International: Haunted Castle

Into Mexico City this week debouched an army of diplomats, drawn by the “Conference of American Republics on Problems of War & Peace “—official title of the next semifinal bout on postwar organization of the world. The diplomatic army of “Hemisphere nations cooperating against the Axis” consisted of some 300 generals. With them came secretaries, lobbyists, newsmen, propagandists, camp followers. They routed indignant tourists from hotel rooms, jampacked the town and, turning their backs on snow-clad Popocatepetl, eyed the suburban hill where stands Chapultepec Castle, site of the conference.

Biggest delegation (39 accredited) came from the U.S., officially headed by Secretary of State Edward Reilly Stettinius Jr., fresh from his triumphs in Moscow. But before Stettinius arrived, the U.S. delegation was mustered by Assistant Secretary Nelson A. Rockefeller, who, having labored long and lovingly, is now beginning to know his way around in the Latin American vineyard. Of the other nations, Mexico, the host, had 36 delegates, Cuba 23. Nearly all sent their Foreign Ministers, with technical aides for facts-&-figures discussions, and plenty of decorative women for dancing and dinner parties.

There are many things that Latin Americans want to discuss with their big neighbors—about keeping Argentina in diplomatic Coventry and sending Franco to it —but there were two subjects that they were intent on bringing up in many forms:

The first was economics—their economics, their market when U.S. war purchases end, their standard of living and what the U.S. is going to do about it. The second was political relationships—their political relationships with their Big Neighbor, their relationships with the world organization proposed by Dumbarton Oaks, their place in the regional affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

Their great worry is: will they be the pawns of the Colossus of the North, or honored, respected associates? The test of Nelson Rockefeller’s long and earnest efforts to win Latin American friendship will be whether or not this Latin worry is deflated at Mexico City. If this fear is not removed, no Western Hemisphere working arrangement will be durable. If the worry is intensified, sooner or later Latin Americans will turn to some other power, perhaps to Britain or Russia, to counterbalance a new U.S. imperialism.

As the setting for the conference, Chapultepec Castle, in whose park the Aztec emperors used to stroll, was symbolic. U.S. troops stormed the castle in 1847, and to Mexicans. Chapultepec means much the same thing that Bunker Hill means to the U.S. Among its defenders were teen-age cadets of the Mexican Military College, who are revered to this day in Mexico as the “Niños Héroes” (Boy Heroes) of Chapultepec.