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Self-Portrait. Our editors recognized Latin America's proper place in world news well before Air Express began. Because of their awareness, TIME was the second U.S. publication (after the New York Times) to operate permanent news bureaus in South America. Over the years, this network of correspondents has expanded. It has supplied important stories for most sections of the magazine and is responsible, of course, for our regular Hemisphere section. Latin American stories have ranged all the way from the Business section's reports on spreading air routes to the Music section's reviews of compositions by Heitor Villa-Lobos.
One of the best stories was the Art section's cover on Diego Rivera, the only man ever to paint his own cover portrait on commission from TIME. Some of the other cover stories along the way: Puerto Rico's Governor Muñoz Marín, Nicaragua's Boss Somoza, Mexico's President Alemán, Brazil's President Vargas.
Citizen Journalists. Today an alltime high of 31 correspondents keep TIME editors posted on news events between the Rio Grande and Cape Horn. Five are staff correspondents based in our four Latin American news bureaus. They are assisted by five "legmen," each a citizen of the country where his bureau is located. The other 21 are string correspondents. These journalists, many of whom are pictured on the map below, cable some 19,000 words of news research to us each week. Eleanor Welch, Assistant Chief of Foreign Correspondents and a veteran reporter herself, keeps in constant touch with them by letters and cables and drops by to see them on an annual working visit. Miss Welch also coordinates their assignments with the work done by Bill White, former Rio Bureau Chief who now covers the Washington end of TIME'S Latin American Stories.
Both correspondents and editors are constantly aware of the many different social and economic patterns found throughout the vast and changing areas south of the U.S. Each week they try to give TIME-readers news stories which tell the ways in which people with different cultural heritages think, act and live. Much help in this effort comes from the stringers, who are usually citizens and top journalists of the countries they cover for TIME. Among them are Bolivian Columnist Walter Montenegro, Chilean Radio Commentator Mario Planet and Peruvian Correspondent Thomas A. Loayza, a veteran of such varied assignments as the Spanish Civil War and the eighth Pan-American Conference of 1938.
Big & Booming. The five staff correspondents in Latin America are mostly veterans of the world's other news centers. Buenos Aires Bureau Chief Frank Shea has at one time or another worked out of Rome, Paris, Bucharest and Athens, later was TIME'S State Department correspondent in Washington. Mexico City Chief Martin O'Neil once was head of our San Francisco bureau, later covered assignments for us in Germany.