LATIN AMERICAN TRENDS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00865A001700070001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 9, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 3, 1975
• Content Type: NOTES

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Secret
No Foreign Dissem
rLLFU H 0
Latin American Trends
Secret
135
September 3, 1975
No. 0525/75
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No Foreign Dsissem/No Discern Abroad
Background Use OnZy/ControZZed Dissem
Warning Notice
Sensitive Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved
NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION
Unauthorized Disclosure Subject to Criminal Sanctions
Classified by 010725
Exempt from general declassification schedule
of E.O. 11652, exemption category:
? 5B(1), (2), and (3)
Automatipally declassified on:
Date Impossible to Determine
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This publication is prepared for regional specialists in the Washington com-
munity by the Western Hemisphere Division, Office of Current Intelligence,
with occasional contributions from other offices within the Directorate of
Intelligence. Comments and queries are welcome. They should be directed to
the authors of the individual articles.
CONTENTS
September 3, 1975
Charges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Situation Heats Up In Surinam . . . . . . . . 5
Cuba: Book Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Enhance Position . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nicaragua: Reaction to Anderson's
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Uruguay: Bordaberry Seeks to Enhance Position
Seizing on the momentum of the relatively favor-
able outcome of his most recent confrontation with
the military (see Latin American Trends, August 13,
1975, and August 20, 1975), President Bordaberry is
attempting--with some apparent success--to enhance his
own popularity and shed his image as a mere figure-
head.
Responding to the enthusiasm of a quarter million
people commemorating the 150th anniversary of Uruguay's
independence, Bor.daberry--usually a mediocre speaker--
launched into an emotional and effective defense of his
government. The President underscored the anti-
Communist and pro-development nature of his administra-
tion and pointed out the folly of returning to the
politics of the past. The latter theme gives credi-
bility to the widely-held belief that the presidential
election scheduled for 1976 will be canceled, allowing
Bordaberry to stay in office beyond his current term.
While the military has dominated the government
since June 1973, Bordaberry has recently been willing
to confront the armed forces over economic policy-
making. His tenacity and personal integrity have in-
creased his popularity, a fact not lost on the mili-
tary. Uruguayan military leaders were both surprised
and impressed by the outpouring of support for the
President at the independence day celebration. This
manifestation, plus a recent favorable Gallup Poll
rating for Bordaberry, could provide him with addi-
tional bargaining power in his future dealings with
the armed forces. (CONFIDENTIAL)
September 3, 1975
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Nicaragua: Reaction to Anderson's Charges
Jack Anderson's recent stinging columns on
President Somoza--characterizing him as "the world's
greediest ruler"--have outraged the Nicaraguan
strongman. Somoza has told the new US ambassador
that he views the articles as part of an effort by
the opposition to incite violence and embarrass his
government, but he also believes US government
agencies are out to destroy him.
Opposition leader and newspaper publisher Pedro
Joaquin Chamorro is a likely domestic target for
Somoza's continued wrath. Somoza conducted a vendetta
against Chamorro, a vocal and long-standing critic of
the regime, in the wake of the successful. attack and
flight to Cuba last December by the terrorist Sandinist
National Liberation Front, and he is again casting
about for scapegoats. Already censors have blocked
publication of one issue of Chamorro's paper.
has reported that publica-
tion of Anderson s columns came during foreign policy
consultations in Managua, and may have prompted Somoza
to decide to explore opening relations with Romania
and Yugoslavia and other initiatives to help improve
Nicaragua's image with the Third World. Such moves,
hardly momentous in the context of the present non-
aligned movement, nonetheless would represent a signi-
ficant policy departure for this traditionally extreme-
ly close US ally.
Somoza, and others about him, have felt that there
is a strong anti-Somoza clique in the Embassy and State
department. These columns, coinciding with the depar-
ture of Ambassador Shelton, whom Somoza regarded as a
great friend, may have deepened his suspicions. In a
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conversation with the US Ambassador on August 27,
Somoza stated that if the US Government did not deny
Anderson's charge that US aid funds had been misused
in Nicaragua, it would seriously damage the aid pro-
gram and bilateral relations. Although Somoza said
he wished to avoid polemics with Anderson, he indi-
cated a willingness to get friends in the US Congress
to raise the matter there. Thus far, Somoza's veteran
ambassador in Washington has simply sent a letter to
the WASHINGTON POST and the distributor of Anderson's
column rejecting the allegations, but the Nicaraguan
leader also seems intent on securing an official denial
of at least some of Anderson's charges as a test of US-
Nicaraguan relations under the new ambassador. (SECRET/
NO FOREIGN DISSEM/BACKGROUND USE ONLY/CONTROLLED DISSEM/
NO DISSEM ABROAD)
September 3, 1975
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Situation Heats Up In Surinam
With the approach of November 25, the date for
Surinam's independence from the Netherlands, there
is increasing concern over prospects for a stable
transition.
Centrist Minister-President Henk Arron is strug-
gling to hold together his coalition of both militant
and non-militant Creoles (blacks) and a few East
Indians and Chinese. The tactics of the leader of the
left wing of the coalition, black-power advocate
Edward Bruma, have exacerbated the fears of Hindustanis,
Javanese, and Chinese that Surinam is rapidly becoming
a Creole-dominated state. As a result, several non-
Creole leaders have proven susceptible to the efforts
of the major opposition party, which represents most
of Surinam's East Asians, to get them to abandon the
government coalition, leaving it with only a slim parlia-
mentary majority.
The demagogic Bruma has used the state purchasing
and distributing agency to increase his popularity with
poor urban blacks while squeezing East Indian farmers
and Chinese merchants. Furthermore, under his party's
leadership the national police have engaged in a semi-
strike that has led to a near breakdown in public order.
The control of the police by Bruma's party has led non-
militants in the government to insist that the Ministry
of Defense, which will be created after independence,
be under their control as a counter weight.
Another indication of growing instability was the
riot in early August by 400 workers at the smelting
and refining complex belonging to the Surinam Aluminum
Company (Suralco), a subsidiary of the Aluminum Company
of America. The disturbance--the first in 58 years of
the company's operation--grew out of unskilled workers'
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fear that they would be laid off. The refusal of the
police to restore order may compound the impact the
incident will have on foreign investment.
The mild-mannered Arron will try to paper over
the split in his government by reining in Bruma far
enough to mollify its non-Creole members. Bruma will
probably find it in his interest to go along at least
until independence is achieved and the Dutch garrison
is removed. East Indians and Chinese, regardless of
political affiliation, have insisted that they be con-
sulted on the draft constitution to ensure that
measures are adopted to guarantee the civil rights of
non-Creoles. If Arron allows an orderly constitution-
al debate, it could mean that independence would have
to be postponed. Meanwhile, racial tension and
economic uncertainty will continue to cause apprehen-
sive Surinamers to depart for the Netherlands at rates
reported to be as high as 500 per week. (SECRET/NO
FOREIGN DISSEM/CONTROLLED DISSEM)
September 3, 1975
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Cuba: Book Review
Frank Mankiewicz' and Kirby Jones' recent book,
WITH FIDEL: A PORTRAIT OF CASTRO AND CUBA, is pattern-
ed on a study done in the mid-60s by Lee Lockwood.
Missing from the Mankiewicz-Jones book, however, are
Lockwood's outstanding complementary photography, his
broad knowledge of Cuban events, and his skillful in-
terrogation of Castro.
Mankiewicz and Jones were obviously awed by the
man they were interviewing, and their political incli-
nation, reflected in their book's main title, apparent-
ly prevented them from pressing questions that might
have embarrassed him. Their poor preparation before
visiting Cuba left them ill-prepared to challenge some
of the more atrocious absurdities Castro foisted on them,
and their inattention to detail resulted in some gross
inaccuracies salted throughout their narrative. Although
they note that Castro chose them from a host of eager
journalists and also chose the time for their visit, they
never seem to realize that they were merely being used for
Havana's own propaganda purposes. Nevertheless, their
book, with all its shortcomings, is a useful contribution
to the literature on Cuba because for the discerning
reader it provides an intimate glimpse of the contemporary
Fidel, a man who has changed dramatically since the
Lookwood interview.
The main portion of the book--and its most valuable
part--consists of the text of the co-authors' lengthy
conversations with Castro. In it, the Cuban prime minister
emerges as an intelligent, smooth-talking, extremely
knowledgeable and shrewd politician who mesmerizes his
guests with his charm and apparent candor. Still a master
of the spoken word, Castro now seems more prone to making
statements that test one's gullibility; distorting facts
seems to come more easily to him and at times he seems to
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have little trouble making statements he almost cer-
tainly does not believe. He can now mouth communist
ideological jargon that years ago would have drawn
his scorn, and his willingness to submit so completely
to Moscow's direction in the field of ideology is a
measure of the trauma his ego has had to undergo over
the past decade.
In his musings, Castro often gives evidence of
a greater maturity and of an ability to look back on
some events more objectively than had been his custom
in the early years of the Revolution. Some of this
obviously was done with a specific purpose in mind.
He acknowledged, for example, that he had made a signif-
icant contribution to the alienation of the US in the
early 1960s and even admitted the foolishness of the
position he maintained at the time of the missile crisis
in 1962. At other times, however, he makes revealing
but less pointed remarks. In likening Dominican revolu-
tionary Colonel Francisco Caamano to Che Guevara, for
example, he lamented the fact that sometimes revolution-
aries were betrayed by their own enthusiasm; that is
about as close as he has ever come to public criticism
of either Guevara or Caamano.
In questioning Castro, the authors showed little
imagination. Instead of fencing pointlessly with him
over theoretical issues such as the eventual disappear-
ance of the state in the final stages of communism, they
should have pressed him on matters of much more immediate
importance. When he criticized the US for allegedly
protecting "some of Batista's worst criminals," why did
the authors not ask him whyhe never requested the extra-
dition of any of those he wanted to prosecute? When
he said he refused to release political prisoners in
Cuba in exchange for political prisoners in Chile on the
grounds that "it is a moral question, an issue of justice,
not a question of negotiations," why was he not reminded
of the hundreds of prisoners ransomed through negotiations
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with the US following the Bay of Pigs? When Castro
alleges that he responded to Senators Pell and Javits'
expressed interest in US political prisoners by re-
leasing four of them, why is the reader not told that
the four were not political prisoners but had been con-
victed of common crimes and were unrelated to those in
which Pell and Javits had indicated an interest?
When Castro boasted that in revolutionary Cuba
"there has never been a conflict between the government
and the masses" and that "never has a soldier been used
against the people," why was not his memory refreshed
with a reference to occasions such as that in the early
1960s when troops and tanks were sent to Matanzas
Province to put down by force a series of housewives'
protest demonstrations? When Castro maintained that
"this is not a personal government; not a single decision
is made unilaterally," why is there no reference to the
mounds of evidence to the contrary that can be found in
the works of such pro-Castro authors as Rene Dumont and
K.S. Karol?
The authors are also given to inaccurate generali-
ties in the remaining portion of the book that tend to
dilute its value. Every young Cuban male, for example,
does not have to serve three years in the armed forces,
nor is every able-bodied person armed and required to
take part in occasional militia training. The Matanzas
Province elections in mid-1974 were not the first held
in Cuba since the Revolution, and the government had
decided before, not after, the elections to expand the
system to the rest of the country. Nor were the elec-
tions "unrigged."
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The authors had an excellent opportunity to
educate many in the US on present-day Cuba and its
fascinating leader, but the work they produced does
not live up to that potential. What is worse, many
of the book's readers will assume it is an in-depth
study by competent observers when in fact it is a
superficial work by writers woefully ill-equipped
for their task. (UNCLASSIFIED)
September 3, 1975
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