The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, May 24, 1961, Page Page 2, Image 2
Page 2 The Nebroskon Wednesday, Moy 24, 196) One Solution for Cuban Problem: Steal Some By Renny Ashleman Our Cuban policy is ill. The appalling fact is that it is not going to get better. Despite the 500 million dollars in social sulfa and political penicillin recently ap propriated, despite the CIA, despite the Rockefeller Foundation, and even despite the thousands of newspaper editorials and columns devoted to the subject, the patient is going to die. We're treating the wrong disease and we're using the wrong medicine. The problem ia Latin America is not Castro and it is not even communism. The prob lem is disease, poverty, ignorance, tyran ny, hypocrisy, American Imperialism, and downright stupid American foreign policy not necessarily in that order. Castro is barely a symptom of what is wrong with Latin America from the view point of the United States. Castro is tem peramental, insulting, unstable. But he merely represents the man intelligent enough to call for what nearly all of. Latin America needs: land reform. This is a good deal more intelligence displayed than that offered by all of the foreign policy of the United States experts put together. Castro has seized all of the United States property in Cuba. The same thing happened in Latin America years ago. The theft was carried out by our warm neigh bor to the South, Mexico. Castro is friendly to the East. So are all of our allies, if trade is the criterion, and nearly all of our foreign aid recipients, if aid is the criterion. Castro is a dictator. This en titles him to break bread with our good friends Batista, Trujillo, and Franco. " This is not to apologize for Castro. If is simply to put him ia perspective. If lie did not lead the Cuban revolution, someone else would. The Cubans want land reform, they want expropriation, and they want to twist the tail of the United States. This makes Cuba just like the other countries of the world. An attack on Cas tro is not an attack on a dictator. It is an attack on a nation which is doing The Daily Nehrashan MAGAZINE ISSUE Vol. 74 No. 114 Wednesday, May 24, 1961 LATIN AMERICA TODAY By Renny Ashleman Page Two A STUDY OF SHAPIRO By Roy Scheele Page Three TO LAUREL AND ILARDY, WITH LOVE By John C. West Page Four A PEBBLE CAST . . . By Lynn Wright Page Five POETRY, AS I SEE IT By Carol Bush Page Six COVER PHOTOGRAPH By Doug McCartney of Castro's precisely what the rest of Latin America and much of the world wants to do. When we attack Cuba or help attack Cuba we are announcing just this: we in tend to block the movements f any na tion in the world, if its movements are inimical to the United States. Such fears are real not just postulated. Pern has refused a loan of oars to set p a cooperative movement among the American states. Instead Pen is consid ering seizing United States oil property. Mexican government officials have openly praised Castro and Ms defense efforts. Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and many others have accepted aid and trade offers from the Communists. In most of Latin America the leader ship of the universities becomes the lead ership of the country. Most of this lead ership is today communist and leftist It is rapidly becoming pro-Castro. This is serious for University pontics are one of the best indices of national political trends ih LA. Take Peru. In a recent election in the leading University of San Marcos the vote was 4,300 for Castro party candidates, 3,000 for the left wing Aprista candidate, and 1,390 for the Christian Democrat party. This is the university of the wealthy students, the conservatives. It is the university that has furnished the leadership of that country. These results are not singular. They are a good match for most of the countries in Latin Amer ica. It is maintained that despite the clear evidence that we are fighting a popular and ever more popular cause in Latin America that we mast continue to do so because our honor is at stake. Our pres tige must be protected. I fail to see the sense of that state ment Our prestige was disastrously dam aged by the ill-planned, ill-advised ' ,iH fated adventure. Our prestige would have been daviaged had we succeeded. This is nothing prestigous about the most power ful nation in the West beating one of the smallest. There is nothing prestigious about crushing a popular government Had we won we would have had to kill Thunder thousands, perhaps millions of Cubans. We would have had to maintain a dictator in power. We would have solidly proved Russia's case of dollar diplomacy. The problem is South America rill . deeper than the United State Wanders. South America is restless becanse of Its poverty. This poverty is not walking pov erty, nor breadline poverty. It is the pov erty of the underfed, the starving; the underboused, the homeless; the poorly paid, unemployed, and virtaal slave. The Buenos Aires Herald points out the facts in December 1960 "When you have a population growing at a rate three times faster than the increase in production there is but one result possible . . . ever deepening poverty." Argentina gets less food to its workers than it did in 1930. Uruguay is not de veloping. Chile is in risk of political vio lence of the worst sort On her own, Chile (next twenty-five years) could not repay the cost of one of her earthquakes. Colombia is killing off as many as 500, 000 of her people by civil disturbance, per decade. Venezuela is the richest nation in LA," and has one of the worst social lags. The opposition in Venezuela is fully fidelista. Brazil's northern province is in a semi-revolt stage and her inflationary problems are unbelievable. She has at times printed more money than her en tire economy is worth. In economic terms all of Latin America is still undeveloped. "Only Argentina feeds her people the satisfactory number of calories for a low calorie country accord ing to FAO. Many thousands die of mal nutrition yearly in 17 of the LA counties. The final blow to Latin America's eco nomic strength is the fact that none of the Latin American countries trade with each other to any appreciable extent Ia Northern Chile, mountain towns needing fresh vegetables cannot get them from Argentina, though both sides would bene fit from a trade exchange.' Political dif ficulties keep the two countries raOroads separated by fifty yards. If the United States wants to save Latin America for the kind of world that it favors, it must attack all dictatorships, not just those against us. We must quit holding our friends in power and let the true popular governments come into power. The second thing that we mast do is aid Latin America. This aid cannot be el the type which we have given in the past which aids the oligarchs or rich families and which supports armies ten times as big as any of the countries need to main tain order or preserve their borders. This aid must go for agrarian reform, better transportation systems, better hous ing, better water, and the development of markets for Latin American products. We are giving all of Latin America 500 million for these aims today. We have given Franco of Spain over two billion hi past years. No amount of money will make Latin America prosperous. An aid amount in the two billion category would give them markedly better bousing, sani tation, and transportation. This is Castro's program. If Free Enterprise is superior to communism, the only way to prove it is to prove it by action. Genuine demo cratic land reform would destroy Castro ism in every country of Latin America. Nothing else wilL