good morning
good morning
uh okay go ahead yeah i understand the topic this morning is uh our policy in Latin America and you know what we've been doing down there so i don't know
no no go ahead
as you indicated you don't have too much input into the area it it just so happens that uh our daughter-in-law is Panamanian
and uh we have been in Panama and i have worked in El Salvador and
we visit Mexico occasionally so yeah we we do have a little information on it here but uh
oh very good because actually um when i was in college i visited Mexico several times i was in the Peace Corps and um Peru but but recently i have been following the Middle East rather than
oh uh-huh
yeah
Central America
it does seem to have quieted down there just a little bit that's that's for sure
no i the US policy uh towards Central America as far as uh well i kind of go back to to the El Salvador thing because Texas Instruments had a
a plant down there for a while and i worked in there for a little while and at that particular time let's let's see that was seventy three seventy four kind of before the the uh the
the uh Civil War really picked up down there and US policy at that particular time there was of course military assistance to uh to the government itself you know anything that's
that's anticommunist you know we kind of had a tendency to be pro it don't matter what their excesses were and i believe at the time that i was down there that uh the
right
that uh the government uh the Salvadorian government you know really gotten out of hand yet the uh right wing death squad type situation i believe that that was beginning to form but i don't
i i wasn't really aware of it's being you know terribly uh you know rapid at the time that that i was down there i think that really kind of developed a little bit later on
but uh our policies seem to be pretty much one of uh you know trying to setup businesses
down there and use the one resource anyway that Salvador had plenty of and that was people we didn't seem to be going in and taking anything out of the country other than just it's it's labor
right
um-hum
because everything that TI did anyway we we shipped in and it was worked on down there assembled and then sent back here so i didn't feel that we really exploiting exploiting them any
did that have
um so you don't you don't feel that that we were um
exploiting in the sense of we were benefiting and they weren't
no uh in the particular incidence that i was aware of now TI wasn't the only ones in there Playtex was in there was uh several other companies and uh
uh-huh
of course we kind of concentrate on there wasn't much to take out of the country i felt like we're going in and taken all their um their gold or oil or bananas or coffee or anything like that because uh it just
um-hum
the only thing that they had a great abundance of was uh you know human beings
uh-huh did did we tend to um change their attitudes attitudes like
some times when Americans go into foreign countries they tend to flaunt American things Americanism um consumer products TV the whole works
yeah i understand what you say there was a uh
the time that i was down there i stayed quite a a bit at the uh uh one of the big hotels San Salvador and at the time i thought there ought to be a law against American tourists
because they for the most part tend to be the most obnoxious
as a as a group and i saw this in Panama so uh oh you know it's it's the uh the almost stereotype
uh-huh
you know flowery shirt shorts camera hanging around their neck you know demanding this that and the other thing you know we're we're here and we want this and we want that and that sort of thing that's
that's the stereotype that's very strong down there you know that uh
the you know that sort of thing
i i i believe those of us who were working down there got a little bit more appreciation for
you know the local
uh culture i really don't believe that we were
quite that bad but yet they were having to deal directly with uh you know with the uh the local people
uh-huh uh-huh
and uh
but boy there is a there is a bad uh uh you know the old brash ugly American type
uh-huh
situation and i saw incidences in the hotel where i just wanted to go over and crawl in the corner and say oh my God those are those are not Americans they can't be but they are
right
and uh of course now i i do have to i remember one case where we had some Canadians in there who were every bit as bad but i mean it i think it's just kind of the North American
situation uh in Panama they've been used to Americans down there for so darn long
but i didn't see quite as much of that sort of thing as Panamanians are just about as as uh as as Americans as far as uh creature comforts you know they're uh they're they're every bit uh
i i know when my my son was in the Air Force and he was stationed in Panama and he married a Panamanian girl and when she came up here uh you know she's
you know except for the language situation some of the cultures she's just about an American you know is as far as TV and
uh-huh
and you know the the moneymaking part of it and all that matter of fact if anything she's worse but uh uh it it just there's little enclaves down there where you know Americans have a lot of influence
uh-huh uh-huh
and the local population kind of
um you know sort of accepts that but i've also seen the other side of it too
uh-huh
well you were in Peru
yeah i was in Peru
Peru but um
i there weren't as i recall or at least i wasn't aware of that many Americans there except for a very heavy concentration of Peace Corps volunteers this was when the Peace Corps first are started and it was one of the big targets
uh-huh
uh-huh
and um i don't i don't think at that time at least Peace Corps was
uh
an obnoxious group in the sense that that we were very controlled regarding number of days off and and you couldn't just take up take off and leave your group and go explore and and things like that
oh
uh-huh
but and i was working actually in the savings and loan program so that was quite specialized although i was living in the slums i was really working with the middle class
uh-huh What uh what area did you live in
i was up in Arequipa
oh okay yeah
and um
i've heard of it
uh-huh
so
well
well is are they is Peace Corps still active down in there
i don't have any idea um probably not i mean there were thirteen i was uh Peru Peru thirteen which meant there were twelve groups before mine
uh-huh
that had gone in and and some of them were quite big in the sense they were community development and they were building schools and doing coops and things like that health um inoculation and and things
oh has those influences lasted do you know whether the the things that that you and your groups before you
did did those
did those live on or were they reabsorbed or how
no no i believe they did because um some of some of the the Peace Corps uh that i knew of did marry Peruvians
uh-huh
and have been back and every now and then some news filters in that they went to see some of the old things and of course the savings and loan program um
that was that you know that that just continued to grow in fact after my group i mean we were just a very small specialized group too to get that going and spread and then of course Peace Corps bowed out of that because that's uh uh
something that nationalized very quickly and the same with the coops
uh-huh
well that's that was kind of the the aim wasn't it to get it started and then have it
right
taken up by the oh okay oh so you know well that's
i had wondered sometimes i knew that there was a lot of a lot of effort and a lot of work went into a lot of that and i just wondered if if it lasted and if it took you know like yeah
uh-huh
yeah i've you know some of the programs i would have concern about like um the language teaching you know i mean
why should we push English and a lot of people were down there teaching English and when they talked about Hungary or someplace one of the eastern law countries requesting Peace Corps to teach
language you know to me that's a little bit marginal i did teach economics at the university one night a week and the textbook was in English but basically i taught it in Spanish because i mean
uh-huh
oh
i really didn't see the point in their knowing stuff rotely and writing it on a test
yeah
yeah my brother-in-law teaches at uh Northern Illinois University and they were in China here a couple of years ago and he was over there
at uh the University of Shah and and teaching
