Rocky's Rocky Path

At the halfway mark, Nelson Rockefeller's four-part series of fact-finding missions to Latin America for President Nixon has a depressing record. He has visited ten countries so far, been confronted with anti-U.S. demonstrations of one sort or another in five, cut short his stay in one because of threats of rioting -- and been disinvited by three. It is a bitter box score, but it contains one encouraging ingredient. Rocky's troubled receptions have probably done more to dramatize the sorry state of U.S.-Latin American relations than anything since Richard Nixon's own tumultuous tour of the southern continent in 1958. Last week, conceding that there is "some discontent" among Latin Americans over their relations with the U.S., Secretary of State William P. Rogers declared that "there is no part of the world more important to us" and that the Administration does not want relations to deteriorate further.

Superfluous Visit. Governor Rockefeller received his first cancellation from Peru after the U.S. announced that arms sales to Lima had been suspended because of seizures of and fines for U.S. tuna boats charged with violating Peru's self-declared 200-mile limit. Bolivia, next on his itinerary, limited Rockefeller's visit to three hours for fear of student demonstrations--and consultations were held at La Paz's heavily guarded 13,350-ft.-high airport rather than in the capital. Then, 29 hours before Rocky was to have landed at Caracas' Maiquetia airport, the Venezuelan government asked for a postponement of the visit--most likely because President Rafael Caldera does not want to blemish his domestic "pacification program" by being forced to suppress possible demonstrations.

In an equally hard blow, Chile requested that Rockefeller's visit there be canceled. Again, like Caldera, President Eduardo Frei Montalva, a friend of the U.S., was influenced by threats of unrest in response to the Rockefeller visit. In any case, some Chileans felt that a visit from President Nixon's envoy would be superfluous: this week, Foreign Minister Gabriel Valdes, acting on behalf of all Latin American countries, will present the President with a common-stand position paper that proposes new foundations--particularly in the economic field--for U.S.-Latin American relations.

With Understanding. Neither the State Department nor the Governor were surprised by the wave of Latin American protest and rebuff. Rockefeller had not expected cancellations, but he treated them with understanding. "As one Latin American said to me, 'You've gotten us off the back pages and onto the front page in the United States,'' the Governor told TIME last week. He added: "After the past six or seven years, without strong and clear policy direction on the part of the U.S., our relations have seriously deteriorated. Things will get progressively worse if we continue to ignore Latin America. It is a very serious situation in terms of the future."

Although there have been suggestions that the mission be called off, Rockefeller seems determined to continue with the third installment of his tour--visits to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. By week's end Uruguay indicated that it, too, would like to cancel the visit but would prefer that the initiative come from Washington. The other three governments--all of them military regimes--are confident that they can welcome Rocky while keeping their militant activists in check. Even so, large U.S. Secret Service details were checking out local security conditions with the kind of minute attention to detail that they usually reserve only for the President himself.

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