Yanqui on a Southern Swing

By Kurt Andersen.

Reagan goes to Latin America, bearing good will

When U.S. Presidents go abroad, they usually make a splash by announcing bilateral agreements, making blustery speeches or starring in extravagant ceremonial tableaux. By contrast, Ronald Reagan's five-day trip through volatile Latin America last week was low-key. In Brazil, where Reagan spent half his time, there was no black-tie banquet, but an outdoor barbecue lunch. In Colombia, Reagan's limousine ride to the presidential palace was a few blocks, hardly a motorcade at all. On Saturday in Honduras, Reagan's final, fleeting stop, he only visited the air force base in San Pedro Sula.

Reagan made the trip with no intention of issuing tough demands to his hosts or striking dramatic diplomatic bargains. Generating good will was the main intention. "I didn't come down here with a plan," he told Brazilian President Joao Figueiredo. "I want to ask you questions about how we can help."

Latin Americans felt betrayed last spring when the U.S. eventually supported Britain in its war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Last week's trip was at least obliquely an attempt to erase lingering resentment. All four countries Reagan visited are fiscally wobbly, Brazil most prominently. There Reagan reassured Figueiredo that the U.S. is not about to let Brazil's precarious economy, the world's tenth largest, collapse. Reagan also went south to reaffirm his Administration's antagonism toward the hemisphere's first Marxist regime (Fidel Castro's Cuba) and the latest (Sandinist Nicaragua). His stops in Costa Rica and Honduras symbolically isolated Nicaragua, which is wedged in between. Reagan also conferred with President Alvaro Magafta of El Salvador and Guatemalan Strongman General Ephrain Rios Montt, both of whom face leftist insurgencies. Though Reagan made it a point not to go to either of their countries, the sessions were controversial because of continuing human rights violations reported in both places.

Overall, the trip permitted Reagan to look and sound his statesmanlike best, both to Latin Americans, who feel chronically misunderstood by Washington, and to the U.S. public. "What am I thinking about?" replied the President to one Brazilian reporter's question. "Right now? I'm thinking this has been a very wonderful visit for us." White House aides tried to counter the impression that the President was shirking urgent work in Washington for a Latin holiday. Nancy Reagan did not go, and the 600-person presidential entourage, wary of "Flying Down to Rio" headlines, avoided Brazil's gayest metropolis.

Instead of Rio de Janeiro, Air Force One landed Tuesday night in Brasilia, the oppressively bland and businesslike capital city planned and built from scratch on an isolated plateau during the late 1950s. "Your elections Nov. 15," Reagan said on his arrival, "demonstrated Brazil's confidence in itself and stability in freedom."

The next day Reagan and Figueiredo, 64, were together almost constantly. The two men talked privately for 30 minutes, then summoned Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, Secretary of State George Shultz and other officials from both governments for an additional hour of discussion. Said a Brazilian official: "The conversations were very candid and yet very gentle." The Falklands, Shultz said, "didn't come up as a matter of dispute." In fact, Brazil only halfheartedly supported Argentina in the war, mostly out of a sense of continental solidarity.

After a 25-minute horseback ride around his moated ranch outside the capital, Figueiredo held a barbecue at which both the food (beef, veal, sausage and lamb) and recorded American music (Willie Nelson) were hearty, even macho. At Wednesday night's banquet, the clos est the trip came to conventional pomp, Reagan stood to offer an elaborately friendly tribute--and a faux pas at the end. "Now," he said, wineglass raised, "would you join me in a toast to President Figueiredo, to the people of Bolivia--no, that's where I'm going--to the people of Brazil, and to the dream of democracy and peace here in the Western Hemisphere." In fact, despite his salvage attempt, Reagan was headed for Bogota, Colombia, not Bolivia.

Although Administration officials tried to downplay the significance of the trip, a number of agreements were announced. Most important, the U.S. will lend Brazil $1.23 billion, at 8% annual interest for three months, to tide over the debt-burdened (nearly $90 billion in foreign lOUs) country until a $4.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan comes through next year.

The two governments will form five vaguely defined "working groups," each with a six-month mandate to discuss certain issues: economics, nuclear power, science and technology, space and "militaryindustrial relations." The economic issues are most important. Washington, for instance, objects to Brazil's subsidies of exports to the U.S., especially of shoes, orange juice, steel and airplanes. Instead, Brazil wants more direct American aid. In a deft but easy bit of diplomacy, Reagan invited Brazil to send a prospective astronaut to the U.S. for training and, eventually, to fly on a space shuttle mission. (The President is copying the Soviets, who have flown astronauts from Cuba and France.)

During a five-hour stopover in Bogota, Reagan met with quasi-Populist President Belisario Betancur at his official residence, Narifto House. Betancur took office last August and has already symbolically yanked foreign policy away from unquestioning fealty to Washington, most notably with a proposal that Colombia join the Non-aligned Movement, a largely Third World group.

Betancur certainly sounded nonaligned. Even his public remarks at lunch with Reagan, after their 45-minute private talk, were harsh. He said that Colombian products are denied full access to the U.S. market by tariffs, that the U.S. should prod the IMF to lend more money more easily to countries like his, and that industrialized powers generally renege on their vague, rosy promises to help developing countries. Alluding to the unaccommodating U.S. attitude toward Marxist Nicaragua, Betancur said that hemispheric interests are ill served "either by pressure or isolation." Reagan did not reply in kind. His speech, muted and conciliatory, implied that Betancur's government has an obligation to crack down on Colombia's powerful cocaine exporters.

On Bogota's streets, the visitor's critics were far less civil. At the National University, 200 anti-American student demonstrators threw rocks, and outside Narino House the Presidents encountered a large crowd of protesters shouting "iFuera Reagan!" (Go away, Reagan).

The crowds were thoroughly pro-Reagan at the next stop, Costa Rica, the most stably democratic and pro-U.S. country in Central America. The left wing charges that Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge, in office just seven months, is Washington's pawn, seduced by U.S. aid ($70 million in 1982). Indeed the money is crucial just now: the country's economy is in a recessionary tail spin.

Immediately after Reagan arrived, he met for an hour at his hotel with a fellow visitor to Costa Rica, El Salvador's Magana. As interim President, Magafta is the most formidable check on Roberto d'Aubuisson, the provocative right-wing leader of the Nationalist Republican Alliance. The conversation with Magafta concerned human rights and Salvadoran efforts to curb the country's murderous counterrevolutionary squads. Said Reagan after the meeting: "I think that they are trying very hard and making great progress against great odds."

Reagan's final 24 hours outside the U.S. were his most tiring. Saturday he met with Monge and his Cabinet, signed a new extradition treaty with Costa Rica and delivered a speech to 500 Costa Rican officials and business leaders. It was delayed for several minutes by a Communist Party member, who read a protest in Spanish from the rear of the hall. Reagan waited him out, then drew applause by declaring: "He wouldn't be allowed to do that in a Communist country."

From San Jose, Reagan flew to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He never left the airport there. He and President Roberto Suazo Cordova spoke together in a conference room, walked to a hangar and read boilerplate speeches. Suazo Cordova, who presides over Central America's poorest country, wants $100 million in U.S. aid to retire 75% of the Honduran budget deficit. Honduras has a strong claim on American largesse: it has lately been a staging area for U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista forces. Reagan met Guatemala's Rios Montt (who had flown to Honduras earlier) for a brief talk. Then the U.S. President flew homeward on Air Force One.

Reagan's tour was more courteous than momentous, meant to create an impression of U.S. sensitivity rather than diplomatic coups. For all that, Reagan handled himself well. He delighted the Brazilians, treated Colombian contrariness with aplomb and showed requisite concern toward Central American countries. An unambitious agenda, to be sure, but in its approach to Latin America the Reagan Administration can do worse than behave with simple, graceful solicitousness. --By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Douglas Brew with Reagan and Gavin Scott/Brasilia

With reporting by Douglas Brew with Reagan and Gavin Scott/Brasilia

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