Word: betancourts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Like every Latin American revolutionary leader, Betancourt promised free congressional and presidential elections. And in order not to perpetuate himself in power, he also promised not to run in them. To the astonishment of the cynical, Betancourt kept both promises. In December 1947, the A.D.'s Candidate Rómulo Gallegos won the first free election in the nation's history...
...scream hatred at their enemies. By the end of 1948, when rumors began circulating that A.D. was planning to replace the army with a "peasants' militia," Pérez Jiménez and his brother officers rebelled. They cut down A.D. in mid-reform, arrested Gallegos, hounded Betancourt into exile, and began a new and bloody military dictatorship...
...Certain Arrogance." While Pérez Jiménez and his cronies got rich from graft and his cops gunned down A.D. members, Betancourt traveled and talked at length and at leisure with the democrats of the hemisphere: Puerto Rico's Governor Luis Muñoz Marin (TIME cover, June 23, 1958), President José ("Pepe") Figueres of Costa Rica, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State (under Franklin Roosevelt) Adolf A. Berle Jr. He lingered over garlicky meals in modest Manhattan restaurants, analyzed what had gone wrong. After nine years of wandering and pondering, he decided that...
...Governor's Shame. The U.S. Government also backs Betancourt-a 180° change of opinion. During Pérez Jiménez' reign, the U.S. pinned the Legion of Merit on the dictator and regarded Exile Betancourt as a troublemaking embarrassment. In 1955 Governor Muñoz Marin of Puerto Rico invited President Figueres of Costa Rica to a meeting in Puerto Rico, where Betancourt, a good friend of both, was then living. The State Department's chief for Latin American Affairs, Henry Holland, hastily got Muñoz Marin on the telephone. He insisted that...
...Latin American dictators into power, recognizes them once in power only as it recognizes any ruling government. But a policy of correctness to dictators leaves plenty of room for a policy of warmth to democratic governments, and there is more warmth in Washington these days for men in Betancourt's mold...