Word: velascos
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Returning to Santiago from a visit to neighboring Peru, Chilean Foreign Minister Gabriel Valdés hastily summoned U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry. In Lima, Valdés had held two long talks with Juan Velasco Alvarado, leader of the military junta that seized power last fall. Subject: the approaching showdown between Peru and the U.S., which neither nation really wants. Soon after his junta overthrew President Fernando Belaunde Terry in October, Velasco expropriated the U.S.-owned International Petroleum Co. As a result, the U.S., under a congressionally imposed retaliation called the Hickenlooper Amendment (TIME, Feb. 14), would have no choice...
...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...
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...
...military regime's Draconian measures have managed to arrest the country's economic decline, bringing a collective sigh of relief from Argentinians. But pressures may well mount if he persists in his intention to keep the country under military rule for at least ten years. Peruvian Strongman Velasco has so far won wide popular support by expropriating some American oil interests that Peruvian leftists long have considered to be a prime symbol of Yanqui economic imperialism...