by Gerard Colby
As IBEC’s mutual fund invested in more companies, the price of its stock rose. IBEC explained in its 1958 annual report that “the growth of Crescinco has served to broaden ownership in Brazilian industry,” but IBEC’s policy of increasing Crescinco’s stock price as its portfolio got larger meant that fewer average Brazilians would be able to pay their way into that ownership, leaving the field to the better-heeled investor. As the Brazilian boom expanded with President Kubitschek’s spending policies, São Paulo and Rio’s wealthier crowd flooded through Crescinco’s doors, doubling investors to 8,355 by the end of 1959; sales doubled with them, to 981 million cruzeiros. On January 9, 1960, Crescinco’s sales passed the 1 billion cruzeiro mark. IBEC’s mutual fund now had a holding in more than 100 Brazilian companies.
Beside its Crescinco investing arm, Nelson’s IBEC directly owned the following: 99 percent of IBEC-Rollins Burdick Hunter, a general insurance brokerage with offices in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre; 15 percent of Avicultura, Comercio e Industria, S.A. (AVISCO), a São Paulo poultry feed plant with sales throughout Brazil; 13.86 percent of Industria Metalúrgica Forjaço, the drop-forging plant in São Paulo; and 66.15 percent of Sementes Agroceres, S.A. (SASA), Nelson’s hybrid seed company with research and production centers in five of Brazil’s most important states.
In 1957, Nelson also brought in a new American partner, Continental Grain, to replace Cargill in his grain storage company, with elevators in Paraná and São Paulo states. IBEC retained 45.4 percent. That year, he also liquidated EMA, IBEC’s agricultural machinery firm, settling for 40 percent of Thela Comercial, S.A., the Barbosa family’s importer of agricultural materials, supplies, and construction equipment. Thela’s mission, however, remained identical to what Reader’s Digest had praised EMA for: “clearing the jungle” for “the “Amazon farmers” with “mechanized land-clearing units which clear as much land in five minutes as a farmer can clear in five weeks.”33
The frontier region received new emphasis. Crescinco invested in Itaú/Portland Cement, which controlled Mato Grosso’s largest cement plant in Corumbá; COBRASMA, which was building Brasília with U.S. loans; and Cia. Brasileira de Construção Fichet & Schwartz-Hautmont, which supplied overhead cranes, metallic structures, and window frames for Brasília’s construction.
In Mato Grosso, Nelson expanded his cattle ranching, experimenting with artificial insemination to increase the size and quality of his herds, and with rice production. But Nelson was not interested merely in cattle and rice. He also wanted colonizers, people who could provide agricultural skills and settle his huge landholdings. In the 1940s, his CIAA had earmarked the Amazon for postwar settlement by refugees from the war. After deciding to buy into the Bodoquena ranch, he explored the possibility of bringing in Japanese settlers. Kubitschek’s regime was willing, but the Japanese government’s enthusiasm waned as nationalist sentiments rose in both countries.
In February 1959, Nelson turned to his brother, the American head of the influential Japan Society, for help. John 3rd received a letter from cousin Richard Aldrich, now Nelson’s IBEC overseer in Brazil.
As you may or may not know, Nelson, David and Laurance own 40% of a large tract of land in Mato Grosso. The remaining 60% is owned by Walther Moreira Salles, prominent Brazilian banker and diplomat, together with Mauricio Verdier. During the past three years they have been negotiating with the Japanese embassy to acquire about 100 families (for settlement and farming on the land). At the outset the embassy was extremely enthusiastic and promised 100 families. Subsequent to this, numbers of families promised have been reduced … and to this date the farm area has not received any.… Thinking of your interest in Japan … Verdier approached me the other day asking for your assistance.… I realize that any direct interest on your part, given Nelson’s ownership of the farm, could involve certain public relations problems … but I hope that in some way you can be helpful to us.34
John 3rd, despite misgivings, obliged, removing his Japan Society hat and putting on his Population Council hat. “It would hardly seem to me that this was the type of thing in which either the Japan Society or myself personally should get involved. On the other hand, Japan does have a population problem.” Ten years later, Brazil would host half a million Japanese, one of the largest Japanese populations in South America. But most settlers spurned western Brazil’s backlands, favoring the already cultivated cotton lands and rolling coffee hills of the south. For labor in the Amazon, the Brazilian government would have to rely on migrants from the impoverished, politically turbulent Northeast; for capital, it would rely on Nelson’s friends in New York and Washington.
*Trusted Rockefeller allies in New York responded with enthusiasm, even joining Champion on the crusade’s executive committee: R. H. Macy Company’s Edwin Chinlund (treasurer), Phelp’s Dodge heir Cleveland Dodge, and Mutual Life Insurance’s J. Roger Hull (as chairman). Others joining the General Crusade Committee were Jeremiah Milbank, director of Chase Manhattan Bank; Henry Luce, of Time, Inc.; Thomas Watson, Jr., of IBM; and Eddie Rickenbacker, Laurance’s partner in Eastern Airlines. In such company, who could doubt the sincerity of Chairman Hull, when he proclaimed, on behalf of the crusade, that “we believe in the free enterprise system.” See Thomas C. Campbell, Jr., “Capitalism and Christianity,” Harvard Business Review (July–August 1957).
*Nelson and his brothers were at the vanguard of this change. Resuming the presidency of Rockefeller Center, Nelson followed up on Rockefeller Center’s recent successful negotiations with Adolf Berle for the purchase of prime midtown Manhattan real estate owned by the estate of the Bishop family, Berle’s in-laws. He struck a deal with Henry Luce and C. D. Jackson that evicted tenants, razed buildings, and erected a new 70-story headquarters for Time-Life, across the Avenue of the Americas from RCA’s Radio City.
On Manhattan’s West Side, John 3rd took the lead in overseeing construction of a new cultural complex for the city, which came to be called the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Wallace Harrison’s firm did the design, assisted by MOMA associates and Gordon Bemshaft, architect of Chase’s new downtown headquarters.
Farther uptown, David’s Morningside Heights Association completed its eviction of 3,000 families and its demolition of ten acres; modern apartment buildings were erected, serving effectively as a buffer, critics later charged, between Harlem and the Rockefeller-funded educational-religious complex anchored by Columbia University, International House, Union Theological Seminary, and Riverside Church, the last three representing a $50 million investment by Rockefeller philanthropies. At the other end of the island, where Chase had $40 million in real estate investments, David led the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association’s effort to revitalize the financial district. Plans to build ever taller skyscrapers to house America’s largest and most profitable banks led eventually to the twin 110-story towers of the World Trade Center.
22
THE BROTHERHOOD
GRABBING POWER
Nelson Rockefeller’s reach for power between 1957 and 1960 was so transparent that it startled the nation.
First, he assembled the Rockefeller Brothers Panels to chart the nation’s future and work up a Rockefeller platform on all the vital issues.
He recruited more than 100 distinguished Americans from every corridor of power through which he had marched in the past twenty years. Shepherding the flock was Henry Kissinger, on leave from Harvard.
They all knew why they were there: not just because of the Soviet threat, but because of the Rockefeller promise. “Many who joined the overall panel of the Special Studies Project were aware they were in the presence of someone who might be the President of the United States in the 1960’s or 1970’s,” recalled a friend of Kissinger. “Their decision to join the group was not unaffected by that awareness.”1
Nelson, of course, took most of the credit for the panel’s work. On January 6, 1958, he appeared on the Today show to promote the national security panel report, Internation
al Security: The Military Aspect. He had rushed it to print to take advantage of the national hysteria over the Soviet launching of Sputnik, the first satellite, the previous October. Almost 200,000 viewers wrote in asking for copies. By the end of 1960, over half a million copies had been distributed, most at cost or free, all carrying Nelson’s dire preamble: “At issue is nothing less than the future of America and the freedom of the world.”
On January 10, he was again in front of the national cameras, this time testifying before Senator Lyndon B. Johnson’s Senate Armed Services Committee. “Ever since World War II, the United States has suffered from a tendency to underestimate the military technology of the USSR,” he warned. “… Unless present trends are reversed, the world balance of power will shift in favor of the Soviet bloc. If that should happen, we are not likely to be given another chance to remedy our failings.”2
Five months later, wiser American political analysts found out what this was all about: Riding on the national furor and exploiting Governor Averell Harriman’s strategic error in naming him chairman of a bipartisan commission to rewrite New York’s Constitution, Nelson summoned reporters to Room 5600. Standing beside a bronze bust of his grandfather, he announced that he was running for office of the governor of the richest and most populous state in the union. Few doubted that New York was only a stepping-stone to his real ambition, the White House.
By August he was already contacting at least one foreign head of state whom he counted as a friend. “I have entered the political arena here in the State of New York and am leaving no stone unturned to obtain the nomination in the Gubernatorial race this fall,” he wrote Alberto Lleras Camargo, who had just been elected Colombia’s president. “If I get the nomination, the race will be a tough one but I think there’s an outside chance.”3
That month, the Republicans gave him the nomination no one else really wanted. Nelson logged 8,500 miles, wolfing down Manhattan knishes and sausages and upstate apple pies. He used his fluency in Spanish among Puerto Rican voters and Count Basie’s band in Harlem. He charged Averell Harriman, another millionaire, with being controlled by Tammany Hall boss Carmine De Sapio. Finally, after enjoying a big boost from friendly articles in the New York Post, the all-but-official organ of Adolf Berle’s Liberal party, Nelson won the governorship by a landslide.
It was dubbed the “Multimillionaire Sweepstakes” and “the battle of the billionaires.” Rockefeller spent $1.87 million; Harriman, $1.1 million. Nelson’s secret weapon, however, was not money, nor the much-vaunted difference in style between the stiff, aristocratic Harriman and the outgoing “Rocky.” Neither was it just the Dewey machine that the Rockefellers had funded and now claimed for Nelson’s own use. Ultimately, it was Rockefeller’s twenty years of experience in psychological warfare, painting an image of himself in the public mind that won the day. Organized by the ever-able Frank Jamieson, Nelson’s propaganda machine chewed up 40 percent of the campaign’s budget for television alone. Everywhere that Nelson went, his movie crew was sure to go; every day, daily reports and short movie reels were distributed free to twenty-three television stations. Intelligence briefings on local communities were compiled and bound in the thick binders Nelson was seen carrying around with him everywhere; they gave his campaign a local flavor, showing that he was concerned about each community and better informed about local matters than were most of its citizens. And at the core of it all, overseeing all field operations, were Nelson’s CIAA veterans.
Throughout the race, despite the international caliber of his advisory stable, Nelson stressed local issues, using them as an excuse to keep Eisenhower and Nixon out of the campaign. Yet everyone in the campaign leadership knew that the White House was the real target. When Nelson, grinning broadly and flanked by Tod and his favorite son, Michael, claimed victory on election night, the crowd broke out in chants of “Rocky for President!” But Nelson kept up the face of party unity. “His boyish grin faded,” reported the Associated Press. “A well-bred frown flitted across his pale face. He shook his head, emphatically, turned away from the microphones and made toward the door.… ‘I haven’t given it a thought,’ he told reporters as he left.”4 He then flew to South America to rest, inspect his ranches and agricultural research in Brazil, and discuss the implications of his election with his friends and allies.
On New Year’s Eve, Nelson placed his hand on Great-Grandmother Eliza’s Bible and repeated the New York governor’s oath of office. He was now one of the most powerful politicians in the United States.
The following morning, eschewing tradition, he appeared at Albany’s official inauguration ceremony in the state assembly chamber dressed in a plain business suit and delivered a speech meant more for a president than a governor. He spoke of “a world divided,” with “weapons of war perfected to deadly extremes.” His tone was religious, and missionary.
“The World … is divided, essentially, between those who believe in the brotherhood of men under the fatherhood of God—and those who scorn this as pious myth.…
“The division of the world—and this time of decision—leave no corner of the earth, no fraction of humanity, untouched. From this basic struggle, there can be no refuge nor escape.”5
As he spoke, his greatest fear had been realized ninety miles off Florida’s Key West. Fulgencio Batista, the dictator, had fled Cuba, and the streets of Havana were filled with Cubans welcoming the bereted revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro.
INVESTING IN PREFERRED REVOLUTIONS
Adolf Berle had seen it coming. The wall of dictators that imprisoned Latin Americans had been crumbling since 1956. At first, the kind of Latin American democracies that both Berle and Nelson Rockefeller had hoped to see since the end of World War II emerged in their place.
Dictator General Manuel Odría of Peru was one of the first to go, wisely deciding to step down a year after the Iquitos garrison revolted in the Amazon. Succeeding him was banker and ex-President Manuel Prado, an old friend of David Rockefeller’s since their days at the London School of Economics.
General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of Colombia fell next, in 1957, after his failure to quell a revolution of Indians and mestizo peasants in the hills. Riots had broken out against his forced “reelection.” To carry out the coup, Colombia’s U.S.-trained-and-supplied air force and army demanded his resignation. He, like Odría, hopped a plane into exile, choosing Franco’s fascist Spain.
His successor, Alberto Lleras Camargo, took office after a year of transitional military rule and brought to bear the fruits of his friendship with Nelson Rockefeller while serving as Colombia’s ambassador to the United States. He quickly decorated David Rockefeller, cousin James Stillman Rockefeller (president of First National City Bank of New York), J. Peter Grace (of W. R. Grace & Company), and ex-Undersecretary of State Henry Holland for renegotiating Colombia’s huge debt. Trusted by Nelson and well known by New York businessmen and Washington officialdom, Lleras Camargo was viewed as a good investment: Holding his government’s bonds was like holding preferred stock in Colombia’s future; it gave you first rights to Colombia’s treasury. There was more than symbolic meaning in the ticker-tape parade Wall Street and Governor Rockefeller gave Lleras Camargo in 1960.
The Pérez Jiménez dictatorship of Venezuela, so mired in corruption that the Roman Catholic Church publicly took issue with his regime, fell on January 23, 1958. The outcome was exactly as ex-President Rómulo Betancourt had predicted six months before, prompting Adolf Berle to remark: “He was right, almost to the day.”6 Pérez Jiménez was put on a plane to Trujillo’s Dominican Republic. Three days later, Argentina’s ex-President Juan Perón, whom Rojas Pinilla had been harboring, joined him. Venezuelans then elected Rómulo Betancourt president.
Carlos Castillo Armas of Guatemala was also eliminated after a year of student demonstrations, in July 1957. Like Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García the previous year, he was shot by an assassin. The CIA tried to prevent Castillo Armas’s rival, Colonel Miguel Ydígor
as Fuentes, from being elected president. When Ydígoras was elected anyway, a deal was worked out by the U.S. Embassy allowing him to take office, but at a price: In 1959, a Philippine CIA operative named Napoleon Valeriano arrived under the auspices of Colonel Edward Lansdale to begin training Cuban exiles at a Guatemalan ranch for the Bay of Pigs invasion.7
When neighboring Honduras faced elections, the CIA’s Colonel J. C. King scrutinized the country’s favored presidential candidate, Ramón Villeda. King gave Villeda the green light only after a meeting with Villeda at Berle’s town house, where Villeda convinced him he was no communist. Berle could barely contain his delight, noting that “between Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Honduras, with friends elsewhere, we have a fairly good galaxy of governments composed of exiles who at one time had few friends except Beatrice and me.”8
One country, however, worried both Berle and King: Cuba. Revolution was spreading among the sugarcane workers and rolling toward Havana. Both men believed the young lawyer-turned-guerrilla-leader, Fidel Castro, was controlled by the Kremlin; they desperately sought a more happy, if less heroic alternative to Batista. Berle and Puerto Rican Governor Luis Muñoz Marín drafted a proposal for the State Department outlining a plan for Batista to step down and hold elections.9 Batista refused. Berle submitted a candidate proposed by his friend President Figueres of Costa Rica.10 That suggestion was also rejected. Colonel King and ex-Ambassador to Peru and Brazil William Pawley, who owned Havana’s streetcar system, tried to find a conservative Cuban more amenable to Batista. They, too, failed.11
Time had run out. Castro’s guerrillas entered Havana and took power as the Berks were dancing the night away to Cab Calloway’s band at Nelson Rockefeller’s inaugural ball. Merrymakers leaving the ball in the snowy wee hours in their dinner jackets, furs, and jewels joked that not such an evening had been seen since the balls at the czar’s Winter Palace.12 If Berle saw any irony in their comments, he did not record it in his diary.