Arturo Frondizi - Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

Frondizi cultivated good relations with the United States without straining those with Brazil or the Non-Aligned Movement. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Argentina in March 1959, the first such visit since 1936, and the resulting Bariloche Declaration promoted the mutual protection of natural parks. Returning the courtesy in January 1961, he became the first Argentine president to visit the United States, as well as the first to visit India and Japan.

He formalized Argentina's support for LAFTA, the first Latin American free trade association, and for the Alliance for Progress, the landmark Western Hemisphere policy of the new U.S. President, John F. Kennedy. Helping remove obstacles to cooperation, he resolved minor but long-standing border disputes with Brazil.

Though commercial concerns continued to dominate foreign policy, Frondizi took part in negotiations between President Kennedy and Cuban representative Ernesto Che Guevara after an Inter-American Economic and Social Council summit in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August 1961. The secret meeting took place in the Quinta de Olivos presidential residence on 19 August. Guevara encouraged Frondizi to act as an intermediary between Cuba and the Kennedy administration, having already himself made conciliatory - but ultimately rejected - proposals in talks at Punta del Este with Kennedy's envoy Richard Goodwin. Frondizi's efforts were sabotaged by the Argentine Intelligence Agency, which learned of the meeting with Guevara.

Ultimately, Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States in January 1962. The effort, though fruitless, showed audacity on the part of Frondizi, whom President Kennedy called "a really tough man." The sizable Cuban exile community in Argentina reacted vigorously to the news, and organized a furtive mis-information campaign utilizing forged documents by which they believed the Argentine military could become convinced that a Cuban-sponsored communist takeover was in the planning. Calligraphers at Frondizi's service easily uncovered the hoax, however.