REPRODUCED AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES LE: DECLASSIFIED Authority Stateletter Mhz y ME, NARA Oz: 912498 told them that this war is a war of liberation and that they and their children shall be liberated from misery.
Señor Picado went on to elaborate upon the necessity for a progressive social policy in Costa Rica, stating that his party proposes to organíze production scientifically for the welfare of employers and workers. He insisted that their program cannot be accused of being extrem Instead, We are the best allies and friends of a healthy and understanding capitalism. He compared criticism of his party with attacks leveled at the late President Pedro Aguirre Cerda of Chile and at President Roosevelt, whose origins are aristocratic, yet it has been he who has saved American capitalism from extermination by humanizing and christianizing it.
While the situation in this present campaign is by no means clear cut, it is undeniable that there is an increasingly deep cleavage on ideological grounds between the two parties. As stated above, the Cortés faction is tending to become a party of the right, while the PicadoMora coalition starts from the center and terminates at the far left. It is sigmificant that spokesmen for the latter party like to compare their objectives with those of progressive groups in other countries and that they set much store on statements by President Roosevelt, VicePresident Wallace and others, In considering the Cortés faction there are several factors, which must be considered somewhat prejudicial to our interests. President Calderón Guardia has on several occasions pointed out that practically all of the well todo German Costa Rican families such as the Niehauses, Steimvorths, et cetera, are supporters of Leon Cortés.
Señor Cortés himself has criticized President Calderóm Guardia for cooperating with the United States in de porting dangerous Germans and Italians from Costa Rica. The admiration which Señor Cortés had for Germany and the confidence which he placed in certain German advisers, such as Max Efinger, are matters of record.
In addition, the Cortés faction has now attracted practically in unanimity the strongly Catholic conservative upper class Costa Rican element, who mortally fear anything connected with communism and who tend to resist any social change. Many of those persons are inclined to be proFranco, sympathetic to the Falange, receptive to the theories of Hispanidad and ipso facto antagonistic to the United States on cultural and religious grounds.
An interesting manifestation which has lately come to the Embassy attention is the increasing frequency with which the Cortés faction speaks of foreign intervention.
Prominent spokesmen of the Cortés group have repeatedly insisted in recent months that the United States cannot stand idly by while Democracy perishes in Costa Rica As they gradually realize that we intend to adhere to our policy of non intervention they are now talking of obtaiming assistance from some other quarter, which would appear to be, at the moment, from Guatemala and Salvador. They state