Word: spain
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Secrecy. Disclosure of Spain's contract with null marked the end of 21 years of secret and almost byzantine negotiations. For as soon as Spanish geologists found the rich phosphate vein back in 1963, Generalissimo Franco's ministers forbade publication of any hint of the discovery. They had good reason for their reticence. The political situation in northern Africa has long been touchy: both Morocco and Mauritania claim the Spanish Sahara. Occasionally, they have gone so far as to threaten to back up their claims with force. Moreover, Spain has been under mounting pressure...
Fighting the Giants. As weaker operators began to fall out during tortuous negotiations, a consortium consisting of Armour & Co., Continental Oil, and Loeb, Rhoades & Co., and headed by former Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson, soon emerged as the leading contender. Anderson was a steady visitor to Spain, even won an audience with Franco. Then, last November, Continental Oil pulled out of the Anderson consortium, and all its hopes were wrecked. A new group, including Gulf Oil, W.R. Grace, Texaco, and Standard Oil of Calif., entered the race with a combined bid. I.M.C. was left to fight it out with the quartet...
Throughout the negotiations, the venture had been discussed as a joint Spanish-American undertaking, with 45% going to the U.S. partner. But last March, when Madrid decided to strengthen its bid for a link with the Common Market, it seemed a good idea for Spain to show itself as Europe-oriented by offering Common Market companies a piece of the Sahara bonanza. That piece, of course, was to come out of the American share. I.M.C. was first to guess what was going on. Boldly, it lowered its demand for 45% participation...
Experimental mining has begun at Bu-Craa, and a small village has been built by Spain for the first 500 workers. Desert roads have been cut and bids are being taken for a $30 million conveyor belt to carry ore to the sea. If all goes well, within a decade the lonely oasis could become the source of enough fertilizer to help feed 68 million people a year. Thus the whole world has a stake in the project's success...
...modern languages, an abolitionist, Ambassador to Spain and the Court of St. James's, author of The Bigelow Papers, and of course poet and perfervid hymn writer ("By the light of burning martyrs, Jesus' bleeding feet I track"). From yet another family branch came Amy Lowell (1874-1925), who wrote passable "imagist" verse, smoked cigars, and drove a claret-colored limousine. "To my family," says Robert Lowell, "James was the Ambassador to England, not a writer. Amy seemed a bit peculiar to them. She was never a welcome subject in our household...