The American Scene; Ties of Hemisphere

I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to do it again Colour and excitement were added to the American scene when the festival of the Americas and the Pan American Games were held here in Chicago Today the interest and excitement have

died down but our dealings with Latin America are still in existence and they are no less important today than they were early in September and for this reason we would like to take a closer look at the ties of the hemisphere and consider what the relationship is between the countries of Pan America and to help us with this we are pleased to welcome this morning to exceptional guests Mr. Irving D. Kenton assistant director of international research at Armour Research Foundation of Illinois Institute of Technology and Mrs. Edith Samson an attorney on the staff of the Corporation Council's Office for the City of Chicago a former member of the United States Committee for UNESCO and of the United States delegation to the UN and recently a member of the International Seminar Group which traveled throughout South America to begin with I'm sure we agreed that our relationship with Latin America is important but perhaps it might be wise to try and establish some of the reasons why it is

important Mr. Kenton Well primarily of course it's important to have good relations with South America because there are neighbors and I don't think anyone could argue with the contention that we should remain good friends with our neighbors Of course there are many other reasons why we should be on good terms some cultural some economic some political and one obvious reason why we should maintain good relations with them of course is that they represent area on our borders that must be kept under in friendly hands in order for us to feel safe so far as our political situation is concerned economically I as an engineer see Latin America friendly Latin America as a very great importance because they're a very great source of raw material strategic and otherwise to us and also a very great market for some of our finished products and not having any statistics at hand I

can't give any figures but I venture to say that a very significant portion of our production is devoted to export and a large portion of that to Latin America and I would also venture to say that this amount of production is probably equal to the difference between profit and loss in the running of an American business and so from that standpoint it's very important to have them friendly and developing and increasing consumers of our goods in order to have them increasing consumers of our goods it's equally important for them to be increasing exporters of their goods because they'll need the dollars which they get in return for the raw materials they send us in order to purchase the things which we can produce for them beyond that I'm sure there are very good social and cultural reasons why we should be good friends with South America and I think my worthy

colleague here could probably detail these to a great extent than I can as a matter of fact I agree with all you say except that if I were to have said it I would have put it in reverse order because I think the question of our security comes first as far as our concern I know all of these other things which you've said are true but I believe one of the fundamental reasons we need to re -examine our relationship with the Latin American countries is because of their proximity to us and because of the 183 million people who are Americans too that we need as our partners in this chaotic time and I don't think they're full fledged partners now but I think they could be full fledged partners I think they're very important to us what would you say our attitude is towards South America how would you describe it? well I would find it easier to answer that question by saying what they think our attitude is toward them and this is what I heard during the 31 days when I was in

sight seeing and I wasn't pleasure honey in South America but I was talking to people on a people to people people in the streets people in the marketplace people in government they think we take them for granted they think that we look down our nose at them they think that we pay more attention to people in other parts of the world than we do to them they feel terribly they're terribly disturbed because we pay so little attention to them they're cognizant of the fact that 25 % of our imports come from their country we're dependent to a great extent on our in order to carry on the American way of life on these imports these very important imports like zinc and copper even coffee but they're conscious of this but they feel that they're the neglected Americans Mr. Canton is this the feeling you have had in working with the industry down there? I will agree to a degree in that when we're

speaking of they Latin Americans we're speaking of shades of opinion which vary from alpha to omega there are certainly a group of people in Latin America to the extent of them I can't say but there are a significant number of people who feel this way and they're right to answer the original question I think that our feelings towards Latin America and the policy of the United States is probably on a very high plane I think we basically wish a lot of good things for South America but whether this policy is actually carried out or not is another question now certainly we haven't neglected them the criteria here is to what extent can we pay attention to Latin America we've got the whole world which we are suddenly kind of responsible we've got problems all over the world and as a fireman would do he tends to play his stream of water where the fire is glowing largest and so

immediately after the war we threw heavy attention into Europe later on into Asia Latin America was never neglected per se completely but certainly in proportion to their importance to us they were neglected however where I in control at the time in the government I don't know that I would have done very much else myself because you kind of take your good friends for granted and figure they're going to stay good friends and let them understand there's an old saying which says don't never explain because your friends don't need explanations and your enemies won't believe you anyway and I think that there's a good deal of this kind of thinking going into our Latin American policy we are hoping that they can see that we are doing what we think is right and what is doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people and we are hoping that they will hold some of their requests for assistance or demands for business in a bayance until we can solve some of these other problems this the time for this may

never come since if Latin America remains very friendly and we continue to have out person in Africa and Asia I should say or any place else why we'll have to devote attention there the time may come when we'll be able to do what we think we ought to and you know where you talk about what you're really saying it's not have patience with us because they know we mean good we mean well however we're millions of people are hungry where millions of people are suffering from disease and where millions of people are ignorant where you find unrest and you can't explain to those people so well take it easy and play it cool because there is all the groundwork all the potential for revolution and for rebellion and for resistance and for hatred and so of course you do find in certain areas and I should say before I go a minute further that most of American people think of Latin America as a whole but I had lots to learn we make this great mistake because individual countries

vary but and it's very good for not only for me to have gone to lift my thinking but it certainly would be good for many Americans to go so that they could see this varying degree of success for instance you know in Venezuela you have a much higher standard of living due to their oil in Brazil you find another type of high standard but in the area between and even in those two countries in particular in Brazil you find a massive amount of poverty and disease and ignorance very close to the wealth yes very close to the wealth and what what is their attitude toward us under these conditions how would you evaluate what what do they really think of us well from my point of view and this is based somewhat on actual living in

South America for a period of four years and reading the newspapers and knowing people at least in the industrial sphere quite intimately there are two attitudes which the average South American has about us one is for print and the other is what he actually believes and I have seen time and time again where for an immediate political purpose in the case of a certain decision which the United States has made which has affected this country whether or not or even when they knew the reasons why this decision was made to their detriment to the favor of some other country perhaps they have rushed into print with their side of the story crying havoc about this particular situation and this was largely done because in this any particular decision we're talking about here if the United States made a policy decision favoring one country which may have hurt the other economically because we had a more pressing problem in the other country perhaps

naturally the party who has been helped by this particular decision does not rush to the newspapers you never read good things newspapers only of excesses so naturally the injured party rushes for the headlines and these are the things we read mostly and it's my opinion that a good deal of what appears to be trouble is not really trouble it deserves attention we should never become complacent about it but these things should be weighed in the light of what's going on these people who are crying about some particular injustice on our part now know very well very often why this decision was made but it is their political duty to do what they do and they can then hope that the next time such a decision is made because of the uproar that they raised perhaps it will be favorable for them and unfavorable for some other country and perhaps a slight example might explain what I mean I was rather closely involved in a project in Uruguay and during my stay there

a decision was made to slap a punitive duty upon Uruguay and will because of the fact that Uruguay required foreign exchange desperately to buy machinery from the United States and in order to get the dollars they gave the will producer a favorable exchange rate which in effect would allow him to undercut the price in the United States market well naturally our sheep producers in the northwest who also wish to sell their will with very good reason were put in a very bad competitive position so their lobby in Washington managed to push through a bill which slapped a punitive duty exactly counter balancing the amount of the exchange break they got from their government so they were right back where they started now I don't believe there are many instances in American history where we have snapped put a punitive duty on any particular country where the goods coming in from one country is taxed at a higher rate than from any other country usually our duties are on a standard rate for

imports from wherever they may come now naturally the Uruguayans had plenty to say about this and they are among our very best friends in Latin America they did understand why this was done but still it hurt them badly and they did cry out in pain and they had every reason to do so but at the same time we have our own citizens here in the United States who are in business selling wool and we've got to think about them too Mr. Samson is this about what you experienced while you were there? yes except that I think we ought to emphasize the fact that despite these cases that Mr. Cantor gives so beautifully that basically there's a great deal of good American feeling although there's an American feeling but on the whole I would say there's a great deal of feeling for America they imitate us and so many things and as a matter of fact there are way ahead of us and many things because they learn our languages where they have schools and they don't have enough schools nor do we but they have far too few schools far

too little education but they start learning English in the elementary school everybody wants to learn the English language now as a matter of fact I think that the area and the climate is so good for America in many of these Latin American countries that the Soviets are really very busy as a matter of fact you spoke of Uruguay in that one country in a small country comparatively speaking the Soviets have 300 attitudes in their embassy now this is a tremendous 300 Soviets dedicated to their way of life there in that little country well they mean business they're not sitting around occupying space they're busy and then too the Soviets because they know that there is this great feeling for America spend 100 million dollars a year that's an awful lot of money for propaganda only directed against the United States now

of course this to me to make us set up and take notice because if it's important enough this whole area that spend 100 million dollars a year to develop hate against us then we ought to be busy see many and developing the friendship that's there and enlarge it well there undoubtedly are some criticisms that South America does have for the United States even though there is basically a friendly feeling what are some of these criticisms that they make of us well one of them is that we don't learn their language is let's break a simple at first we don't learn their language and we don't and they learn our language which we learn one of their complaints is that when American technicians and specialists and there are quite a few coming to their area they isolate themselves they live in the colony an exclusive society they don't mingle and mix with the local population one of the complaints

is that we don't trade enough with them and of course you're constantly here this question of Argentine beef I remember in a seminar meeting when they were just yakini yakini about how much beef they had and how we had put up barriers against it the importing of beef into their beef into our country one of our colleagues the one of my companions on the trip was the former president vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation and he pointed out that well of course you said you know you have the hoof and mouth disease down here and so the South American said in answer so what's a little hoof and mouth disease he felt that that was nothing no handy cap at all however they talk as you said about wool tops they talk about zinc they talk about copper they talk about coffee they want to sell more to us then we are now buying

they talk about the high tariffs and we do have them there's no question about that but I would think as I recall those were the chief beefs they had yes well are the people in the United States aware of these criticisms or are they rather uninformed about the way South America views us well I am but frankly I would think the average American is rather ill -informed I don't believe our newspapers do a very good job in briefing the people on these stories very often I get the impression when I read a foreign news story that the correspondent is repeating something he has heard in a bar while he has been in the country for two days becoming an expert on our relationships with that country it takes an awful lot of study a lot of digging and a lot of talking and a lot of just plain living there to absorb these feelings when you make a quick pass at a country to learn something you only hear of excess people are only going to air their grapes they're going to tell you about the American who lived there for 14 years and never bothered to learn their

language they're not going to tell you about the other 50 who learned the language within six months or something like that and who did a good job you're going to hear about the American who blows his mouth off in a bar and gets drunk every night and scatters his money around like a fool you're not going to hear of the others who are living there quietly and doing a good job and so the newspapers can do a much much better job than they have done on giving the real story as to what goes on there when you read magazine articles and things of that nature in news magazines you read stories of corruption and excesses in the foreign governments and to sell them to read about the good work that they're doing to pull themselves out of some very very difficult problems we in the United States have the answers to all of their problems all we need to do is to buy everything they want to sell us but we can't know what I think this is another area that's been neglected for too long the time the American public have felt that knowing the Latin Americans, knowing the people in Western Europe, knowing the people in the Far East and the Middle East is something

only for our diplomats this is none of our business we're too busy buying a car, buying a car, developing our own way of life we don't want to be bothered so we're stipend this off to our diplomats but our foreign policy and our domestic policy now is tied up hand in glove and every American has a responsibility to know or to teach the children about the kind of a world we're living in because the repercussions of what happens in Western Europe, what happens in Latin America, what happens in the Middle East and the Far East have their effect on us but this is a new look this is the thing this is the reason why we ought to get a new look at who are we and what is our relationship to all of the other people in the world but this is a new concept what it is growing though yes it is I think it is growing well when you whenever you have people from one country living in another country these problems we're discussing here come up invariably it doesn't matter whether we're talking about Americans in Latin America or Germans in Spain or

even Latin Americans in Chicago as they were recently during the Pan American Games I distinctly recall picking up the newspaper and on this particular day most of what I read were about some of the gripes that the Latin American athletes had about their accommodations here and the food here and the transportation arrangements a person transplanted to another country becomes naturally kind of insecure and he tends to gripe about the excesses well there was one gripe that they made that was awfully legitimate and I just laughed about it because it shows you how stupid we are and we think we're the who do you need we know all the answers for instance in one of the suburbs in Chicago during the Pan American Games some wonderful women who wanted to extend a hand of friendship decided to have a barbecue or somehow to a picnic or festival and they'd oh they'd cooked up a marvelous meal and they waited the appointed hour nobody came the next hour nobody came and finally four hours passed and they all went home and took all of the food because nobody had been there to take over you know why they didn't come they had a poster around this arena where the athletes had competed

day after day and the poster was done in English and nobody could read it so this is a legitimate beat you see everybody's got to know our language we've never thought stop to think that everybody doesn't know our language well the point I was trying to make was that this is just an example of the kind of things that happen this is what appeared in newspapers for everyone who had a beef there may have been hundreds who are very happy to be here and enjoy their experience tremendously but the thing that we heard were the beef now this is the same thing is true when the coin is reversed well would you say that events like the Pan American Games or athletic events of some sort are a benefit to strengthening the relationship oh yeah I think they're immensely because here again I've had some experiences the last 10 years and it's people to people diplomacy it started in 1949 and I have had a personal experience in the dividends that are derived from the people to people diplomacy but our fact people can do much

more than governments in certain areas so that these 2300 Latin American athletes coming into Chicago as they did a couple of weeks ago get a look at America as it really is they went back I'm sure with increased knowledge of the American way I'm sure that on the whole despite these criticisms and many are more legitimate we make the same criticism when we go there they're pretty good but despite these criticisms on the whole I think they were favorably impressed now these 2300 people are just like 2300 diplomats going back home increasing understanding as far as the American way of life is concerned that question I believe another factor is that the Latin American is a very very great sports fan they're real aficionados they take their sports very seriously when an important soccer game comes to their town why it's no surprise to get out a hundred thousand people to see it and I think of special interest to

Chicago people would be the fact that I happen to be working in Venezuela building a chemical plant for six months during the period when Chico Carasquel was at his highest glory with the Chicago White Sox and I was invariably taken with the tremendous amount of space that was given to the Chicago White Sox not only on the sports pages but even the front page when the Chicago White Sox won or especially if Chico did very well on this particular day there were occasions when the White Sox lost when it was hard to find out this car on the previous day but a tremendous amount of space was devoted to him especially during the period when he was being voted in for the All -Star game and the course of the elections or the balloting for the All -Star game took up more space I'm sure than the course of the balloting for the American president or maybe even the president in their own country I think that he probably was the greatest ambassador the greatest thing that happened to diplomatic

relations between the United States and Venezuela and I believe this is continuing now since I think Louis Apparitio is also Venezuelan and because of this of course almost any Latin athlete on American teams in their own increasing number of these get a great amount of play Minnie Minoso who was Cuban shared some of the glory during the period when Apparitio was playing at the White Sox so I say let's have a lot more of this sort of thing because it brings nothing but good well this is a good point let's get into this area what can we do what can our country do and our people do to help strengthen our relationship well we can keep up this exchange of people whether it's by way of the athletic field or by exchange of teachers I think this is a tremendous game if we stepped up our exchange of teachers to Latin America they would welcome our teachers and I think it would be very good for their educators to come to this country we're doing it in other countries we're doing it to deliver them

in Latin America but we could do more we could encourage more people to send their children to school there are young people to colleges and they have some good colleges there and we could learn their language this is a thing that's very important and by the way I had to learn that in the Latin American countries they don't all speak Spanish when you go into Brazil your Spanish doesn't do you any good because there you must know your Portuguese it's a very funny situation Brazil although it's only one of some 20 odd countries this thought of as just another Latin American country it represents half of Latin America's area half of Latin Americans population and probably half of Latin America's resources and yet you find Spanish taught wherever languages are taught and Portuguese is hardly taught in any high school and in darn few colleges and I think an increasing amount of attention needs to be

paid to Brazil primarily because of the fact that they do represent so much more than just another country in Latin America so it's up to the people to take a greater interest and there's one in the post -cript I might say that they want to be considered as Americans too because we think of ourselves as being the only Americans and we're all constantly siphoning off the Canadian and the Latin Americans and they're in a two you know thank you very much it was a very interesting discussion this morning and I think our discussion has indicated that there are many ties of the hemisphere and that our relationship with South America is extremely important for reasons of our national security it is vital that we create and maintain a friendly relationship with many countries and particularly in our own hemisphere for reasons of a sound and healthy economy it is equally important that we maintain friendly relationships with all potential markets and even though it seems our Pan American relations are based on a strong foundation it has also been indicated this morning that instances of distrust and misunderstanding

do occur and as a result it has been suggested that it continued and in some cases increased effort be made to strengthen our relationship through understanding and aid good morning for the American scene