by Gerard Colby
In the city of Lima, for instance, once the proud Pacific capital of the Spanish empire in South America, government officials were reluctant to spend money to save mummified remains found at Paracas. Here were the desert tombs of more than 100 leaders of the ancient Nasca Indian civilization, famous for its ceramics and the Nasca Lines carved out of the stony desert, which are so huge that they can be appreciated only from the air. These sun-worshiping people had flourished along the southern coast a thousand years before the arrival of Francisco Pizzaro. Later they had spread into the interiors high plateau to inspire the temples, pyramids, and Gate of the Sun of the Tiahuanaco culture around Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world. The Tiahuanaco culture, in turn, may have given rise to the famed Inca civilization of the Cuzco basin to the north at the end of the eleventh century.
Nelson had been greatly impressed by the Incas. The Inca empire was one of the largest planned societies on earth, with a form of social security and roads that stretched 3,000 miles along the Andes, from what is now coastal Chile to Ecuador.
Nowhere was the romance of the Indian past stronger than in Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, perched 11,000 feet on the eastern slope of the Andes. Nelson wanted to see Cuzco. He hired a Ford trimotor airplane, stripping it of most of its seats so it could clear the Andes’ soaring peaks. The Rockefeller party had no sooner landed in Cuzco than Nelson was beside himself with excitement. The city’s architecture was colonial Spanish now, but it literally rested on the Indians’ ancient glory: along almost every street the smooth, perfectly fitted giant stones of the Incas still served as foundations for the Spaniards’ cruder adobe buildings. The aura of an enduring, permanent Indian presence permeated Cuzco, quietly understated in its Inca walls, arches, and amphitheater and even in the flocks of llamas brought in from the countryside by Indians who still spoke the language of the Inca empire, Quechua.
Nelson plunged into the Indian textile market, happily emerging with armloads of colorful Indian blankets and serapes. Nelson was now treasurer of the Museum of Modern Art and was eager to bring his new finds home to New York, even to the point of risking his party’s lives by insisting upon a return flight over the Andes in a dangerously overloaded plane.
Back in Lima, Nelson’s fascination with Inca art led him into a confrontation with dictatorial power in Latin America. Nelson met the archaeologist who had found the threatened Paracas mummies. Dr. Julio César Tello poured out his grievances, explaining that the mummies and their pre-eighth-century wrappings were an international treasure. But Tello was now out of favor—and out of money. He had recently lost his seat in the Peruvian Senate and his job as director of the Archaeological Museum. Tello’s fall was only one of many examples of repression in Peru since General Oscar Benavides had seized power through an armed coup four years earlier.
Nelson was sympathetic. He decided to use the power of the Rockefeller name to intervene. Unlike his older brother and father, Nelson did not feel any real burden in being a Rockefeller; in fact, he reveled in it. “I never in my life felt any conscious embarrassment or concern about the family name or the family’s money,” he later remarked. “I never felt any different from other people—not even when I was with the Indians in the Andes Mountains.”8
When he met the bull-necked Benavides on a courtesy call, Nelson simply donned one of his many Rockefeller hats. He was developing plans, he quietly explained, for closer cultural ties between South America and New York’s museums, for two of which he was a trustee. One, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, would be interested in helping preserve the mummies.
“It is my intention to provide the money,”9 he announced to the startled dictator, assuming, he added, that the Peruvian government could house and maintain the collection. That meant the Archaeological Museum and Dr. Tello, Benavides realized. But it was an offer he could not refuse. He could bask in the prestige of saving a national treasure. It might even help placate his critics.
It was Nelson’s first diplomatic victory in Latin America, the first of his interventions into the destiny of its Indians. The cruel irony, that it was Indians long dead who made it possible, was not yet apparent.
For Nelson Rockefeller had not come to South America to see Indians.
THE POWER OF INDIRECT RULE
Nelson’s real purpose was to inspect Standard Oil’s operations in South America, particularly Creole’s in Venezuela. This purpose was reflected in the presence in the party of two top lieutenants in the Rockefeller empire: Jay Crane, treasurer of Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Joseph Rovensky, vice president and head of the foreign department of Chase National Bank.
Of all nations in Latin America, Bolivia probably caused Nelson the greatest concern that spring of 1937. On March 13, Bolivia stunned the world with the news that it was nationalizing Standard Oil’s properties.
Only a month later, Nelson was flying in a Standard Oil plane over eastern Venezuela’s Oficina field north of the Orinoco River. Oficina was Creole’s newest jewel, with its superior light oils and low sulphur content. Nelson, however, saw a bigger political picture, and it troubled him. “We met the President and all the members of his cabinet and called on the Governors of four states,” he proudly reported to his father, “plus talking at great length to many men in the Standard Oil Company.… Unless something unforeseen happens, it looks as if this would turn out to be one of the soundest … countries in the world—and there’s certainly plenty of oil here.”10
The unforeseen was another Bolivia or worse, a revolution, perhaps led by Venezuelan communists or radical socialists.
Throughout his tour of Latin America, Nelson had seen again and again that executives of American companies tended to model their behavior after their British counterparts. They held themselves aloof from all but the top echelons of local society. They seldom learned Spanish and relied instead on local autocratic managers to communicate with the workers. He cringed at the sight of barbed-wire fences erected around Standard’s American compounds. The barbed wire imposed a racial segregation that was not only crudely blatant, but carried the suggestion that violence might be vested upon trespassers from the shantytowns that inevitably sprung up outside the company’s gates.
Nelson had seen such foreign compounds in the British colonies during his honeymoon in the Far East, and he knew the anger that was stirred by such haughty behavior.
One day, while still taking notes on Creole’s operations, he received an urgent telegram from his father. Senior had passed away in a coma in the early morning of May 23. Junior had been with him at the end.
Nelson flew back for a private funeral service at Pocantico conducted by Riverside Church’s Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick and attended by relatives from William Rockefeller’s line and families of Standard Oil Trust’s partners.
Some weeks later, Nelson saw the descendants of his grandfather’s old partners again, and this time he was challenging them. Since his return from Latin America, he had been conveying a message to friends, business associates, and family members with evangelical fervor: Reform was needed. The old British blueprint for colonial operations had been a disaster. If it had not been for the dedication of American missionaries, teachers, and doctors, such as those of the Rockefeller Foundation, a hurricane of anti-Yankee rage would have long ago swept over Latin America—and Standard Oil.
Nelson presented his sense of urgency to the executives of Standard Oil of New Jersey and offered to address its foreign-branch officers at Standard’s annual meeting. Since Rockefeller family members held 8.69 percent of New Jersey Standard’s stock and controlled another 4.82 percent through shares owned by the Rockefeller Medical Institute, the General Education Board, and the Rockefeller Foundation,11 the oilmen were in no position to refuse. But after Nelson had delivered his address, entitled “The Social Responsibility of Corporations,” they may have wished they had.
Before 300 executives of what was then the largest industrial corporation in America, Nelson challenged the men
to develop a sense of responsibility that went beyond the well-being of the machine and the size of the shareholders’ dividends. His concern was for “ownership of property anywhere in the world. Such ownership,” he explained, “can only be justified if the property serves the broad interests of the people in the host country. This means recognition of obligations to the public welfare.”12
Nelson Rockefeller was far from naive, and he made this clear in practical terms, addressing political power. Laws could protect a corporation only if the people were convinced that its success was being used in their best interest. Laws, one way or another, he warned ominously, can and would be changed. “We must recognize the social responsibilities of corporations and the corporation must use its ownership of assets to reflect the best interests of the people. If we don’t, they will take away our ownership.”13
The older Standard officials refused to listen. They believed they were already paying their social obligation to the people of host countries by bringing in the capital and expertise to develop the oil and by paying taxes and wages that would otherwise not exist.
Nelson knew from Bolivia and Venezuela that this arrogance was suicidal. The unparalleled wealth and abundance that accompanied modern industry allowed for more flexible strategies than the traditions of strictness and thrift forged by an earlier age of scarcity. The continued existence of inherited fortunes despite the Great Depression enabled younger heirs like Nelson Rockefeller and William Averell Harriman to rise to the challenge of public leadership with a confidence and optimism their elders did not enjoy.
Nelson’s warning before the Standard Oil hierarchy revealed a self-conscious sense of noblesse oblige. It reflected the political maturity of not just the third generation of Rockefellers, but of an American industrial gentry coming of age. This, clearly, was not a manager speaking, but a member of Old Wealth with a traditional concern for retaining power. What seemed simplistic to the uninitiated actually was profoundly fundamental, and fundamental strategic truths were often what field generals lost in the heat of battle.
Grandfather bequeathed a board made up of company men set in their ways, and Nelson walked away from the Jersey Company’s 1937 annual meeting in defeat. Before another year would pass, Standard’s general staff would flout the laws of both Venezuela and Mexico. In Venezuela, they would get away with it. But in Mexico, where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the striking oil workers, they faced a stronger president, Lázaro Cárdenas.
CRUSADERS FOR CÁRDENAS
In February 1938, Cam and Elvira were about to sit down to lunch in their trailer at Tetelcingo when they heard a knock. Cam’s eyes widened as he opened the door. There, with his wife, stood the president of Mexico.
Cárdenas had found in Cam Townsend a stalwart supporter. The missionary even allowed the Mexican government to review the contents of his personal appeal to evangelical missionaries in Mexico before he sent it out, calling on them to join him in “doing my bit to help in the crusade of reform headed by President Cárdenas.”14 The president now was seeking Townsend’s help.
After lunch, the men moved to shade behind the trailer. In grave tones, Cárdenas explained to Cam that the oil crisis was nearing its climax. Standard Oil and a dozen other American and British companies had refused to sign a general labor contract with the new oil workers’ union, despite repeated concessions by the workers in their contract proposals.
Cárdenas was caught between the companies’ belligerence and the threat of political instability. Unless there was obedience to the law and some compromise, the president would have to act and risk armed U.S. intervention. Cárdenas clearly empathized with the oil workers. As a young army officer stationed at Tampico, he had witnessed firsthand the low wages, disease, and dangerous conditions the workers experienced.
His words fell on sympathetic ears. Cam, too, had flinched at the misery he saw during his visits to the oil regions. He was aware that bribes had been behind many of the concessions won by the American companies during the pre-Revolution regime of Porfirio Díaz.
“If I could just reach the stockholders of these companies,” Cárdenas said, “instead of their high-salaried agents who refuse to concede the justice of our demands.”15
Cam had only prayers to offer, to which Cárdenas responded with a pledge to remove duties on Bibles. Then the old warrior presented Townsend with the fountain pen he had used to sign the land decrees of the past three years. Cam resolved to do more than pray.
A scandal was brewing involving the American oil companies.
Lombardo Toledano, head of the Mexican Workers Confederation, charged that Standard Oil was withdrawing funds from Mexico (later confirmed by the companies) and had even tried to remove equipment. Because of Venezuelan oil, new explorations for oil in Mexico were down. The oil workers then announced their intention to strike at midnight, March 18. The impending strike confronted Cárdenas with the imminent paralysis of a major industry on which much of the transport for Mexico’s agriculture and mines depended.
By March 1938, the very sovereignty of the nation had been flouted by the companies’ refusal to abide by a Supreme Court decision awarding oil laborers 2.6 million pesos. Moreover, Cárdenas was convinced that the companies’ transfer of funds out of Mexico was causing a serious flight of capital.16 In an interview with the president, the executives of the oil companies made their final mistake. Cárdenas had just offered guarantees against further wage demands and tax increases, but he warned the oil executives that the Supreme Court’s decision would also be guaranteed. The oil officials asked who would enforce these guarantees.
“Me,” answered Cárdenas, “the President of the Republic.”
“You!” a British oilman scoffed.
Cárdenas rose from his chair. “Gentlemen,” he said icily, “we have finished.”17
His expropriation decree shortly followed.
The reaction in Washington was swift. Secretary of State Cordell Hull persuaded Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau to suspend U.S. purchases of Mexican silver.
Reaction to that suspension was swifter. “I cannot convey to you the feeling here,” Ambassador Daniels gravely wrote President Roosevelt, “that a friend has struck a blow more devastating than he can conceive. It hurts economically and reduces [the] ability to give employment and meet obligations, but it hurts worse in a conviction that it is the end of the Good Neighbor Policy and a replacement by the old policy of the Big Stick and the patronizing Big Brother policies.” He asked Roosevelt to resume silver purchases.18
Roosevelt agreed. He accepted Cárdenas’s expressed willingness eventually to provide compensation and had a chagrined Hull send a note to that effect on March 30. Cárdenas, having feared a U.S. invasion, was elated. “Today my Country is happy to celebrate without reservation the proof of friendship which it has received from yours,” he wrote Daniels the following day, “and which will be carved in the heart of its people.”19
Such presidential exchanges only made Standard’s executives more furious at both Cárdenas, the “communist,” and Roosevelt, “the traitor to his class.” They decided to retaliate with their own foreign policy, refusing to supply oil products to Mexico’s new national oil company, PEMEX. Twenty-one other companies joined the boycott.
By May, the oil companies would escalate their retaliation beyond boycotts. They would be plotting coups.
Roosevelt adviser Adolf Berle, summoned to Washington in February 1938 to help in the mounting crisis, had noted in his diary that “we prefer not to have a revolution and to ride out the confiscation of the oil companies. Again the oil companies prefer a revolution, not understanding that they may uncork a civil war of some magnitude.”20
It was in this tense political climate that Cam met with President Cárdenas before returning to Arkansas for the 1938 Camp Wycliffe. The missionary offered to form an “Inter-American Brigade” of young Americans paid by Mexico to assist Cárdenas’s social projects. He also proposed a trip to Washingto
n and New York to lobby on Cárdenas’s behalf.
The president was so taken with these ideas that he handed Cam a $1,000 check to pay for a new automobile. “I don’t want your sick wife riding in a bus,” he explained.21
Before leaving, Cam conferred with Ambassador Daniels. The black-tie southerner was populist enough to back Cárdenas’s agrarian reforms. And his bonds to modernist Protestants, who were likely to share his sympathies, were still strong. The ambassador offered Cam advice on whom to see and scribbled a note of introduction to President Roosevelt’s appointments secretary, Steve Early.
Cam dropped off Elvira in Sulphur Springs and headed east alone. His goal: to lobby John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and President Roosevelt personally on Cárdenas’s behalf.
On June 1, Junior received an urgent cable from Townsend, requesting a meeting the next day.
Cam knew that it would take a miracle for an unknown missionary to get an appointment with John D. Rockefeller, Junior, especially in one day. And this time the Lord did not oblige. When Cam called Junior’s office the next day, an aide put him off and referred him to Standard Oil’s headquarters in the same building. Townsend walked past the sepia mural where Rivera’s bright colors had once been and took the elevator to Standard’s offices. There he was told that Standard’s demand for the return of its oil holdings in Mexico was not negotiable. It wanted them back.
Standard’s intransigence had a ruthless quality about it. In fact, it had been just that attitude which prompted Cárdenas to nationalize Standard’s properties in the first place.
Cam next tried to gain entrée to the White House. But even with Ambassador Daniels’s backing, he got nowhere. He left Washington in defeat and drove home to Arkansas for the Summer Institute of Linguistics. He felt some joy when he discovered that SIL’s membership had expanded to thirty-two that summer.
