4
Thursday, April 21,1994
U.S. Policy Aims to Strengthen Economic Ties With Latin America
BY JONATHAN BARKER
STAFF WRITER
The North American Free Trade Agree
ment has been a significant boon.to U.S.-
Latin American relations and should be
the beginning ofbetter intra-American ties,
foreign policy analysts say.
“We’re treating them as equals,” said
Leo Welt, publisher of The Latin America
Index, a Washington, D.C.-based newslet
ter on Latin American affairs. “The Clinton
administration’sNAFTAagreement shows
his agenda for Latin America and his strong
interest in the area.”
Welt said such economic cooperation
would aid in the stability of the countries
and would create profitable cooperatives
for both areas.
“I am positive that this long-range rela
tionship will create better market opportu
nities,” he said. “It will provide a great
opportunity for joint ventures and
privatization in these areas.”
One country Welt has observed devel
oping is Argentina.
“Argentina has been booming, ” he said.
“There has been much privatization and a
lot of foreign investment. Argentina has
tremendous growth.”
Welt also said the liberalization reforms
happening in Argentina had benefited the
area in terms of democratic growth and
educational programs.“ There’s a lot of
growth going on,” he said. “Education
specifically is progressing.”
Welt said environmental problems, a
vital concern in Latin America, would be
dealt with through an exchange of technol
ogy with the rest ofthe industrialized world.
“One ofthe issues is the environmental
issue,” he said. “This creates a great oppor
tunity for America. I hope that we take a
real active role in competing with Europe
Revisionist Movement Clashes With Traditional Acceptance of Holocaust
BY CHRISTOPHER TEBBIT
STAFF WRITER
The Nazi genocide of Jews and other
Europeans ended almost 50 years ago. But
there still are people who question whether
the Holocaust actually happened.
In February, The Daily Tar Heel ran an
advertisement paid for by the Committee
for Open Debate on the Holocaust. The
committee is attempting to bring Holo
caust revisionism, a promotion of the idea
that the Holocaust never really happened,
into the historical mainstream.
“There is a growing body of revisionist
research that is becoming very widely
known, therefore making the Holocaust
story worthy of debate,” said revisionist
Bradley Smith, who is a member of the
CODOH.
“There is a really weak response from
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A five-part series Monday: The Middle
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The United States has supported the
reduction of defense budgets in Argentina,
Brazil and Chile and attempts to liberalize
the economies and governments in these
areas, said John Booth, professor of politi
cal science attheUniversity ofNorthTexas.
“The U.S. has been strongly encourag
ing reductions of defense budgets in Latin
America, and even more than that has
been in favor of neoliberal reforms in Latin
America,” he said.
The benefits ofNAFTA will be felt most
strongly in Mexico and will serve to stabi
lize the already shaky elections process
going on there, said Byron Adams, pub
lisher of the Washington, D.C.-based
Mexico Trade and Law Reporter. Adams
also said the trade pact would increase the
American role in Mexican affairs.
“It gives the U.S. a much stronger stake
in Mexico’s stability and economic
growth,” he said. “It’s providing the U.S.
with a huge untapped market.”
the other side and, in many cases, the
revisionists have the facts on their side, ” he
said.
The revisionists claim there is no hard
evidence that gas chambers ever were used
for murder in the Nazi concentration
camps.
“There is no physical or documentary
proof that the gas chambers in the concen
tration camps were ever used for any other
purpose than the delousing of clothes and
such,” Smith said.
“Most Holocaust survivors do not claim
to have any personal knowledge of the gas
chambers,” he said.
The revisionists also argue that it has
not been shown that there was an order to
murder the all the Jews of Europe, or that
there were 6 million Jewish deaths during
the war.
“The facts, in many cases, lie on the
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STATE ( NATIONAL
Countries of Central
And Latin America
Country Population GDP
Argentina 32.900,000 $101.2
Belize 189.000 $.290 ,
Bolivia 7,323.000 $4.8
BrazS 158.000,000 S3BB
Chile 13,528.000 $29.2
Colombia 34,296.000 $43
Costa Rica 3,187,000 $5.6
Cuba 10,846,000 N/A
Dominican Republic 7,515.000 $7.1
Ecuador 10,933,000 $11.5
El Salvador 5,574,000 $5.5
Guatemala 9,784,000 $11.7
Haiti 6,431,000 $2.7
Honduras 4,949,000 $4.9
Jamaica 2,506,000 $3.6
Mexico 92,380,000 $289
Nicaragua 3,878,000 $1.7
Panama 2,529,000 $5.2
6 4,929,000 $7
2Z767.000 $20.6
obago 1,285,000 $4.9
3,121,000 $9.1
20,675,000 $52.3
SOURCE 1994 WORLD ALMANAC
Adams sees uncertainty for Mexico’s
ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party,
or PRI, especially after the recent assassi
nation of PRI candidate Luis Colosia. He
said instability during the August presi
dential elections could jeopardize reforms
if opposition parties took a majority.
“The new PRI candidate is not as strong
as Colosia was,” he said. “He was ex
tremely popular with the Mexican people.
Opposition parties are relatively hostile to
revisionists’ side and, unlike the other side,
which relies on faith, we can and are will
ing to be disproved,” Smith said.
Smith is working with David Cole, an
other member of the CODOH, to produce
a set of videos documenting revisionist
research made in the concentration camps
of Europe.
Cole makes trips to the concentration
camps and videotapes both the trips and
the interviews of the Holocaust preserva
tion officials.
“I publish the ‘Smith’s Report,’ which
promotes open debate of the Holocaust,
and we use the proceeds to fund David’s
trips overseas,” Smith said.
But, according to Smith, the revisionists
have a difficult time persuading the histori
cal community to acknowledge any of the
results of their research.
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Adams said that as the Mexican
economy grew stronger, there would be
more demand for the PRI to improve its
political tactics. “As the U.S. and Mexican
economies become more intertwined, there
will be more pressure to be more open
about the PRl’s policies,” he said.
The United States more than likely will
attempt to have an unbiased arbiter to be
on hand for the August elections, said John
Bailey, acting director for the Center of
Latin American Studies at Georgetown
University.
“The United States may try to convince
the Mexican government to invite the U.N.
to create a mechanism that will provide an
internal arbiter to oversee the elections,”
he said.
Adams is optimistic about the benefits
ofcontinued positive relations between the
United States and Mexico.
“Mexico stands to become as equal a
partner as Canada and stands to surpass
Canada in the future,” he said.
The United States now will take a less
direct role in the affairs of Mexico and
Latin America, with more emphasis on
trade and economic relations, Bailey said.
in America can afford to assign seriously
written Holocaust revisionist text without
the risk of summarily losing their jobs.
Tenured professors feel they can not now
turn and, using revisionist research, reveal
that they promoted the orthodox literature
for political reasons,” Smith said in a letter
sent to college newspaper editors.
But Arron Breitbart, senior researcher
for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish
organization based in Los Angeles, said he
did not think the Holocaust was an accept
able subject for debate because there was
no doubt as to the facts of the Holocaust.
“You do not debate the past. Facts are
facts, and they may only be interpreted,”
Breitbart said.
“ ‘Revisionists’ should not be the term
used for these people. These people are
deniers. They want to whitewash the stain
of the Holocaust and lead us to believe that
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“The U.S. policy is changing to recognize
more commercial and economic relations
with Latin America,” he said. “The policy
in the Cold War was security. The U.S.
had an emphasis on internal politics. Now
there is more emphasis on trade.”
Bailey said that along with the changes
perhaps the Nazis were not as bad as we are
told. The fact of the matter is that they do
not want to debate the past; they want to
rehabilitate Nazism,” he said.
Breitbart also said there were no histori
ans or scholars who contested the Holo
caust.
“There is not one professional historian
or scholar who contests the Holocaust.
They are only professional anti-Semites
who are capitalizing on a younger society’s
ignorance,” Breitbart said.
Proof that individuals were gassed in
Auschwitz was presented to the Superior
Court of California in the 1981 case of the
State of California vs. the Institute for
Historical Review, Legion for Survival of
Freedom.
It was stated in a press release that
“After lengthy and heated arguments by
both sides, on Oct. 9,1981, the honorable
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in U. S. policies with Latin America, public
opinion in Latin America also had changed
toward the United States.
“There has been a sea-change in public
opinion of U.S.-Latin America market re
lations,” he said. “I see anew basis for a
new relationship.”
Judge Thomas T. Johnson declared that
this court, ‘Under evidence code section
452 h, does take judicial notice of the fact
that Jews were gassed to death at the
Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Po
land’ and that the Holocaust is not reason
ably subject to dispute.”
Gerhard Weinberg, UNC history pro
fessor, said that while debating whether
the Holocaust happened was absurd, some
issues concerning the Holocaust did de
serve attention.
“There are issues about the Holocaust
that merit discussion. There is for example,
considerable discussion about exactly when
the Germans made the decision to kill all
the Jews,” Weinberg said.
“The revisionists are dangerous in that
they might make society less conscious of
the terrible dangers that surround us as we
live,” he said.
According to Weinberg, there are sev
eral reasons for the rise in Holocaust skep
ticism.
“As the Holocaust fades with time, anti-
Semitism becomes much more socially
acceptable and even fashionable,”
Weinberg said.
“Also, with distance in time, terrible
things become less real to people, therefore
making it easier for people to believe that it
just did not happen.
“The Holocaust tells us that not only
natural disasters cause great human suffer
ing, but also human cruelty,” Weinberg
said.
“All the advances in both bureaucratic
and mechanical technologies make it pos
sible for people to do terrible things on an
enormous scale,” he said.
“We underestimate the dangers of the
world in which we live,” Weinberg said.
“The earth is a far more dangerous place
than we imagine.”