Breached Bloc

Seven leading Latin American nations --Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Ecuador--cold-shouldered the U.S. last week to vote for U.S.S.R.-backed Poland instead of U.S.-backed Turkey to fill a U.N. Security Council seat. The failure to muster a two-thirds vote resulted in a deadlock and pushed decision on the issue into this week.

The opportunity for the Latin American swing came from Western dawdling that failed to put Turkey into the race until last month. That gave Poland time to ask for commitments from the Latin Americans. They agreed because of three factors:

P:The Big Power "gentlemen's agreement" of 1946, which guarantees a Security Council seat for an East European nation, is also the agreement that guarantees two Security Council seats for Latin American nations. Although the U.S. maintains that the agreement was valid for only one year, the Latin Americans figured that a vote against Poland would mean certain Soviet-bloc opposition to perpetuation of their two seats. P:The Latin Americans do not consider the Poland-Turkey contest a big issue even if the U.S. does. Adding Poland to Russia and neutralist Ceylon (which last week replaced Canada on the Security Council) would, they say, still leave the West with an 8-3 majority at the least-one more than the 7-4 vote needed to throw deadlocked issues such as Suez and Hungary into the General Assembly. (But the U.S. argues that by 1961 Russia-fearing Finland and the neutralist United Arab Republic will probably win seats, might cut the reliable majority to 6-5.) P:Latin America has never been a monolithic bloc, even if the Russians do call it the U.S.'s "mechanical majority." As Mexican Delegate Luis Padilla Nervo puts it, "the Latin Americans do not follow instructions from anybody except their own governments." Compared to the Soviet bloc, which votes solid on every question, Latin America is ruggedly independent. In 1957, for example, Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti and Bolivia disagreed with the U.S. more than half the time.

Only on major cold-war issues does Latin America usually side with the U.S. --and even then there is always the temptation to pluck a feather from the eagle. Example: admission to the U.N. of Red China, which has been staging a major propaganda drive across Latin America (TIME, July 27). Last month Cuban Delegate Manuel Bisbe made the first open gesture by abstaining from backing the block-Red China bloc. Now Brazil's U.N. delegate, Augusto Frederico Schmidt, blusters that "popular outcry in our countries is becoming so strong on the Red China issue that we may soon have to give in and change our position."

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