Monday, Jul. 14, 1941
Liquid or Solid?
If the German invasion of Russia caught Nazi propagandists in Latin America napping, they were wide awake last week. By cartoon, pamphlet and voice the call was sounded to join Adolf Hitler's crusade against Communism. Since Latin America is 78% Catholic, the call might have been expected to show results. It did, but the results were not all as intended. Latin Americans started shooting each other.
Raids & Riots. In Buenos Aires, Deputy Raul Damonte Taborda's newly formed equivalent of the Dies Committee staged a series of pre-dawn raids, seized files, pamphlets, maps, books of instruction on fifth-column activities, Nazi flags, radio sets and thirty Germans, including one Hein Froehling, who was supposed to be director of Nazi underground activities.
In the town of Durazno, Uruguay, students staged a demonstration in the street outside the building where an Italian Red Cross benefit was being held. The benefit turned into a riot. A 70-year-old drawing teacher, Gregorio Morales, was killed while onlooking. An automobile careened down the street, its occupants firing into the crowd. Down went 17-year-old Walter Medina, shouting: "Viva la Democracies!" Three days later the police announced that three men had confessed to the killing of Teacher Morales. One of them was Italian Vice Consul Andres Musciani.
Words & Weasels. The British and U.S. decision to help Russia and the Pope's refusal to join Adolf Coeur de Lion's crusade kept the Nazi campaign from gaining headway among the more statesmanlike of Latin America's leaders. Argentina's Acting President Ramon S. Castillo joined Brazil's Getulio Vargas and Cuba's Fulgencio Batista in broadcasting good-neighborly greetings to the U.S. on the Fourth of July.
Pan-American solidarity was nevertheless somewhat more fluid than it had been before the attack on Russia. Evidence of this was contained in the refusal of Argentina to support Uruguay's proposal that all the Americas regard as nonbelligerent any American country at war with an outside power (TIME, June 23). Argentina insisted that the proposal was merely "superfluous."
War? While some friends of solidarity urged another meeting of the America's foreign ministers, and others hoped that none would be proposed until Latin America fully realized that its No. 1 enemy was Hitler, fighting broke out between Ecuador and Peru (see below). If the other 19 American republics could quench this fire quickly, the hemisphere would emerge more united than ever. If they failed, Pan-Americanism would be a dream.
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