OSULASSTILU Authority Stateletter Inhz 8; ML NARC9 24181 AIR MAIL The idea of Central American political union was dismissed as impractical at this time, but the Party went on record as favoring coordination of the economies of the five nations. It was also announced that the Vanguardia shock brigades were being disbanded in evidence of the organization sincerity in its call for national unity.
The reaction to these announcements was not slow in coming. By and large it may be said that elements of the Right were and are unwilling to accept this volte face as being anything but a superficial political maneuver, designed to deceive the country and to make possible further electoral gains in 1946. The Centro para el Estudio de Problemas Nacionales, in an editorial in the Diario, indignantly rejected the idea of any rapprochement with Communism. and stated that the only things the country needed were liberty and legality. Other persons among the opposition have expressed doubts as to the motivation of these decisions, and the manager of a large American firm in Costa Rica indicated to a member of the Embassy that while the sentiments voiced were splendid in the ory he had little hope for actual collaboration with labor.
On the other hand, Father Benjamin Núñez, director of the Rerum Novarum unions, told a member of the Embassy staff that he thought the declarations were a definite step forward toward the conciliatory settling of many of Costa Rica economic problems. He characterized the new Mline as being very favorable to capital, and stated that organization would have been afraid to offer such concessions, for fear of being called a tool of capital. He also added that Archbishop Sanabria was extremely pleased with the Vanguardia decisions and felt that events had justified his position that Catholics might join the Vanguardia.
Because of the varied reception which greeted the new policy, Manuel Mora gave a radio speech on September 29 in which he reviewed the bases for the changed policy.
Making much of the Teheran Conference and the Atlantic Charter, Mora insisted that it was his conviction that socialism and capitalism could live in harmony after the war. Perhaps significantly, he added that the same decision had been arrived at in the United States by Earl Browder and his followers.
The question as to whether these decisions were freely arrived at by Mora and the Vanguardia Popular or whether