THE AMERICAS: Balance Sheet

Fidel Castro's one-man brain trust, Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, last week lectured 5,000 Red Chinese in Peking on how the Marxist blessings of Castro Cuba can be carried to country after country throughout the rest of Latin America. "It is," he said coldly, "through arming the people and smashing the puppet dictatorial regimes." In Washington a high U.S. official dealing with Latin America took a look at the endless crises besetting the hemisphere's governments and likened the situation to a "mountain of sugar melting under a fire hose."

The man at the nozzle is Fidel Castro. Subjected to Castro's purposeful troublemaking and his example, old wrongs throughout Latin America took on fresh passion. Castro has claimed all Latin American discontent and injustice for his own, and though not all dissenters march under Castro's banner, the majority would admit his example if not his leadership. Among the nations where Castro's brand of eroding revolution sees its best opportunities, few can be counted as immune, and many are dangerously vulnerable. Among the vulnerable:

Haiti. President François Duvalier last week felt himself so threatened by the forces of discontent in his poverty-stricken republic that he expelled the highest-ranking Roman Catholic churchman in the country, an archbishop, on the odd charge of encouraging "Communist student revolutionaries."

Guatemala and Nicaragua. Still binding up the wounds of last fortnight's open rebellion, while the U.S. Navy patrols the Caribbean to make sure that Cuba does not seize the opportunity to invade.

El Salvador. Five weeks after the overthrow of President José Maria Lemus, the U.S. is still withholding recognition from the six-man revolutionary junta until the State Department's Special Envoy Allan Stewart checks reports that the junta is a front for Castroites and Communists.

Honduras. President Ramón Villeda Morales delayed agonizingly while Castro's ambassador roamed the remote backlands sowing rebellion seeds; now he faces inevitable upheavals fed by poverty.

Dominican Republic. Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo has had 30 years to perfect his military defenses, but he is still mortal; when he goes, by revolt or old age, the vacuum he leaves is all too likely to be filled by pro-Castro Marxists.

Colombia. President Alberto Lleras Camargo lacks sufficiently assertive leadership to stamp out backlands bloodshed that has stopped development and killed 300,000 in the past twelve years.

Bolivia. Eight years ago, a deep-cutting revolution brought chaos to the nation's tin mines, on which its economy depends, and disrupted its army. President Victor Paz Estenssoro's efforts to rebuild both have been resisted by peasant violence.

Peru. A rigid feudal system controls most of the nation's land and wealth. Peru's mass-based APRA is firmly anti-Castro, but it has no chance of instituting social reforms until elections in 1962; in the meantime, a new, nationalistic party is rising to chip away APRA's strength.

Ecuador. President José Maria Velasco Ibarra has a record of social progress, but he also faces a feudal oligarchy so reluctant to change that his reforms may come too hard and too late.