page_title: Arturo Frondizi
section_title: Foreign policy
hierarchical_section_title: Arturo Frondizi / Foreign policy
caption_attribution_description: Dean Rusk, Arturo Frondizi, John F. Kennedy &amp; Miguel A. Cárcano. Estados Unidos 1961.
context_page_description: Arturo Frondizi Ercoli was an Argentine politician and lawyer who was President of Argentina from May 1958 until March 1962, for the Intransigent Radical Civic Union.
  Under his program of "Developmentalism", he encouraged increased foreign investment in heavy industry, including motor vehicle production; made the country self-sufficient in oil production, and increased public spending for loans to encourage business, and to develop infrastructure for electrical power.
  He was a law professor who became active in left-wing politics as a young man, joining the Radical Civic Union. He was first elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1946. In the 1950s he founded the Intransigent Radical Civic Union. He was elected following the military coup d'etat that overthrew Juan Perón, and was deposed in turn by a coup in 1962.
context_section_description: Frondizi cultivated good relations with the United States without straining those with Brazil or the Non-Aligned Movement. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Argentina in March 1959, the first such visit since 1936, and the resulting Bariloche Declaration promoted the mutual protection of natural parks. Returning the courtesy in January 1961, he became the first Argentine president to visit the United States, as well as the first to visit India and Japan.
  He formalized Argentina's support for LAFTA, the first Latin American free trade association, and for the Alliance for Progress, the landmark Western Hemisphere policy of the new U.S. President, John F. Kennedy. Helping remove obstacles to cooperation, he resolved minor but long-standing border disputes with Brazil.
  Though commercial concerns continued to dominate foreign policy, Frondizi took part in negotiations between President Kennedy and Cuban representative Che Guevara. The secret meeting took place after an Inter-American Economic and Social Council summit in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August 1961.  Kennedy and Guevara met in the Quinta de Olivos presidential residence on 19 August. Guevara encouraged Frondizi to act as an intermediary between Cuba and the Kennedy administration, having already himself made conciliatory - but ultimately rejected - proposals in talks at Punta del Este with Kennedy's envoy Richard Goodwin. Frondizi's efforts were sabotaged by the Argentine Intelligence Agency, which learned of the meeting with Guevara.
  Ultimately, Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States in January 1962. The effort, though fruitless, showed audacity on the part of Frondizi, whom President Kennedy called "a really tough man". The sizable Cuban exile community in Argentina reacted vigorously to the news. They organized a furtive mis-information campaign, using forged documents which they believed could convince the Argentine military that a Cuban-sponsored Communist takeover was in the planning. However, handwriting experts working for Frondizi easily uncovered the hoax.
caption: John F. Kennedy visits Frondizi in United States (1961)
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