Contemporary revolution in Latin America; Revolution of rising expectations

<v Speaker>[Announcer intro] The following program is produced by the University of Florida School <v Speaker>of Journalism and Communications under a grant from the National Educational Television <v Speaker>and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of Educational <v Speaker>Broadcasters. <v Speaker>[Clarence Senior clip] Hopeless people are practically always helpless people. <v Speaker>The people in Latin America have begun to hope and they have begun to do something <v Speaker>about the problems that they want to solve. <v Speaker>About the things that they haven't liked all of these years. <v Speaker>People are undertaking [ fades to Dr. Borda] if the problems are not solved, if <v Speaker>the institutions and their leaders do not become realistic, accept <v Speaker>the fact and modify their attitudes, there will be a national <v Speaker>disaster worse than what we have witnessed today <v Speaker>I think. The last year has also [ fades to Camargo speaking] the almost unanimous <v Speaker>desire in the hemisphere is to seek more equitable, <v Speaker>more humane and less anachronistic uh forms

<v Speaker>of national life. <v Speaker>If those efforts are thwarted Latin America may well <v Speaker>become a storm of imminent danger. <v Speaker>[Latin music plays] <v Speaker>[2nd Announcer intro] The University of Florida presents the Revolution of Rising <v Speaker>Expectations, the first in a weekly series of recorded documentary reports <v Speaker>on the contemporary revolution in Latin America. <v Speaker>Your reporter is the distinguished American journalist and editor of the Christian <v Speaker>Science Monitor Erwin D. <v Speaker>Canham. [Music fades to children singing in Spanish] <v Speaker>

<v Speaker>[Canham narrates] The singing you hear is of school children in a small village not far <v Speaker>from Guatemala City. <v Speaker>There, but one segment of the voice of Latin America and they sing <v Speaker>unmindful of grim possibilities. <v Speaker>Yet, if the relentless course of present events is not <v Speaker>altered, the overwhelming majority of these children in this first <v Speaker>grade class will never finish primary school at all, and very <v Speaker>few of them will survive beyond his 44th year. <v Speaker>[end sounds of singing children] <v Speaker>But the people of Latin America are determined to change this relentless <v Speaker>course of events, determined to seek out a better way of life <v Speaker>for themselves and their children. <v Speaker>That is what this series is about. <v Speaker>It will examine the nature of the contemporary revolution in <v Speaker>Latin America. <v Speaker>It has often been pointed out that the importance of Latin America to the United

<v Speaker>States is equaled only by our ignorance <v Speaker>of it. <v Speaker>A respected Latin American leader takes this view. <v Speaker>[Leader speaks] And the United States and its fuh and its uh terrible <v Speaker>problems in other areas of the world has uh overlooked Latin <v Speaker>America not only economically, but in uh <v Speaker>in this terrible attitude of not knowing what is going on. <v Speaker>I'm not making any distinction between a democratic movement [Canham narrates over <v Speaker>leader's speech] Jose Figueras, former president of Costa Rica, <v Speaker> a great champion of democracy in Latin America, [Figueras' speech continues] honest <v Speaker>reform, honest and honest uh and democratic social movement. <v Speaker>And who is what? <v Speaker>It is very easy to use the alibi that the picture is complicated. <v Speaker>It is. It does not mean it is not easy to learn overnight about uh <v Speaker>the different pattern or the different picture that each Latin American republic <v Speaker>presents. But it is not so difficult.

<v Speaker>And uh, uh you'll have in the United States, the Latin <v Speaker>Americanists. They're the school professors who know more about our <v Speaker>countries than we do at which proves that it is not the mysterious uh, uh <v Speaker>science. <v Speaker>[Canham] Great social and economic changes have been sweeping the countries of Central <v Speaker>and South America. These changes began as far back as the Mexican Revolution <v Speaker>in 1910. Yet awareness of these events by the American <v Speaker>public hardly existed before the recent critical <v Speaker>doings in Cuba. <v Speaker>Taking a lead from Jose Figueras, we talk to a Latin American specialist, <v Speaker>the Columbia University sociologist Clarence Senior. <v Speaker>He tells us of the nature of this contemporary revolution. <v Speaker>[Clarence Senior] Latin America is one of the many places in the world in which people <v Speaker>are undertaking uh to bring themselves up <v Speaker>to date. Someone sometime ago started talking

<v Speaker>about the revolution of rising expectations. <v Speaker>That's what is what seems to be going on in Asia and Africa and <v Speaker>Latin America. People have begun to hope, and <v Speaker>when people begin to hope that things that have always existed <v Speaker>can be changed then you have the possibility of what <v Speaker>can be called either a revolution or evolution <v Speaker>toward better conditions. <v Speaker>Hopeless people are practically always helpless people. <v Speaker>The people in Latin America have begun to hope and they have begun to do something <v Speaker>about the problem is that they want to solve about the things that they haven't <v Speaker>liked. <v Speaker>All of these years.[Canham] An American who has lived in Mexico most of her life <v Speaker>believes that attempts to inform the American public of the nature of this <v Speaker>revolution of rising hope have failed.

<v Speaker>Anita Brenner, editor of Mexico This Month, speaks specifically <v Speaker>of the Mexican Revolution that was born in violence nearly 51 years <v Speaker>ago. Today, this once violent uprising has settled <v Speaker>down to a program of peaceful evolution. <v Speaker>But to the Mexican the Revolution is still living, still breathing. <v Speaker>[Anita Brenner] The thing that uh that is um difficult to <v Speaker>explain to the American people, the English speaking American people, is <v Speaker>what is this revolution that people are talking about because they hear the word <v Speaker>revolution and they think ah! <v Speaker>Russians. And they don't realize that this is a revolution that <v Speaker>went on before the Russian revolution and has its own roots and its <v Speaker>own philosophy and its own methods and is um <v Speaker>committed to this philosophy of change to keep <v Speaker>up with a greater amount of democratization of

<v Speaker>justice and better spread of the good things of life <v Speaker>in their own terms. <v Speaker>[Canham] But what of the rest of Latin America? <v Speaker>What conditions have influenced the masses, the peasants, to create this <v Speaker>surge of hope? <v Speaker>We asked a Colombian sociologist of the National University in Bogota to <v Speaker>analyze the sequence of events that have produced tremendous changes <v Speaker>in the social and economic structure of his country. <v Speaker>Dr. Orlando Fals Borda explains that a technical revolution <v Speaker>in transportation and communication was a major factor. <v Speaker>[Dr. Borda] One of the first innovations was the airplane <v Speaker>and uh all communications, innovations <v Speaker>which came later. <v Speaker>This revolution in communication started to break up the <v Speaker>internal isolation of the country so that this country

<v Speaker>was more uh a nation, a united nation <v Speaker>than before. <v Speaker>Then came city growth with all its social and economic implications. <v Speaker>This growth has been mostly industrial course, but in the last <v Speaker>few years it has also reflected the political insecurity of the rural <v Speaker>areas. <v Speaker>[Canham] The phenomenal growth of Colombian cities and industry since 1930 <v Speaker>has resulted in the appearance of a new urban middle class, a group that received <v Speaker>its prestige mainly from financial standing rather than traditional social <v Speaker>rank. Meanwhile, life continued in the rural areas <v Speaker>much as it had in the past. <v Speaker>News of what was happening in the cities, however, began a trickle back over the new, <v Speaker>improved highways and in the automobiles and on the passenger cars of trains that <v Speaker>are being used more and more every day. <v Speaker>The peasants soon began to feel the new forces.

<v Speaker>Dr. Fals Borda describes the effect of modern transportation and communication <v Speaker>on the peasants. <v Speaker>[Dr. Borda] They began to sense that their world was not, after all, the best of all <v Speaker>possible worlds. [Train whistle in background] With more contacts <v Speaker>than these peasants felt, the new impulse to modify the the situation <v Speaker>as it was. <v Speaker>And to seek seek explanations of the things [clears throat] <v Speaker>as they were. <v Speaker>Especially the relationship between the landlord and the agricultural worker <v Speaker>with knowledge of this urban world, then these basins started to <v Speaker>abandon their traditional conservative values. <v Speaker>And their standard of living, of course, rose, too. <v Speaker>They started to make new demands on the traditional institutions such <v Speaker>as the church, the government, the school.

<v Speaker>This was, I think, the beginning of the crisis which we now face. <v Speaker>That the national institutions of major influence <v Speaker>somehow found themselves unable and sometimes unwilling <v Speaker>to accept the change that was taking place, thus <v Speaker>failing to answer to the needs of the people. <v Speaker>And consequently, many aspirations of the people had been worked. <v Speaker>Causing tensions, dissatisfactions and internal warfare, that <v Speaker>means the-the uh lens here, as we call it. <v Speaker>If the problems are not solved, if the institutions and their <v Speaker>leaders do not become realistic, accept the facts <v Speaker>and modify their attitudes, there will be a national disaster <v Speaker>worse than what we have witnessed today I think. <v Speaker> [Canham] Foremost among the many aspirations of the masses in

<v Speaker>Latin America is the yearning for land reform. <v Speaker>Statistics fall short of telling the whole story, but they serve to indicate the <v Speaker>immensity of the problem. In Venezuela, 3 percent of all the land owners <v Speaker>own 90 percent of the land. <v Speaker>In Chile, 2 percent of the landowners own 52 percent of the available <v Speaker>farmland. Fidel Castro used land reform as a rallying point <v Speaker>for his revolution in Cuba. Competing with the demagog in their concern with this issue <v Speaker>are responsible leaders all over Latin America. <v Speaker>A leader of the Brazilian Labor Party, Oswaldo Lima, tells of the working <v Speaker>conditions of the agricultural worker. <v Speaker> <v Speaker>[Lima][background hum] In Latin America the conditions under which they walk <v Speaker>in her areas is done. <v Speaker>It's to be considered almost slavery <v Speaker>to be true. We have too much big farms.

<v Speaker>Farms with 10,000 acres, with 5000 acres <v Speaker>in that is not healthy for the country. <v Speaker>[Canham] Too many big farms, says Oswaldo Lima. <v Speaker>The technical term is latifundia. <v Speaker>The system in which landless peasants work this land for little more than their <v Speaker>daily sustenance is called the Hacienda system. <v Speaker>Observers see this system as little less than feudalism right here in <v Speaker>the middle of the 20th century. <v Speaker>Many economists view land reform as a necessary first step in the economic <v Speaker>development of Latin America. <v Speaker>Argentine professor of economics at the University of Mississippi, Pedro Teichert, <v Speaker>puts it this way. [Dr. Teichert] Its absolutely necessary that that land reform <v Speaker>take place in Latin America. uh <v Speaker>The forum specific forum depends on the country. <v Speaker>But if any development has to take place in Latin America, land reform has to <v Speaker>take place, which does not mean that land reform as such uh will

<v Speaker>solve all the economic problems of the country. <v Speaker>But it is a precondition for for further development, for further industrialization, <v Speaker>because the land system now uh also eh determines <v Speaker>the social uh structure of these Latin American countries. <v Speaker>The class society is still, still exist, feudalism still exists. <v Speaker>And industrialization progress in education all depends on this <v Speaker>outdated agricultural system that has to be gotten rid of <v Speaker>one way or another. [Canham] Dr. Teichert links this improper and unjust <v Speaker>land tenure system to the problem of education. <v Speaker>What about education in Latin America? <v Speaker>A large group of experts consider it the key problem. <v Speaker>Luther Evans, when he was director general of UNESCO, inaugurated technical <v Speaker>assistance in the field of primary education as one of the pilot projects in the United <v Speaker>Nations aid to Latin America. <v Speaker>Dr. Evans explains his reasons.

<v Speaker>[Dr. Evans] Now, over half of the kids of primary school age <v Speaker>do not go to school at all in Latin America. <v Speaker>And most of those who enter primary school never finish it. <v Speaker>So that the average schooling of the total population <v Speaker>of Latin America above school age is <v Speaker>only one year of school. <v Speaker>That's the average for Latin America. <v Speaker>[Canham] The handmaiden of inadequate education is illiteracy. <v Speaker>And in Latin America, statistics tell the story of appalling waste of human <v Speaker>resources. Only 3 of the 20 countries of Latin America approximate <v Speaker>the literacy standards of Western nations. <v Speaker>In Brazil in 1950, the number of persons over 10 years old who could neither <v Speaker>read nor write was over 50 percent. <v Speaker>Brazilians, such as the noted journalist and encyclopedia editor Antonio Collado,

<v Speaker>are greatly concerned and hope their new president will do something about it. <v Speaker>[Collado] But I'm confident that the new government is really going to make education <v Speaker>its basic point because all the other problems derive from education. <v Speaker>Its impossible that the country should go on developing as Brazil is now, <v Speaker>especially from an industrial point of view and even a sort of superior <v Speaker>cultural point of view like you can see here in our theater and so on, and having at the <v Speaker>same time at the basis this colossal amount of amorphous <v Speaker>masses of people that can't read or write. <v Speaker>[Canham] By now, we can begin to see the highly interrelated nature of the problems <v Speaker>facing most of Latin America. Perhaps no problem is more interrelated <v Speaker>than that of economic development. To University of Florida political scientist Harry <v Speaker>Cantor, teaching on a leave of absence in Costa Rica,the problem is <v Speaker>circular. <v Speaker>[Cantor] It is a sort of vicious circle.

<v Speaker>Latin America is not economically developed enough to provide <v Speaker>a decent standard of living for its people, and it cannot provide a decent standard of <v Speaker>living for its people because these people are sick and <v Speaker>educated uh-uh with very little energy <v Speaker>and they cannot themselves build up the enterprises which <v Speaker>are needed to provide the kind of living that they need. <v Speaker>[Canham] As in other underdeveloped areas of the world, the communists continue to take <v Speaker>advantage of the desires of the Latin American people for a better life. <v Speaker>This communist threat to the hemisphere has never been more dramatically illustrated <v Speaker>than by recent events in Cuba, which happened, as the saying goes, just 90 miles <v Speaker>from home. What appeal does communism have for Latin America? <v Speaker>Herbert L. Matthews, Latin American specialist on the editorial board of The New York <v Speaker>Times, thinks he has the answer. <v Speaker>[Matthews] There is a communist uh threat in Latin America now, <v Speaker>which is rather more acute than it has ever been.

<v Speaker>But, perhaps for a reason that it is not well understood in the United <v Speaker>States. The great appeal today <v Speaker>of communism, especially in Russian and Chinese, of course, <v Speaker>is that they point to their own successes in <v Speaker>a material way in turning underdeveloped <v Speaker>agrarian nations into industrial nations <v Speaker>quickly and without outside investments. <v Speaker>This has a tremendous appeal in Latin America to the intellectuals, <v Speaker>to economists and many ways to a number of politicians and <v Speaker>above all, it is seeping down to the rural areas <v Speaker>where the peasant ,in general, in Latin America lives <v Speaker>very miserably on a subsistence level. <v Speaker>[Canham] Since the end of World War 2, a deep resentment has existed in Latin America

<v Speaker>against the policies of the United States. <v Speaker>The attitude of the Latin American people on the eve of our 1960 presidential elections <v Speaker>is reflected by a student from Peru who was attending the University of Florida <v Speaker>at the time. <v Speaker>[Peruvian student] Well, Latin America basically, once it needs a new deal. <v Speaker>Latin America has heard throughout all this years as the rest of the <v Speaker>world has to. We have heard the advertising made by this country. <v Speaker>That here there is freedom. <v Speaker>There is personal liberties. That here there is democracy. <v Speaker>There is free enterprise. <v Speaker>People believe that they prefer to use that in order to achieve this <v Speaker>political stability, the social justice, the economic progress <v Speaker>that they all want and we don't yet have. <v Speaker>Well, I think that this period of advertising is over. <v Speaker>Now it's the time for action and Latin America is waiting for it. <v Speaker>[Canham] During the election campaign, Senator, then Senator John Kennedy, had pledged <v Speaker>a new Latin American policy.

<v Speaker>On March 13th, 1961 he unveiled his program to the Latin American <v Speaker>diplomatic corps stationed in Washington. <v Speaker>[Kennedy] Therefore, I have called on all people of the hemisphere to join in a new <v Speaker>Alliance for Progress, Alianza Para Progresso, <v Speaker>a vast cooperative effort to satisfy the basic needs <v Speaker>of the American people. The homes, work and land, <v Speaker>health and schools. <v Speaker>Techo, trabajo y tierra, salud y escuela. <v Speaker>First, I propose that the American republics <v Speaker>began on a vast new 10 year plan for the Americas. <v Speaker>A plan to transform the 1960s. <v Speaker>And if we are successful, every American republic <v Speaker>will be the master of its own revolution and its own hope and <v Speaker>progress. <v Speaker>[Canham] Is Kennedy's Alliance for Progress coming in time?

<v Speaker>And is it enough to stem the tide? <v Speaker>Earlier in the year, before the Kennedy pronouncement, Jose Figueras was pessimistic. <v Speaker>He told a University of Florida audience, <v Speaker>[Figueras] I believe that uh unless <v Speaker>our great effort comes under the leadership of the United <v Speaker>States to develop Latin America rapidly <v Speaker>along the Democratic lines, unless this comes, we <v Speaker>are going uh to lose the Cold War in Latin America. <v Speaker>If uh someone had told me 10 years ago, 5 years ago, <v Speaker>that eh Latin America would align itself itself <v Speaker>with Russia and China in a Cold War, I would have thought it was preposterous. <v Speaker>And yet it is happening. <v Speaker>[Canham] A former Guatemalan ambassador to the United Nations sees a slightly brighter <v Speaker>picture. Jorge García Granados. <v Speaker>[Granados] Well, I am not entirely pessimistic.

<v Speaker>Uh I heard Figueras, for instance, who is very much <v Speaker>worried about it.[inhales] I think that uh if <v Speaker>the United States and the Western ehh European countries <v Speaker>eh come to Latin America, where they would will <v Speaker>show in up helping us to develop our natural resources. <v Speaker>If ah we get err, we get better prices for our raw materials. <v Speaker>And if we could raise the standard of life for our people, this situation <v Speaker>could ah be ameliorated in ah in a certain <v Speaker>period, within a certain period of a few years. <v Speaker>[Canham] A more urgent view from the president of Colombia, Alberto Lleras Camargo, <v Speaker>as he talks of the people of Latin America. <v Speaker>The masses. [Camargo] In their state of backwardness is to be <v Speaker>found the origin, immediate or remote <v Speaker>of the political instability, the dictatorships, the mis

<v Speaker>use of freedom, the violence and all that such <v Speaker>evils that harass our peoples. <v Speaker>Great efforts are being made today, most Latin American countries <v Speaker>to eliminate the conflicts and to do this <v Speaker>without political and social disturbances. <v Speaker>The almost unanimous desire in the hemisphere is to seek <v Speaker>more equitable, more humane and less <v Speaker>anachronistic uh forms of national life. <v Speaker>If those efforts are thwarted, Latin <v Speaker>America may well become a storm of imminent danger. <v Speaker>That danger holds true for the entire hemisphere. <v Speaker>[Canham] To conclude our program, we have invited members of the graduate faculty of the <v Speaker>University of Florida School of Inter-American Studies to summarize what we have heard so

<v Speaker>far. And if they will, to try to come to some definite conclusions about the <v Speaker>revolution of rising expectations. <v Speaker>Here to introduce the panel is the school's director, Dr. A. <v Speaker>Curtis Wilgus. <v Speaker>[Dr. Wilgus] Thank you, Mr. Canham. Everyone who has an interest in Latin America should <v Speaker>keep in mind that these countries have changed a great deal in the past century. <v Speaker>Indeed, in the last a 135 years since independence, many of the problems <v Speaker>of today have been inherited from the past. <v Speaker>Historically speaking, some of these problems go back to the 16th century. <v Speaker>Over the years, the people of Latin America have been concerned largely and trying to <v Speaker>stay alive. But frequently the national economy has failed them <v Speaker>with unfortunate national and international consequences. <v Speaker>Joining me today are Robert W. Bradberry, professor of Latin American economics, <v Speaker>and Larry Nelson, visiting professor of Latin American sociology. <v Speaker>Dr. Bradberry, as an economist, what do you think about these economic problems?

<v Speaker>[Dr. Bradberry] Latin America and again, of course, this is a matter of not realizing <v Speaker>that there are 20 countries involved here so that the rates are different. <v Speaker>But Latin America as a whole is the fastest growing region of the world. <v Speaker>As an economist, I would say that Latin America <v Speaker>wants to increase its standard of living. <v Speaker>Standard of living goes up if its production increases more rapidly than <v Speaker>its population. It goes down if its production increase <v Speaker>is less rapidly than the increase in population. <v Speaker>With this great increase, this very rapid increase, we're a little bit in the way <v Speaker>of Alice in Wonderland. You have to run faster in order to stay at the same place. <v Speaker>This then has given rise to the great movements throughout Latin America <v Speaker>looking toward increased production. <v Speaker>Dr. Nelson, as a sociologist, what do you think is the most important problem in

<v Speaker>Latin America? <v Speaker>[Dr. Nelson] Well, one of the very important one uh is part of this <v Speaker>heritage from uh the earlier period, and I referred <v Speaker>to the dual class system in which there was an elite uh <v Speaker>few and uh a great uh mass of the lower class. <v Speaker>Often in these countries it is related also to the um uh <v Speaker>to the racial composition of the native population <v Speaker>,usually is uh on a lower plane, part of the <v Speaker>lower class. That the elitists almost always a uh a <v Speaker>group that uh descend directly from uh from Spanish blood <v Speaker>or Portuguese, as the case may be. <v Speaker>This uh duel class system in which that one governs <v Speaker>and the other works uh makes it rather difficult, <v Speaker>has made it always very, very difficult to bring about needed reforms.

<v Speaker>So much responsibility rests upon the elite who are reluctant to <v Speaker>make any concessions until they're forced to do so. <v Speaker>So the class system, it seems to me, is one of the one of the big impediments <v Speaker>to bringing about social evolution. Uh but now the thing is <v Speaker>becoming urgent. <v Speaker>[Canham] Yes, absolutely. The um countries of Latin America are looking at both <v Speaker>the United States and Russia as examples of economies that have <v Speaker>developed through industrialization. <v Speaker>And they're going to follow one or the other. <v Speaker>It's a question which one is most attractive uh <v Speaker>as a means of improvement. <v Speaker>And so we are facing a conflict of ideology <v Speaker>throughout Latin America. <v Speaker>Thank you, gentlemen. <v Speaker>For the past half hour, we've been reporting on the revolution of rising <v Speaker>expectations, a product of the contemporary revolution in Latin America.

<v Speaker>[Latin music] <v Speaker>[Announcer] The Revolution of Rising Expectations is the first in a series of weekly <v Speaker>documentary reports on the contemporary revolution in Latin America. <v Speaker>The program was narrated by the distinguished American journalist and editor of the <v Speaker>Christian Science Monitor, Erwin D. <v Speaker>Canham. The series is produced in cooperation with the University of <v Speaker>Florida's School of Inter-American Studies. <v Speaker>[Latin Music ends] You may receive without charge the text of today's program by writing <v Speaker>this station. This program was prepared and recorded by Will Lewis <v Speaker>for Radio Center School of Journalism and Communications, University

<v Speaker>of Florida, Gainesville. <v Speaker>Under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center and is being <v Speaker>distributed by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. <v Speaker>This is the NAEB radio network.