Word: peru
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Peru seems headed toward a major diplomatic showdown with the U.S. that could produce serious repercussions throughout South America. It is a highly paradoxical crisis that neither side really wants-or can avoid. The dispute centers on a Standard Oil of New Jersey subsidiary, International Petroleum Co., whose Peruvian oilfields and refinery were seized last October by the country's new military regime, headed by General Juan Velasco Alvarado. The pretext: that I.P.C. years ago had illegally acquired its oil concession in Peru...
Aware of the highly charged nationalistic feelings involved in the I.P.C. case, the U.S. asked only that the junta pay Standard Oil a fair price for I.P.C.'s properties (Peru's Supreme Court had earlier set the figure at $142 million). If it does not, as the Peruvians well know, the U.S. would be forced under the provisions of the Hickenlooper Amendment to suspend its economic aid to Peru within six months after the seizure unless promising negotiations for equitable compensation are under way. At present, U.S. aid amounts to $34 million a year plus another $45 million...
Last week, in a highly emotional television and radio address, General Velasco virtually foreclosed any possibility of a negotiated settlement. In an obvious bid to win the support of other nationalist army officers and businessmen, Velasco asserted that I.P.C. owes Peru $690.5 million for all the oil that it has pumped from Peruvian soil. To recover at least a part of that sum, representing I.P.C.'s entire gross sales for the past 44 years, Velasco plans to auction off the company's properties within the next 40 days...
Left Face. Velasco and his colleagues appear to be committed to a collision course. They can hardly back down from such an extreme stand without totally losing face in Peru. After all, they overthrew President Fernando Belauúde Terry largely because he failed to execute an outright takeover of I.P.C., settling on a compromise instead. In his speech, Velasco defiantly declared that Peru was willing to accept the consequences of its actions and denounced the impending application of the Hickenlooper Amendment as "economic aggression." In addition, Velasco appealed to other Latin American countries to support Peru in its confrontation...
...Peru lost an estimated $40 million, chiefly in cotton, when drought struck six of its 24 departments early last year; it allocated another $10 million in relief and public-works projects to employ suffering campesinos. Ecuador saw parts of Manabi and Loja provinces charred, with an estimated $50 million in losses, mainly in coffee and rice. In Argentina's Patagonia region, woolmen estimate that the drought has taken the lives of at least 200,000 sheep. But Chile's plight is by far the worst of the nations in the area. If the drought there does...