Boy Wonder

When a U.S. news scout searched Bogota for a Colombian representative last year, he was told that there was only one man in the country who knew how to write the terse, factual stories that North Americans like. "Unfortunately for you," a Colombian explained, "he is our President." He spoke of keen, wiry Alberto Lleras Camargo, the "boy wonder" editor who became Minister of Interior (Premier) at 29, and stepped into the presidency ten years later. Last week, Lleras, now 41, got a job with even more scope; he was elected director general of the venerable Pan American Union.

Lleras would walk into the Union's white-columned Washington headquarters with a critical eye cocked. Recently, Newspaperman Lleras' Semana (Week) referred to former Director Leo S. Rowe's stewardship of the Union as "26 years of banquets." It stated that Rowe had been "a discreet agent for all North American policies in connection with the continent, whether of aggressive penetration or of good neighborliness." Lleras could be expected to back a more representative position.

Among the Pan American Union's most outstanding work has been the staging of hemispheric conferences. That is right down Lleras' alley. Aside from handling many top Government jobs in Colombia, Lleras has been attending Pan American conferences since the Montevideo meeting in 1934. At Mexico City, he helped write the anti-Axis Chapultepec Agreement, which provided for common defense of the hemisphere against aggressors within and without. As a believer in unity at almost any price, Lleras sparked the fight at San Francisco to get Argentina into the U.N.

At home, Provisional President Lleras invited conservatives into his National Unity Government. He also, complained fellow party members, failed utterly to heal a split in his own Liberal Party. The result was that in last year's elections the Liberals (whose two candidates polled a majority) were soundly defeated. But not even Colombian Liberals set up an opposition cry when their leader was presented for the $18,000-a-year job (tax free) as head of the Pan American Union. Lleras' election was unanimous.

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