I had four meetings with him:
- When Carter was Governor of Georgia in 1972
- By winning the elections and how president-elect of USA in 1976
- Together with President Balaguer in 1977
- when he went election observer in 1990 in the country
Being unknown to the 200 million Americans, Jimmy Carter said in 1972 that the federal government did not express from Washington the true feelings of the people of the USA in favor of the Latin America.
Those were the days when the plan to run for office was incubating in the head of the then governor of the state of Georgia. presidency of his country.
I met James (Jimmy) Earl Carter in mid-June 1972, and was impressed by his personality and the interest he showed in Latin America before a group of journalists from Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.
They told me after interview held in the Capitol in Atlanta that Carter aspired to obtain the nomination for his party, the Democrat, in future years, and in truth it was difficult for me to imagine him as presidential candidate.
How is it possible that a man unknown throughout North America believes he is capable of challenging so many candidates for the top executive position? It was what I, a young 22-year-old journalist, thought at the time.
That time Governor Carter showed a brilliant personality, but ultimately he seemed like another of many applicants.
He State Department invited us
Invited by him State Department to observe the process of primary elections Americans along with other Latin American journalists, I was sitting face to face with Jimmy Carter addressing issues of interest to the region.
Carter spoke to us in more or less clear Spanish
He was interested in establishing commercial ties and friendlies between Georgia and neighboring countries and finally I concluded by inviting him to visit the Dominican Republic.
In fact, I was the only one who extended the invitation to his country, with polite and protocol content, and on July 26, 1972, he sent me a letter thanking me for two reports that I wrote and sent him upon my return to Santo Domingo.
Jimmy Carter He was an anonymous politician for the majority of the American people in 1972. But his statements were journalistically interesting for us.
The then governor of the US state of Georgia complained that the government of Richard Nixon, who would later be re-elected that year in 1972 in an overwhelmingly superior vote over Democrat George McGovern, was relegating the Latin America.
“In my opinion,” he said then Jimmy Carter“our own government does not express the popular sentiment of the American people in favor of Latin America. My party, the Democrats, has great interest in Latin America“.
And what was the reason for Carter’s attention to the region?
“The Russians, the Japanese, the French and the Germans now have more interest than we do in increasing the commercial exchange and cultural Latin America“the future told us president-elect in 1976.
Carter felt in 1972 that USA was being displaced from the region.
In his efforts for re-election in 1972 – to be dismissed due to the irony of history two years later – President Richard Nixon had promoted in 1972 a rapprochement of the USA with China and the Soviet Union.
Jimmy Carter commented on those movements of Nixon, and in our interview express:
“It is necessary to maintain communication with communist countries, but we need to always indicate that the most important interest for us is with our neighbors.”
“I have more interest in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico than in Russia and China,” Governor Carter said. He then praised what he called the “sufficient interest” in Latin America that the ill-fated Democratic president had.
John F. Kennedy through the Alliance for Progress
Carter also spoke of “helping small countries” that, in his opinion, “need to buy and sell more” like the others, and proposed an exchange between Georgia and the Latin American region.
In his opinion, “help” should not be a gift and must manifest itself in exchanges of friendship, students, businessmen, cultural and social groups.
Exchanges are very important, because they reinforce our image around the world. They are a demonstration of peace and not war.
In the meeting with Latin American journalists, held in his own office, Carter assured that the next administration that took office in January 1973 in Washington had as one of its goals the reestablishment of attention to Latin America.
He ended by wishing “freedom and a better life for our people”, a purpose that four years after that meeting in Atlanta we wanted to come into effect if the former governor of Georgia was elected on November 2, 1976 as president of his country.
(The above text is the transcription with details of an article that I published under my signature in the evening newspaper La Noticia dated October 24, 1976, page 19. This report was also illustrated with a photograph of the group of journalists from 1972, along with the governor of Georgia, in addition to the letter in English with his signature that Carter sent me).
The following week elections were held in which Carter defeated President Gerald Ford, who had served as president since Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Ford was the leader of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives until October 1973. , when he replaced the resigning vice president Spiro Agnew. The administration Nixon went into decline after the Watergate scandal investigated by a Senate Committee in 1973.
In Plains in 1976
In November 1976, after Carter’s victory, the Press office of the transition team headed by Jody Powell gave me the go-ahead to spend a few days in Plains, Georgia, and there I was able to see Carter for the second time. President-elect, he already had the possibility of applying the ideas that he expressed to us in 1972.
With Balaguer in 1977
In 1977, in the White House Gardens, for the third time I would see him in person one afternoon in September when he received the president for a private conversation. Joaquin Balaguerwho was in Washington at the signing ceremonies of the Treaties for the return of the Canal to Panama in 1999.
Carter was the president who turned the foreign policy of the USA in the Latin America. Since 1977 the military dictatorships. His Presidency made possible the change of government towards democracy in our country in 1978.
The 1990 elections
In 1990 and 1996 Carter came as election observer to the country for the 1990 elections in which the opposition came very divided and facilitated the permanence of President Balaguer. That time I gave him, with a dedication, my book about the 1965 North American Intervention in the Dominican Republic. His presence prevented a tragedy in 1990. Some time later, President Leonel Fernández declared that Carter’s presence prevented violence in 1990.
Then in 1996 Carter and his organization witnessed in the country the electoral process that unified Juan Bosch and Joaquin Balaguer to support the victory of Dr. Leonel Fernández against José Francisco Peña Gómez.
