St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1944-03-31

White Costa RIGA went to the
polls the other day and elected a
progressive president over a racist
candidate who, it said, was being
helped along with guns struggled
into the country by somebody close
to the United Fruit Company.
White Costa Ricans would clamp
Senator Bilbo or any other Dixie
fascist into Jail if he came to their
country suggesting that the small
Negro minority, living along the
coast and back in the mountains,
should be deported to Africa.
If a Negro Costa Rican should
ever be elected president-and that
is not inconceivable in most any
Latin American country-very few
white citizens of the republic would
feel alarmed or disgraced. Along
with the strong tradition of equality
and fraternity in these countries,
there is the tradition that any tai
ented person has the right to serve
his country with all the gifts of his
talent.
Many Presidents
Nobody knows just how many
people, with Negro blood, have been
presidents of Latin American re-
publics. Records about race aren't
kept very carefully in part of the
world where race is not a chronic
mass hysteria.
Milo Pecanha, former president
of Brazil, would have done credit
to the White House.
Cuban President Fulgencio Ba-
tista is a Negro ex-sergeant who
worked his way up to the highest
office in the gift of his people.
President Ellie Lescot of Haiti and
Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican
Republic are Negroes who might as
we'll recognize that Dixie Estates
men" will always regard them as
Negroes, even if they spend their
days trying to change their COM
plexions with prayers and bleaching
creams.
1t is hard to find any legislative
body in Latin America which does
not have a large quota of Negroes,
sponsoring and debating bills and
resolutions, serving as chairmen of
important committees, giving far
better accounts of themselves than
the poll tax shysters who make laws
for Texas and Tennessee.
Our country has had only two
Negro senators-Blanche K. Bruce
and Hiram R. Revels-elected dur
ing the acknowledgement days
of Reconstruction. Dozens of Latin
American Negroes have served in
their countries as senators.
Cuba's Negro senators have fol-
lowed in the footsteps of those early
American Negro senators and con-
gressmen who saw that ignorance
was worse danger to a country
than invasion. They have been par
ticularly active in getting better
schools for poor children of both
races.
Cuba's outstanding Negro patriot,
Juan Gualberto Gomez, died as a
senator of the republic which his
restless, energetic brain had helped
to create. He fought for educa-
ton in Cuba-through a decent
public school system and for an en-
lightened free press living up to the
standard of his paper, Fraternity.
Latin-Americans are very much
puzzled over the poll tax require
ments that Dixie enforces for vot-
ing, and over the fact that ten per
cent of Americas citizens have only
one congressman-William L. Daw-
son-to speak for them in our ma
tional legislative body.
They are much more interested
however, in what Congressman
Dawson has to say than in the foul
bromides which Mississippi Con-
gresham John Rankin spews out
when he takes the floor. They point
out that they have tradition of
sending Negroes to their congresses