CONTINUATION OF DISPATCH SECRET DISPATCH NO. 5961

To request ODCA approval of the creation of this Coordinating Committee and ODCA recognition of CLASC as its chosen hemispheric labor instrument. The eventual approval of the ODCA leadership appears likely. Indeed, it is doubtful that the act would have occurred before Montevideo Seminar if informal agreement of the ODCA leadership had not been obtained in advance.

12. Possible CLASC Influence on Party Youth Wings. Closer CLASC identification with the CD political movement will likely rub off negatively on CD youth wings which invariably are further left than their parent parties and identify much more closely with the "revolutionary" image and mystique CLASC has won and propagated. It is perhaps significant that CLASC has intensified its efforts in some areas to establish youth appendages to the Christian labor movement. This initiative appears to have made greatest progress in Central America.

IV - THE ROLE OF ODCA

13. ODCA Contributes Little Positive Direction. The Latin American CD parties formed their regional organization in Montevideo in 1949 - the Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América (ODCA). The current officers of ODCA are:

President: Rafael Caldera, Venezuela
Vice President: Hector CORNEJO Chavez, Peru
Vice President: Rene DE LEON Schlotter, Guatemala
Secretary General: Tomas REYES Vicuna, Chile

ODCA has consistently assumed an anti-Yankee posture on a broad range of key issues (most forcefully on the American intervention in the Dominican Republic) but on balance has been less strident in its criticism than several of its member parties (notably the Chilean, Bolivian, and Dominican CDs), probably because of Caldera's restraining hand. The Organization would merit much closer attention than we have given it to date if it had substantial influence or authority over member parties, or could apply sanctions against national groups. But ODCA amounts to little more than a fraternity. Its member parties have little ideological homogeneity and the content of their joint papers are to be based more on revolutionary mysticism (which most parties are careful to qualify with adjectives like peaceful, democratic, and Christian) and self-righteous factors (hostility to the U.S., capitalism, and the oligarchies), than on a foundation of doctrine or basic agreement on just what they want.

14. European Efforts to Tie in the ODCA Role. We have asked contacts in European CD circles to prod ODCA to set criteria for membership in ODCA and then tie European weight petitions for support for the Latin American parties and organizations against these criteria. European officers have argued that while the Europeans cannot realistically require nascent and trial-minded groups in Latin America to meet the same rigid standards of political maturity as have evolved in Europe, neither should the European ...