Latin America: Don Rocky's Mission

"I'm listening," Nelson Rockefeller told his hosts. "What's wrong with listening? This is the first time a North American has ever come listening." The heads of state of the seven Central American countries, whom the New York Governor visited last week on the first leg of a 23-nation, four-stage mission for President Nixon, had plenty to tell him.

To a man they related the need for more American investment capital, both private and governmental, the end of discriminatory tariffs and of quotas for their exports. They expressed concern over the moribund Alliance for Progress, since 1961 the principal vehicle for U.S. aid to Latin America. Congress cut Alianza funds that Lyndon Johnson had requested from $625 million to a disappointing $336.5 million, and Nixon has publicly criticized the program's performance. At each stop, Latin leaders recited the litany of the region's social problems from illiteracy and overpopulation to the need for agrarian reform.

"Don Rocky," as Latinos call him, and his more than 20 technical advisers are not on the road in order to make any recommendations themselves, but simply to gather suggestions from their host counterparts. The only message that Rockefeller has brought is: the United States alone cannot provide unlimited amounts of dollars needed to bring Latin America from the burro age to the jet age. "I am asking you to suggest other ways that we can help," he said.

Rapid Pace. So far, contrary to some impressions back home, the reception has been relatively cordial. But newspapers and government officials have bristled over the pace of Rockefeller's mission, which whipped his party through seven countries in eight days, with as little as four hours in one capital. Besides, anti-American demonstrators whoop it up whenever the party hits town. In Tegucigalpa, Honduras, a university student was killed by the police, who say a patrolman's gun went off when he fell with his finger on the trigger. Immediately after the shooting, Rockefeller took to the streets, smiling and shaking hands with crowds of students and ordinary citizens. "I'm trying to get understanding going both ways," said Don Rocky.

His visit to the bigger nations lies ahead. The mission returns home this week. It resumes May 27, headed for such eventual destinations as Argentina and Brazil, where military regimes are in power. One of the first stops is Peru, headed on a collision course with Washington over compensation for the expropriation of the International Petroleum Co.'s properties.