Latin America's Biggest Waste

FOR once they all seemed to agree," smiled Peru's President Manuel Prado last week as a chorus of assent from Latin American Presidents answered his call for a hemisphere-wide conference on disarmament. The U.S. Department of State hastened to approve the idea. Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Uruguay agreed to meet, and Argentine President Arturo Frondizi cabled "my firmest support."

But while Peru's Prado drew cheers, his navy brass was quietly concluding a deal to buy two cruisers from Britain for $4,000,000. President Jorge Alessandri of neighboring Chile, who earlier had assailed the "ruinous competition" in weapons, observed that "it is not a logical attitude to propose a conference and then to buy new arms." And despite Frondizi's stand, Argentine officers were in Washington purchasing 28 F-86F Sabre jets for $700,000.

Able by their arms to intimidate civilian authority, brass-hats have spent some $2.5 billion on munitions since World War II--more, in most countries, than goes for health, education and development programs. The standing armies total 500,000 men and cost $1.4 billion a year.

Lonely Force. Neither Prado nor any other political leader proposes to wipe out Latin America's armed services, long a necessary and sometimes a lonely force for stability. Even in democratic Brazil, President Juscelino Kubitschek rules today because the army four years ago staged a "preventive coup" to nip a plot against him. The Argentine military backs Frondizi against mob pressures. In Guatemala the military academy is dubbed the "school of Presidents" because it trained four of the last five chief executives.

The pinch is that from this position of strength the military demands disproportionately costly and often unsuitable tools for the job. Brazil has spent $2 billion on its armed forces in the past six years v. $1.6 billion for all public works and development programs. The refurbished carrier Minas Gerais (once H.M.S. Vengeance) will cost $36 million, enough to pave 3,900 miles of highway--and Brazil has no naval air arm to put aboard her. Argentina has spent $1 billion on defense since 1954. "Every time Ecuador buys armaments," notes Peruvian Foreign Minister Raul Porras, "we buy as much or more"; yet General Antonio Luna Ferreccio retorts for the brass: "Peru cannot be more disarmed."

Bad Buy. The officer caste, drawn traditionally from the middle class and poorer gentility, splurges fortunes on such status symbols as Caracas' $10 million officers' club, the marble-and-gilt Circulo de las Fuerzas Armadas. Early retirement is a huge drain on treasuries. Argentina has 20,000 retired officers v. 10,000 on active duty; Brazil's out-to-pasture list includes 1,500 generals and 38 field marshals.

Waste and graft are high. After Peru contracted to buy four submarines from the U.S.'s General Dynamics Corp, word leaked out that the nephew of the navy minister who ordered the subs stood to collect a $300,000 "commission." The latest scandal brewing is in Cuba, where Fidel Castro agreed to pay $150 each for 24,000 Belgian automatic rifles worth $75 each. The fancy equipment is often short-lived. Days after Ecuador got three Canberra turbojet bombers, a mechanic cracked up two of them taxiing on the landing strip.

Only 1.3% of U.S. mutual-defense funds have gone to Latin America since the program started in 1951, $317 million in aging equipment designed to promote joint defense and weapons standardization. Instead, the Latin Americans kept shopping abroad for hotter hardware, spending some $200 million for British jets alone. Official U.S policy now is only to encourage (chiefly by lending destroyers) the development of an anti-submarine warfare force.

Militarists are quick to point out that the U.S. spends twice as much on defense ($40 billion a year) as it does on education. But the U.S. defense effort is the nuclear shield behind which Latin America has concentrated on economic progress (see BUSINESS). Mexico, which devotes only seven-tenths of 1% of the gross national product to its 60,000-man army, has experienced stability and boom. Lightly policed Uruguay and Costa Rica are stable and democratic. The fervent response of civilian leaders to the idea of an arms cutback showed that, with the spread of democratic government, pressure is building against the brass.

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