The Haves & Have-Nots

In the plain-spoken letter that prompted visiting President Eisenhower to invite him and six of his friends to see the U.S. for themselves, Chilean University Student Patricio Fernandez drew a bitter contrast. He compared the failure of the U.S. to finance the economic development of Latin America with "the initiative of the U.S. and its immense sacrifices in Europe--the Marshall Plan." Last week, as the Chileans finished their tour of the U.S., they made it plain that they had come, seen and not been conquered.

Fern7#225;ndez and his friends think that "the key to understanding the current world situation is recognition that man has entered the period of the most intense, widespread revolutionary activity in his long history," and that the revolution's cause is the disparity between the high U.S. standard of living and the low standard of 1.8 billion hungry havenots, including Latin Americans.

In this mood they traveled the U.S. from San Francisco to Manhattan, touching at Philadelphia, Albuquerque, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Washington. They were stuffed with facts about the U.S. educational system, fraternity houses, cement plants, free enterprise, soil-conservation projects and a calendar printing plant. They were briefed by State Department officials and rebriefed by professors, Rotarians and students of Hispanic affairs.

In Washington at journey's end, the students made it clear at a press conference that their brains had not been washed. They still had the questions (and preconceptions) they arrived with, and said they had got no satisfactory answers. Sample: "Why does the U.S. not grant credits for fundamental government-owned industries like petroleum? Why has not the U.S. come anywhere near fulfilling our basic necessities?"

At week's end they flew to Cuba, where Fern7#225;ndez pleased a television audience by saying that "the Cuban revolution represents a hope for the peoples of Latin America," but made clear that the U.S. visit was "pretty good, because we had absolute freedom to converse with the personalities we wanted to talk to."

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