Office of the Historian

710 Consultation 4–/1–2246

Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs (Braden)8

[Washington,] January 26, 1946.

With respect to the attached memorandum9 from Mr. Braddock, I yesterday suggested to Phil Chalmers before he left that he discuss the [Page 3] proposed Rio Conference with Ambassador Berle10 along the following lines:

1.
In not being willing to sign the proposed treaty with the present Argentine regime, Ave are standing on two points, viz., (1) to do so would make a mockery of the treaty itself, and (2) knowing what we do of Perón and company, we would be lacking in self-respect and dignity.
2.
We now enjoy the friendship of the Argentine people that we have [not?] had in generations, certainly since Sarmiento’s11 time. Were we to sign the proposed treaty with the Argentine Government, we would lose this friendship and, together with it, the friendship and respect of those genuinely democratic elements throughout the rest of Latin America who are our only true friends and only real guarantee for the future.
3.
We seek a real solidarity of all the twenty-one republics and this we would not have in signing the treaty and thus encouraging the present Fascist regime.
4.
I said that we were thoroughly alive to the difficult position in which Brazil finds herself and have racked our brains for a solution, and that so far as I could see the solution would consist in the other American republics and Brazil, in particular, taking our forthcoming expose of the Nazi connections of the Farrell–Perón government12 as a basis. Too often, I said, our Latin friends are disposed to adopt an excessively charitable and courteous approach in these matters, whereas they should view the situation from the hard-boiled point of view of the facts in the case, and that, by following this latter course, Argentina could properly be excluded from the Conference.

Spruille Braden
  1. Addressed to A–Br: Mr. Wright, Mr. Duran, and Mr. Spaeth, and to ARA: Mr. Briggs and Mr. Butler.↩
  2. Supra.↩
  3. Adolf A. Berle, Ambassador in Brazil.↩
  4. Domingo F. Sarmiento, President of Argentina, 1868–1874.↩
  5. See section under Argentina entitled “The Issuance by the Department of State of the Blue Book …”, pp. 182 ff.↩