Onetime Bolivian Foreign Minister Eduardo Diez de Medina squirmed uncomfortably on his bench in the La Paz Chamber of Deputies one day last week. From the packed galleries above him angry Bolivian spectators hissed & booed, kept up a steady chant of "Down with the Jews! Death to the Jews!" Jingoistic Congressmen waggled their fingers under his nose, made long speeches about national honor. Then, with deliberate gait, gumshoeing Deputy Jordan Velasco strode forward, lifted his eyes to the balconies, bellowed out: "I am proud of being an accuser. And, without wishing to compare myself with Zola, I accuse." Defendant Diez was on trial for selling out to an illegal passport ring peddling to Jewish refugees.
In a bedlam of chest-pounding patriotism, Accuser Velasco and his colleagues began backtracking Diez's trail. It began, they said, in the Gran Hotel Paris, where police seized documents belonging to the ring's La Paz agents. There they found a check for $7,500 in Diez's favor, a slip of paper reading: "Dear Ed: Here goes the first payment; others follow."
The spoor led the investigators across the Atlantic, where, they said, more agents had received over 1,000 blank immigration permits for distribution in Warsaw, Hamburg, Genoa and Paris. These sold from $145 to $2,000. All told, one Deputy charged, the ring's total receipts had reached $50,000,000 for 15,000 Jews admitted to Bolivia.
In a burst of oratory Defendant Diez's counsel ripped at the evidence, swore it had been twisted, that exonerating portions had been skipped over. Other Diez sympathizers blamed the whole charge on Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism working through a controlled press. They pointed out that Diez himself had demanded the trial to put a stop to malicious gossiping.
Whether rigged or not, Diez's trial shed bright light on the sorry business of selling sanctuary in South America to European refugees. Reports from Lisbon tell of Latin-American passports selling for as high as $3,000, auctioned off by the unsalaried consuls of small nations. In Berlin, Warsaw, Kaunas or Stockholm the pattern is the same. Some consuls were reported busily selling citizenship over the counter, then adding the stipulation that the refugee never enter his adopted country. The Japanese liner Ginyo Maru, which docked in Panama three weeks ago, was filled with Jewish refugees who had paid from 2,000 to 6,000 marks ($2,400) for Latin-American visas, which proved worthless when presented.
By week's end Bolivia's Chamber of Deputies, having voted to continue the trial, had turned the evidence over to its Judiciary and Police Committee for further investigation.