VENEZUELA: Good Neighbor in Action

Last November Nelson Rockefeller went to Rio de Janeiro on business of hemispheric importance: to translate Good Neighborliness from words to deeds. Through his American International Association for Economic and Social Development (TIME, Nov. 25), he proposed to increase Brazil’s production (especially of food), thereby increasing Brazil’s capacity to buy sorely needed U.S. goods, which the U.S. sorely needs to sell.

Last week, at the invitation of Venezuela’s New Dealish Government, he set out to do the same for Venezuela. As in Brazil, corporations with mixed U.S. and Venezuelan capital (plus Venezuelan Government aid) will invest in specific projects to improve the country’s backward agriculture. (At present, Venezuela imports fresh vegetables from the U.S.) In time the Rockefeller plan is to:

1) increase the food supply; 2) raise living standards ; 3 ) diversify an economy now top-heavy with oil; 4) stop the stampede from farms to oil camps and cities. First projects will be truck farms and dairies, with flour mills and model cattle ranches to follow. Big U.S. oil companies, such as Rockefeller’s own Creole, will probably put up 25% of the original capital. They will withdraw in favor of Venezuelan capital as soon as the projects are well started.