More Sorrow Than Anger

By Marguerite Johnson

Will the U.S. be the loser?

Argentine Foreign Minister Nicanor Costa Mendez was sitting across from U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig as the Organization of American States met in Washington last week for an emergency session to consider the Falklands crisis. Staring directly at Haig during a virulent, 45-minute speech, Costa Mendez charged that U.S. support for Britain was "illegal and repugnant" and that the U.S. had "turned its back" on Latin America. He warned: "The future of the inter-American relationship is under threat." As Haig sat in stony silence, most of the assembled delegates gave the Argentine diplomat a long standing ovation.

That gesture seemed to confirm a fear that has haunted U.S. policymakers almost from the day Argentina seized the Falkland Islands: that there was no way the U.S. could side with Britain, a loyal NATO ally, without alienating much of Latin America. Venezuelan President Luis Herrera Campins, a U.S. friend only a few months ago and now Argentina's most vocal supporter in South America, declared last month: "It is already clear that the country that will lose the most in this confrontation between Britain and Latin America will be the U.S." Panama President Aristides Royo has accused the U.S. of betraying its Latin neighbors by "changing hats and choosing sides when it should have remained neutral." Most U.S. experts take Latin America's anger seriously. Says Robert Leiken of Georgetown University: "This has struck a very deep nerve." The U.S. is viewed as tricky, sly and selling out its Latin friends."

In an effort to contain the damage, Haig delivered a conciliatory response to Costa Mendez. He rejected Argentina's demand for application of the 1947 Treaty of Rio, which calls upon the U.S. and 20 other signatories to come to each other's aid in the event of aggression from outside the hemisphere, on the ground that the first use of force in the Falklands crisis did not come from a non-American nation. A few days earlier, Haig had tried to patch up relations with Latin America by publicly calling upon Britain to be "magnanimous in victory." Summing up the U.S. dilemma, Haig asked his fellow O.A.S. delegates: "Is there a country among us that has not counted itself a friend of both [Britain and Argentina]?" Overriding a plea by Haig, the O.A.S. the next day approved, by a vote of 17 to 0, an Argentine-sponsored resolution condemning Britain's "unjustified and disproportionate armed attacks" and asking the U.S. to lift the economic and military sanctions that it had imposed against Buenos Aires last month. The U.S. abstained, along with Cuba, Colombia and Trinidad-Tobago.

Within Latin America, paradoxically, public emotions were restrained. Resident or visiting Americans encountered no demonstrations urging " Yanqui go home." Nor were there any anti-American mobs of the sort that pelted Vice President Richard Nixon with eggs in 1958 and forced Governor Nelson Rockefeller to cancel official visits to Chile, Peru and Venezuela in 1969. Although popular sentiment has been running in Argentina's favor, the most violent reactions have been the burning of a few British and U.S. flags in Caracas.

Washington could also take heart from the fact that official Latin American criticism was not unanimous and was frequently delivered more in sorrow than in anger. Although most countries in Central and South America recognize Argentina's claim to sovereignty over the Falklands, many viewed Argentina as the aggressor last April. Mexican officials conceded that, in the words of one diplomat, U.S. support for Britain was "easily predicted from the beginning." The trouble was, he added, that "the U.S. has no friends, no allies in Latin America, only interests. And those interests are often not in the best interest of Latin America."

The harshest criticism of U.S. policy came from Peru and Venezuela, two countries that are involved in tense border disputes of their own. Charging that Washington had disrupted the basis of the O.A.S. and created a North-South breach in the hemisphere, Caracas sent a delegation to Western Europe to plead for an end to the European Community's economic sanctions against Argentina. The sudden surge of nationalism in Caracas raised fears in Guyana, meanwhile, that Venezuela might resort to military action to seize 58,000 sq. mi. of mineral-rich territory that have been the subject of dispute since the beginning of the century.

The Falklands crisis has had a different effect on another country engaged in a longstanding territorial argument. For more than a century, Guatemala has had its eye on Belize, a tiny neighbor that gained its independence from Britain eight months ago. Says a Guatemalan newspaper editor: "When the Argentines first went into the Falklands, a lot of people here were saying, 'Bravo, we should do the same thing and invade Belize.' But now, after watching the British these past few weeks, that feeling has changed to, 'Thank God we never tried.' " Meanwhile, at the United Nations most of the Caribbean countries were trying to keep a low profile in the affair partly to avoid jeopardizing foreign aid from the U.S. and partly because many are English-speaking former colonies that retain sympathy for Britain.

However, U.S. policy in Central America is expected to suffer a serious setback. Until the Falklands war, the U.S. was counting on Argentina and Venezuela for help in its attempt to bolster El Salvador's regime against leftist guerrillas and condemn Nicaragua's revolutionary government for allegedly aiding the insurgents. Any new U.S. offensive branding Nicaragua as a "Marxist aggressor" will meet with little backing after Nicaragua's outspoken support for Argentina. Reports one recent visitor to Nicaragua: "After the first shots were fired in the Falklands, you could almost hear a great sigh of relief coming from Managua."

Some Latin American officials are pessimistic about the precedent that has been set by Argentina. Colombia's Foreign Minister Carlos Lemos Simmonds fears a "Malvinas syndrome" in which governments will use war to forge national unity in the face of serious internal problems. Lemos Simmonds also blames the U.S. and the industrialized nations for their unrestrained competition in arms sales. Says he: "At the moment, there is no more dangerous area of the world than Latin America." Cuba has offered to send troops and arms to Argentina, but the most that U.S. experts expect Havana to gain is propaganda points against the U.S. and a little less political isolation from its Latin American neighbors.

Most analysts in and out of Washington agree that no accurate assessment of the damage to U.S. policy in the region can be made until the war is over. Much will depend on the conflict's length and severity, as well as the degree of military aid the U.S. provides Britain. Diego Uribe Vargas, former Colombian Foreign Minister, echoes a common refrain when he observes that such institutions as the O.A.S. and the Treaty of Rio have not proved to be effective instruments in the current crisis. "They are like those medicines you keep in a bottle on a shelf for a long time," he says. "When you take them, you find out they're no good." On a collective level, Washington may find Latin Americans more difficult to deal with in the future, but on an individual level the damage is expected to be easier to repair.

--By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by William McWhirter/Bogota and Christopher Redman/Washington

With reporting by William McWhirter/Bogota, Christopher Redman/Washington

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