Evening star., 1937-11-29

whole" ~ D 0cHiIDE HAROLD.
Open the chronicles of Latin
America. Let the pages come alive |
with saints and sinners, beggars and |
kings, tyrants and rebels, scholars, ad-
venturers and priests. Twenty ma
tions with history and culture to
be admired, and democratic ideal |
we share"
So runs the legend on the banner |
Of the Brave New World" series of |
notable educational radio entertain
ments, broadcast tonight at 1890 |
o'clock, and every Monday night dur
ing the winter, over the Columbia
network.
Open this unfamiliar book, and
turn the pages written in the red of
blood and the salt of native tears"
Do not be too saESuine; do not ex-
purgate it before you read it, or ignore
the bitterest facts of American His
tory-the burning facts of Indian and
Negro slavery, of racial prejudice, of
imperialism, old and new; of economic
exploitation and ecclesiastical indif-
ference AMI oppression-if you would
really understand Latin America, the
price of democracy, of freedom and of
peace!
Not without reason, rebellions and
great revolutions have occurred in the
territories stretching from the Rio
Grande to the winding Straits of
Magellan. Indeed, not without rea-
son they are still occurring, and will
occur in the future, in Spanish and
Portuguese America, and for the
same reasons that they are even now
mutilating. with horrible conse-
quences, old Spain. What are the
reasons? There is only one agi-
tator," exclaimed Lord Roseberry,
''injustice!" Many of these revolu-
tions have been pointed toward
realization of the same great political
and humanitarian principles en-
blazoned in our own Revolution. and
the French; and embodied in our own
Constitution and Bill of Rights, in
cluding, particularly, popular suf-
frage and education, and the total
disestablishment of the church and
its constitutional divorce from the
State.
Full Truth Needed
If We are to understand the revolu-
t1ons of the past, or influence those
that may be written in the scroll of
the future, in Latin America, or else
where-H We are to deaf with intel
ligently and constructively, as we
ought to dove must read and hear,
by book and radio, the full, unmedi-
Gated truth about them and about
the great men who led them, and the
facts and forces against which their
heroic lives and labors were dedicated
These must not be discourtly veiled,
or adulterated down to an innocuous
bedtime story, in the name Of edu-
cation, lest some interest or prejudice
be chafed! Nothing but the whole
truth will set the people free.
Last Monday evening there were
dramatized the life histories of three
remarkable men, of Spanish, Portuguese
and Indian America, whose lives per-
sonify the desperate. century-long
struggles that have made freedom pos
sible for the American serf, or peon,
or slave-brown, or black or creole
struggles that have made independ-
ence possible for 81 ideologically
affiliated republics in the Western
Hemisphere; and that have raised the
bright standard of Pan-Americanism
and a metamorphosized Monroe Doc |
trine as the continental and co-opera-
tive bulwark of an ancient dream |
whose hour of political fulfillment has |
almost come. The three personali- |
ties chosen to signalize this historic |
movement were the famous Bartholo-
NEW de las Casas, priest. educator and |
reformer of Spain and New Spain; the |
less well-known Candido Rondon, a |
mestizo engineer of the Amazon, whom |
Theodore Roosevelt encountered in |
the jungle of Brazil, and the notorious
Emlliano zapata, who now appears as
q kind of native Indian Robin Hood |
OF modern Mexico, whom his con-
temporaries termed and treated as a
bandit few years ago.
Most Remarkable" Person.
Tonight we shall have the stories of |
two more-two literary friends of 10Th
century Venezuela who dabbled in
poetry. talked of their political fu-
ture, fought for liberty and founded
Tree nations" in South America-the
Damon and Pythias" of Venezuelan,
Colombian, Ecuadorean and Peruvian
ndependence-Andres Bello and Jose
Olmedo
But greatest of them all in point
OF sacrifice and service to the despoiled
Indian natives, and of courage and |
influence in the reformation of the
laws, the policy and the hierarchy of |
Spain was Las Casas Born in Seville |
of distinguished French parents, in |
1474 (his father had actually sailed |
with Columbus to the Caribbean), he
became, by the consensus of secular
historians, lone of the most remark
able personages that has ever appeared |
in history" More than a philanthropy
ast, missionary and a Dominican
priest, "he had one of those large
minds which take an interest in every
thing. AS an historian, a man of let
ters, a colonist, theologian, a re-
former, an active power in the church, |
. business man and an observer of |
natural history and science, he holds
. very high position amongst the
notable men Of the 18th century. The
Nuo~e ha p11cfny,,c fha ro3ir;a., 49,