It is a sad fact that living for any length of time in a Latin American country has a tendency to do this to many Americans. To avoid it takes tremendous adaptability, idealism, and faith in the common future.

Take the example of a young man named John, a representative in a Latin American country for an international relief organization. His work consists mainly in distributing surplus food to the poor. He works hard, often going out on field trips, for three or four days of rough driving, bad food, primitive living, and dysentery.

But the people he has to work with bother him. He can't understand why the principal of a back-country school would steal food earmarked for the pupils and sell it to speculators. He can't understand why his warehouse -- lying in the middle of a district where food is distributed regularly -- is constantly being looted by the very people who were standing in line the week before to get their regular share.

He broods on these things and wonders if he is really accomplishing anything, or just being taken for a sucker. Then, one day when he is in a particularly bad mood over some new evidence of callousness or corruption, he hears below his window the shouting of a mob. A man is standing on the steps of a fountain, shouting hoarsely about “the rights of the people” and what should be done to secure them. And the crowd happily roars an answer -- “down with the capitalist swine!”

Our man, standing at his window, suddenly loses his temper and shakes his fist. Abajo del pueblos! he yells. Meaning, “Down with the people.” Then he quickly ducks back inside.

But the Latin family next door, standing at their window, hears the gringo abusing the crowd. Word gets around, and several days later our man is insulted as he walks to the corner cantina for a pack of cigarillos. He speaks good Spanish, and curses back, not understanding why his neighbors are no longer friendly. But it makes him even more bitter, and once the tide starts running in that direction, it is hard to reverse.

One day a new American appears in town, a trainee for one of the United States banks that have branches in South America. Our man John meets him at the Anglo-American Club and, in the course of conversation, tells him what to expect from the nationals -- “a bunch of rotten ingrates, stupid and corrupt to the last man.”

The newcomer hears other gringos say the same kind of thing. At night, in his new and unfamiliar apartment, he begins to think the neighbors are making noise on purpose, to wear on his nerves. Soon he is as bitter as most of the others.

When the inevitable bank strike comes along -- as it does at regular intervals in most Latin American countries -- our newcomer takes the advice of an older gringo employee and shows up at work with a pistol, which he puts on his desk like a paperweight to show the employees he means business.