362.20235/5–847
The Ambassador in Argentina (Messersmith) to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: Anticipating that shortly after your return from Moscow you would be able to give consideration to this matter of the Argentine and our problems in this hemisphere, and to the Rio meeting, and as the Argentine has really with the steps she has taken and is taking completed her compliance under the Acts of Mexico City, I wrote a despatch yesterday making recommendations to the Department for your consideration of which I enclose a copy (no. 2462 of May 7, 1947),46 I had dictated a letter to you in which I sent you some observations I thought would be of interest to you, but this morning when the letter was given me for signature there arrived your telegram no. 395 of May 7, 8 p.m., 1947, stating that since your return to Washington you have discussed with President Truman his meeting with the Argentine Ambassador, Dr. Ivanissevich, at the White House. In view of this telegram, I am writing you this letter [Page 196] instead of the one I had dictated yesterday, as we have a confidential pouch leaving tomorrow.
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I do not recall in all my service for our Government any situation in a country which has been so misrepresented before our public opinion. This is due to a variety of factors. I cannot in this letter enter into any details, but I have endeavored, and my associates have endeavored, to keep the Department fully informed concerning all that is happening in this country. What we must recognize is that the Argentine Government today is the first government of the Argentine for years to concern itself with some of the fundamental social, economic, and financial problems which previous governments had neglected. We have to recognize that the present Government was constitutionally elected in as fair an election as has been held in the Argentine. We have to recognize that whatever inefficiency, corruption, and inadequacies exist here do not differ from the situation which prevailed under previous Argentine governments and which unfortunately prevails in others of the American republics. Great changes are taking place in the country, but they are long over-due in most respects, and they fit into the times. The Argentine Government has in the political and economic fields as well as in the social field taken some measures which have gone too far, but the pendulum is already swinging back. …
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But what is more important than this is that the Argentine has not and cannot have any aggressive intentions against any of its neighbors. As President Perón has well put it, if the Argentine had any such aggressive intentions it has the money to buy arms in Europe and can get them, and that if it had such aggressive intentions it would certainly not be so eager for the defense pact, for the defense pact will mean not only common action of the American republics against an extra-hemisphere aggressor but against one in this hemisphere. He has frequently remarked to me that if the Argentine had these aggressive intentions it would certainly do everything it could against the defense pact instead of being for it.
I do not know why we are continuing to stress in some quarters that the Argentine has this aim towards a southern bloc and has aggressive intentions against neighbors. As a matter of fact, the present Argentine Government is the first one which has not had in the back of its mind a southern bloc, and one of the principal difficulties which President Perón has is with the extreme nationalists who have removed [Page 197] their support from him because they know he considers this southern bloc idea politically and economically unwise and infeasible.
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Cordially and faithfully yours,
- Supra.↩