Giving up practice as what he calls "a Texas country lawyer" in 1943, he joined the State Department, serving over the years mostly in Latin American posts (Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador) or dealing with Latin American affairs in Washington. The jobs took a personal toll: in 1947, when he was Second Secretary in Caracas, Venezuela, his first son swallowed some gaily colored fireworks, thinking they were candy, and died of phosphorous poisoning. In Mexico City Mann suffered from chronic altitude sickness.

Mann came into his own after Vice President Nixon was stoned and spat upon in Caracas and Castro rose to power in Cuba in 1958. He was then serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, and he took a leading role in the U.S. analysis of what was going wrong in Latin America. There was no doubt in Mann's mind; economically, Latin America was still a continent of a few thousand haves and millions of have-nots living under the remnants of a feudal system inherited from Spain and Portugal. After World War II, however, Latin America's masses had started waking up to the fact that there was a better life to be had than hunger, disease, poverty and ignorance.

Mann battled to protect such Latin American exports as copper, lead and zinc to the U.S. Between 1958 and 1960, he almost singlehanded brought the U.S. into a worldwide marketing agreement designed to end wild fluctuations in coffee prices. When President Eisenhower and then Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon got to work on the complicated hemisphere-wide development plan that later became the Alliance for Progress, Mann was a principal adviser.

He kept up the fight as Ike went out and J.F.K. came in, exhausting himself with 70-hour work weeks despite the fact that the White House in group was making all the big decisions--like the Bay of Pigs. After the Cuban invasion, Mann requested and was finally permitted to go off to the relative quiet of the U.S. embassy in Mexico City.

Mere Hoping Can Hurt. Back in Washington, even with the increased authority provided by Johnson, Mann will find his new job a man killer. To succeed, time, money and genius are needed--and none of them are plentiful. Through Fidel Castro, the Communists are actively pushing violent revolution designed to grab half a dozen Latin American nations before Western-style democracy, fed by development, can take root. It is increasingly obvious that a policy of coexisting with Castro, while merely hoping that the governments he threatens will be strong enough to resist, hurts rather than helps. Thus, U.S. policy toward Cuba is a major part of the re-evaluation study that President Johnson has ordered.

As for the Alliance for Progress, so far it has been more a slogan than a policy. The nations and governments of Latin America are vastly disparate, yet many still seem all too ready to consider the Alianza an excuse to sit back and let the U.S. foot the bill for their own shortcomings. In fact, in those Latin American nations where U.S. policy has been successful, it has been due as much to capable on-the-scene ambassadors as to the Washington-directed programs and policymakers.

It will be up to Mann to give some sort of cohesion to U.S. relationships with Latin America, and if the task is formidable, the rewards could be beyond calculation.

* Although Franklin Roosevelt is usually given the credit and did indeed put it into practice, Hoover introduced the policy and the phrase during a pre-inaugural tour of Latin America.

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