19571920 1929 Tith DEODODUCED AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES managers of the local company. Thereupon, said Mr. Gehrels, President Calderón Guardia called the head of the National Arbitration Commission, and the Government representative on the Commission, Mr.
Prospero Guardia (an linalo of tho Prosidont. and instructed Mr. Guardia to vote on the side of the laborers. When the case was brought before the Commission, the representative of the laborers, Mr.
Enrique Benavides Chavarría, a member of the Communist party, made so many unfounded accusations that Mr.
Guardia felt justice compelled him to cast his vote on the side of the company and against the direct instructions of the President, according to Mr. Gehrels.
When President Calderón Guardia learned that the decision in this case had gone in favor of the National Light and Power Company, he immediately called Mr. Gehrels to his office and requested him to re hire the 16 men on the grounds that his company had been upheld and thus saved face. but that he, the President, needed the men re hired to comply with political commitments he had made. This Mr. Gehrels again refused to do.
Shortly after this decision became known, the Diario de Costa Rica published an editorial dictated by the syndicates entitled: Un Fallo Incongruente. an incongruous decision. This editorial took occasion to attack American companies in the following words. The fact that the United States may be our Allies (or we, Allies of the United States)
should not make us believe that whatever comes to us from there is just, democratic and representative of the interests for which that country and our own are fighting. Thus the great countries which exploit our territory and our people do not cease to be dangerous to our sovereignty because they are.
Americans.
That quotation, as well as the enclosed political manifesto of the labor organizations referred to above which complained against the interests of imperialistic enterprises shows an increasingly hostile attitude toward American business. From the beginning of his career, Mora has had two pet hates, and they are, in order, the United Fruit Company and Yankee Imperialism.
El Trabajo, the Communist weekly newspaper, during the early part of this year, accused the United Fruit Company of making pro Axis sympathizers out of its employees.
It arrived at this curious conclusion by asking why the laborers should work for the United Nations when the United States concerns deny them the rights for which the United Nations are supposedly fighting. The National Union of Syndicates addressed a letter, dated February 19, 1943, to President Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace condemning the labor policies of two Yankee corporations