by Gerard Colby
It was left to the blunt North Americans to explain what this statement meant. “We can see no well-being for [the Indians] unless they be persuaded to mingle with us,” summarized the chairman of the U.S. delegation, Assistant Interior Secretary William E. Warne, “and to share with us the riches yielded by the good American earth.”17
If this idea ran contrary to the original philosophy of the Pátzcuaro conference’s sponsors—Cárdenas, John Collier, Moisés Sáenz, and Manuel Gamio—no one pointed it out. Of the four men, Gamio and Collier were sick; Sáenz was dead; and although Cárdenas’s spirit may have been present in the resolution pleading for an inter-American conference of Indian youths, spirit was not substance. The proposal was crushed by the U.S. delegation. It was “communist-inspired,” someone said, and that was enough.
The legacy of Collier and Gamio was reduced to eulogies to their services, as if both were already dead. No one made the death of their ideas more clear than the Honorable William E. Warne: “We believe deeply that ours is a true and lasting way of life and we believe that the Indian way, valid though it may have been for the times in which it flourished unchallenged, will not suffice.”18
THE PENTAGON’S PLAN FOR THE PHILIPPINES
John Collier’s failure to attend the Cuzco conference was due to more than the “sickness” alluded to in the U.S. delegation’s official report. Marshall’s State Department had refused him travel funds because of hostility to him from the Pentagon. Support from tribal people had made it impossible openly to purge him, but it also put him in direct conflict with the Truman administration’s policies toward European, Japanese, and U.S. colonies, particularly in the Pacific.
By the time the Cuzco conference convened, Collier had also locked horns with the Truman administration over the Philippines. Central to Collier’s concerns was the appointment of a former fascist sympathizer, Manuel Roxas, to the staff of the Supreme Allied Commander, General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur subsequently backed Roxas’s bid to become the first president of the newly independent republic, whereupon Roxas promptly surrendered 200,000 acres to the Pentagon for ninety-nine years for use as military bases.19
Roxas also amended the Philippine Constitution to guarantee parity rights for American companies to exploit natural resources and own utilities. In return for these guarantees, Roxas got $620 million in war damages and a Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group to help his Rural Constabulary repress landless peasants who had not given up their arms since World War II ended. During the war, many of these peasants had joined the communist-led Anti-Japanese People’s Army, or Hukbalahap in Tagalog, the Philippines’s major indigenous language. They expected agrarian reform and a share in political power for having fought on the Americans’ side.
When they did not get either by 1948, the Huks, as the Americans called them, were in full revolt, capturing large areas of the rural Philippines—and the attention of a new secret agency operating out of wartime barracks flanking the reflecting pool between the Washington and Lincoln monuments: the CIA.
That year, the CIA set up a covert operating arm, the innocuous sounding Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). A CIA component, OPC nevertheless reported directly to Secretary of State Marshall. One of its first tasks was to send a military adviser back to the Philippines to organize “civic action” as part of the war against the Huks. The man chosen was Lieutenant Colonel Edward G. Lansdale, architect of the United States’s entry almost ten years later into French Indochina’s political cauldron.
Cam, too, became fixated on the Philippines.
The world press provided a daily parade of headlines spelling trouble for Western interests in that part of the world, including the “Moscow-inspired” rebellion, the “loss” of China to the communist revolution led by Mao Tse-tung, and the mounting tensions in Korea between Soviet-armed communists in the north and a new U.S.-backed regime in the south.
Emboldened by the sudden influx of $250,000 in 1949, including $41,000 for JAARS, Cam decided that the Pacific might offer more open doors for SIL’s advancement into Bibleless hinterlands than did suspicious Latin America. By February 1950, Kenneth Pike was already in Australia, teaching linguistics to missionaries and making plans for SIL’s entry into the Australian-ruled eastern half of New Guinea and the Philippines.
In June, SIL was given a fateful boost with the outbreak of the Korean War. MacArthur’s goal was to push Kim Il-Sung’s communist army north, not only back across the 38th parallel, but out of Korea altogether. His ambitions extended beyond the Yalu River, Korea’s border with China, into China itself. What had been described as a U.N. “police action” was quickly escalating into a major war. With the French fighting Ho Chi Minh to retain their empire in Indochina and British support limited by its own war against communist-led peasants in Malaya, Washington was looking to Latin America for troop replacements. And Cam knew it.
Taking his newly completed film on SIL, O, For a Thousand Tongues, Cam headed for Washington. On September 22, he met with the State Department’s Willard F. Barber and proposed an armed “volunteer inter-American brigade.” One hundred men could be recruited in each capital of Latin America and flown to the United States for military training. Then they could be sent to Korea. Whatever Barber may have thought about the risk of angering governments by recruiting their own citizens into a foreign war, he noted that the “official result” would be “to show the world that the Latin American peoples want to take part in the struggle against communist imperialism.”20
Cam had taken SIL beyond the Good Neighbor policy à la Cárdenas. He was joining the Cold War and helping it turn hot. By 1954, Barber’s endeavors would include the CIA coup in Guatemala.21
Eager for the renewed opportunities Washington presented for SIL’s expansion, Cam worked feverishly on final revisions of a biography of Cárdenas. The book would be evidence of SIL’s close relationship with one of the strongest supporters of the wartime military alliance between the United States and Latin America. Indeed, he would soon use it as his calling card to OAS chief Lleras Camargo, Ecuadorian President Galo Plaza, and even the CIA-sponsored president of the Philippines. It would also, by its tone, demonstrate his sympathy for nationalist aspirations in the Third World, which would be necessary to fend off accusations of being the cultural vanguard of some American imperialism.
But he was uneasy about retaining Washington’s support. The trip to Washington had seemed to go well, but politics is a fickle lover, subject to sudden changes of heart. Cam was painfully aware of the importance of an enlightened policy toward Latin America. Certainly a better strategy was needed than what had so far prevailed under the Europhile Truman administration. If he was to regain the momentum SIL had enjoyed during the war, Cam needed a breakthrough.
It came just a month after his Washington visit. President Truman had finally appointed someone to design the foreign aid program for the underdeveloped nations that he had promised as Point IV in his 1949 inaugural address. The new Point IV chairman with the familiar name boded well for SIL’s future. “If the highly successful Rockefeller methods continue, and the budding Point IV program comes into full bloom,” Cam wrote with conviction in his Cárdenas biography, “we shall become truly ‘good neighbors.’”22
* The U.S. military officers involved in the negotiations with Peru had been two of Rockefeller’s strongest allies at Chapultepec and San Francisco on the question of regional military pacts, General George Brett and General Robert V Strong.
15
THE PRETENDER AT BAY
THE MISSIONARY IMPULSE
In the years between World War II and the Korean War, Nelson Rockefeller’s face lost much of its youthful exuberance. Eyes that had shined in even the most arduous days of the war now seemed smaller and dimmer. His smile was drawn and thin, and his shoulders often appeared stooped, reflecting less the wear of time (for he was just entering his forties) than the strain of a frustrating political exile. During these years, Nelson learned that ther
e were limits to what wealth, even Rockefeller wealth, could achieve in this world.
His family’s support for former New York Governor Thomas Dewey’s second drive for the White House had seemed a sure bet in 1948. Dewey’s defeat by Truman dashed Nelson’s hopes for an early return to Washington. On top of that, his mother, Abby Rockefeller, had been ill for several years. She had taken to wintering with Junior in Tucson, Arizona, where, in April, she died from a massive stroke. Nelson’s bridge to his father was now gone.
Exiled from political power, Nelson had been putting his energies into the one power base he knew he could control: his family. Well before Abby’s death, Nelson and his brothers took over Junior’s offices in Room 5600 at Rockefeller Center and gradually brought in their own staffs, Nelson dominating the selections. The most important change was the replacement of Junior’s old friend, Thomas Debevoise, by CIAA veteran John Lockwood as family counsel. Even the name on the door was changed. It now read “Rockefeller: Office of the Messrs.”
Nelson next assaulted another citadel of his father’s power: Rockefeller Center. The family’s largest asset, the Center influenced New York City’s economic and social life. It was not only a forum for a political aspirant, but a lever for influencing the city’s economic—and thereby political—direction. The chance to merge Rockefeller financial power with Nelson’s budding political career in New York came in 1946, when Mayor William O’Dwyer appointed Nelson to a committee charged with making sure United Nations headquarters was located in New York. Nelson impulsively offered Rockefeller Center’s huge theater; Junior, just as quickly, insisted that he withdraw the offer.
Nelson refused to give up. On December 10, he came up with another site: Pocantico. To Junior’s immense relief, however, some of the delegates balked; Pocantico was too far away. It was architect Wallace Harrison who finally found the solution. He was about to begin designing a rival to Rockefeller Center, “X City,” for William Zeckendorf. The $200 million project was to be huge, stretching seven blocks along the East River from Forty-second Street to Forty-ninth Street, seventeen acres in all. Harrison had inside information that the heavily indebted Zeckendorf would be willing to sell out for a mere $8.5 million. Junior, glad to hear that his beloved Pocantico and Rockefeller Center could be spared the U.N. and competition, offered the entire sum.
Two days later, with the deal accepted by Zeckendorf and endorsed by the U.N. delegates, Nelson breakfasted with his father. After signing the papers, Nelson rose quickly to leave with his prize when Junior tugged at his coat. “Will this make up for the Center Theater?” the old man asked gently.
It did not. If anything, Nelson’s embarrassment over Junior’s withdrawal of Rockefeller Center Theater convinced him that his father’s grip over the Rockefeller empire had to be broken. After Junior’s chief Praetorian guard, Thomas Debevoise, was gone, it did not take much for Nelson to rally his brothers and sister Babs for the final onslaught. Stressing the tax benefits for the family by transferring title before his death, the younger generation persuaded Junior to sign over ownership of Rockefeller Center. Nelson, of course, remained president.
Pocantico was not spared either. It would take longer, but in the end, Junior would deed over his home to a holding company, Hills Realty. Nelson was president of Hills, too, waiting patiently as the old man continued in his role as lord of the manor.
Only the Rockefeller Foundation, Junior’s greatest achievement, seemed sacrosanct. His eldest son, staid and reliable John 3rd, appeared committed to allowing the foundation a life of its own, separate from the brothers’ individual pursuits. The rest of the brothers accepted John’s well-established role, just as they embraced roles for themselves in other parts of the Rockefeller empire.
Winthrop had returned to Standard Oil of New York, but he yearned to cut his own path. He ended up in Arkansas, becoming its governor.
Nelson’s closest brothers, on the other hand, thrived in his shadow. Laurance continued his prewar role as silent accomplice in business and politics. He became the leading force of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., the brothers’ profit-making complement to their philanthropic Rockefeller Brothers Fund. RBI provided financial support for Laurance’s various ventures into the military-industrial complex.1
David, by 1948, was a senior vice president at Chase National Bank. At Nelson’s urging, his specialty had become Latin America. He traveled with Nelson to see firsthand the opportunities his brother assured him were there for the taking. He then convinced his uncle, Chase National Chairman Winthrop Aldrich, to found a Latin American Department with him at its helm. David began Latin American Business Highlights, Chase’s quarterly on the joys of Latin American financing, and pursued an aggressive campaign of branch openings in Latin America.
“Unfortunately, the trend toward nationalism and all that it connotes is on the rise in Latin America,” David wrote his Uncle Winthrop after returning from his first Latin America tour with Nelson in 1948.
The day has passed when our Latin American neighbors will tolerate American institutions on their soil unless those institutions are willing to take an interest in the local economy. I believe that it is in our own interests, therefore, as well as others’ that Chase should rethink its policies.… I cannot see that the other North American branches have made much of a move in that direction, so we have an opportunity to be pioneers in the field.2
David’s tutor in Latin American politics, of course, was Nelson. The brothers had already joined Nelson in his latest Latin American venture, whose motive was both economic and political: the Cold War.
In 1946, Nelson had convinced his brothers to sponsor a series of studies to pinpoint which nations in Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa were likely to become soft on communism or targets for subversion by the presumed monolithic world communist conspiracy. Two Latin America countries were selected for special treatment: Brazil, because of its size and influence on the entire South American continent and its enormous untapped potential wealth, and Venezuela, which, “particularly interested the Rockefellers because of their previous experience and their oil holdings in the country.”3
Nelson persuaded his brothers, Babs, and even Junior to help him found the American International Association for Economic and Social Development (AIA). Six months later, in January 1947, Nelson set up a profit-making corollary, the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC). Its name was inspired by the CIAA’s Basic Economy Division, but more than the name was borrowed. Much of the CIAA’s top staff also reappeared on the boards of AIA and IBEC.4
The missionary impulse was evident. “The third generation of Rockefellers is still exporting the missionary idea,” remarked a friend, “just as their grandfather did through his large contributions to foreign missions of the church.”5 Nelson agreed with that analysis, even urging his father to become AIA’s chairman because, “You more than anyone have become a symbol to people throughout the world that democracy and the capitalistic system are interested in their well-being. The people must increasingly have reason to feel that their best interests and opportunity for the future are identified with our country and our way of life.” Beyond Cold War politics, he stressed, lay family honor and tradition. “Now more than ever before it is important that we as a family carry on with the courage and vision that led you and Grandfather to pioneer new fields and blaze new trails.”6 Junior declined.
Nelson Rockefeller used the nonprofit AIA to pave the way for IBEC’s for-profit ventures. This chart shows Venezuelan operations.
Source: Organizational chart, AIA Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center
To Nelson, capitalism was the most revolutionary social force known to history, and his grandfather had been one of its great pioneers. The United States was then at the peak of its power. It was the only major power with its industrial plant intact, the only country capable of confronting communism as the leader of world capitalism. In such a world, the Rockefellers had to respond to destiny.
To Nelson and allies like Adolf Berle, only communists threatened this Weltanschauung of certainty and predictability by daring to stop the inevitable. The possibility of another path toward economic development than that which led toward the modern corporation, à la Standard Oil, could never be admitted. Herein lay the kernel of the “containment theory” proposed by author George Kennan. The theory claimed that communism, having bureaucratically centralized power under a party of ideologues purporting to speak for a working class, could never survive on its own because it lacked capitalism’s internal dynamic of growth: freedom to accumulate great wealth and to tame, channel, and institutionalize human greed as private ownership of the means of economic production.
In this scenario, communism, dampening human initiative through overregulation and outright prohibition of great wealth in private hands, could gain resources only from abroad and was thereby inherently expansionist at other countries’ expense. War, however, could be avoided through Western preparedness that would discourage aggression. Deprived of resources, contained, and isolated, the huge bureaucracy and its expensive armed forces and police apparatus would fall under its own weight. Nelson easily agreed that containment necessitated the Cold War, but to him, the successful prosecution of this war required more than armaments for military containment. Also needed were ideological containment and foreign aid for the promotion of capitalism in developing countries. And no one could demonstrate that better than himself, drawing on the enormous resources of the Rockefellers.
Some Brazilian nationalists did not agree. On hearing that the Rockefellers were interested in development projects in their country, they expressed bitter resentment over Standard Oil’s renewed effort to control the refining of Brazil’s oil. Nelson was branded as “the puppet-master who puts pressure on Brazil for surrender of its black gold.”7
The Brazilians underestimated Nelson. He was interested in far more than their oil. He wanted their destiny.
