Alliance for Progress?
Plastrik, Stanley
A ten-year plan that will be a vast cooperative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work and land, health...
...it is, in fact, this notion that flawed the Alliance for Progress from the start...
...This task is nothing less than an effort to compress into a "decade of development" the continuous revolutionizing process that has taken almost two centuries in the United States...
...the Social Progress Trust Fund administered by the Inter-American Development Bank...
...These problems, according to the rhetoricians of the Administration, were — not necessarily in that order of priority: 1. Castroism 2. Military coups—new style (Argentina, etc...
...have committed an even greater blunthe other, more limited and practical, der—inflating and launching a balloon with realistic aims which anyone could that failed to rise from the ground...
...investment in Peru is $800 million...
...An Administra-instructions went out from top admin istrator Moscoso not to celebrate but to—meditate...
...In the case of Peru, the tie-up between the new Peruvian military junta that nullified the elections and American private business interests that opposed the initial response of the Kennedy Administration caused one of the most embarrassing retreats of recent American diplomatic history...
...Now— is understandable that on the first anOctober 1962—there seems to be no niversary of the Allance for Progress Alliance for Progress...
...It is true in the Congo...
...In August 1961 the Organization of American States (OAS) meeting at Punte del Este in Uruguay formally adopted the program...
...Rather, the trend is to downgrade and minimize the importance of what—yesterday—was hawked as the most daring and imaginative program ever presented by United States diplomacy...
...On the surface, the status of the Alliance for Progress program does not look quite as bad as we suggest...
...For example, instead of the comparatively piddling $10 billion American aid proposed, wiser calculations are that $100 billion is a more realistic sum required to make a substantial dent in Latin American poverty alone...
...it is true throughout Latin America...
...It exists among all but the most democratic-minded of the program's administrators, it dominates the present Congress, it is unhealthily widespread among the American people...
...In this issue, you will find proposals which originate in relations of equality and the total selfdetermination of independent nations, i.e., rejection of any Monroe Doctrine approach, no matter how modified...
...What is required is a transformation of Latin-American society, governmental administration and economy.—New York Times editorial...
...The rhetoric of early optimism had it that, once an early momentum was underway, the major problems of Latin America would fairly rapidly dissolve before the avalanche of dollars and progress...
...The billion dollars, divided into 87 per cent loans and 13 per cent grants, took the form largely of economic infra-structure investments in housing, road-building and other basic necessities of backward economies...
...For a brief period, it appeared that an end of Latin America's misfortune— the military junta regime—was in sight and that democratic forces were on the move...
...at any rate, it is now superseded by more striking difficulties...
...every American republic the master of its own revolution and its own hope and progress...
...The United States is literally proposing a revolution to be brought about voluntarily and democratically by vast social and economic reforms...
...On March 13, 1961 President Kennedy made his initial proposal to launch a 10-year plan "for homes, work and land, health and schools" to the assembled diplomats of Latin America, urging the Latin American nations to prepare to "modify their social pattern...
...the Export-Import Bank...
...The American failure to do this has meant, in practice, that the Alliance program is basically an extension of the historic trend the "Monroe Doctrine" represents— a relation between superior and inferior...
...A ten-year plan that will be a vast cooperative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work and land, health and schools...
...Early in 1962, important policy makers in the Administration felt that confusion had arisen over the Alliance which needed straightening out or the program would fail before it got off the ground...
...The notion that the United States has by some "divine right" special privileges, responsibilities and powers over Latin America dies a hard death...
...Did it suffer from some basic flaw in conception, or did it simply fall victim to combined Latin American and United States bureaucratism and blundering...
...what cannot be dismissed is the continuation of a state of mind frozen into the "Doctrine...
...It decently, if critically, support...
...The question remains: What did happen to the Alliance in such a short span of time...
...Then, the rise of the fidelista school of Communism, plus the incapacity of the United States during the Eisenhower days in encouraging democratic movements, gave the military and oligarchic forces a respite in which to develop new techniques of holding power...
...If this continues, who will remember the Alliance for Progress a year from now...
...We need add only that Haya de la Torre and his reform Aprista party were popularly known as the "Alliance for Progress" supporters of Peru...
...In their minds the question was, which comes first: United States aid or Latin-American reforms...
...to bring about crucially needed agrarian reforms, not just equalizing the ownership of arable land but teaching the people to make this land productive...
...Ironically, at the very moment when the Cuban revolution has entered such a stage of disintegration that the Russians must act even at the risk of extreme provocation, at a moment when the stock of fidelisrno is far lower throughout Latin America than it has been for years, the United States resorts to outmoded tactics and measures: The posture of toughness and menace toward Cuba, of capitulation and cringing before the militarists and oligarchies, of reinvocation of the "Doctrine," of pressure upon its associates of the OAS...
...The United States under both Ike and JFK proved unable to block this retrogression to an even more sinister and dangerous suppression of democratic life...
...Whether this was ever a true representation of the Alliance dilem ma is doubtful...
...Or consider the scandalous story of powdered milk—part of the Alliance's "program for underfed children"—reported in detail in the May issue of Atlas magazine which, in turn, cites the detailed account of the daily "Estado de Sao Paulo" of Brazil...
...We ought to have wiped the slate clean and proposed a fresh start...
...to provide housing for millions who live under conditions few North Americans can conceive of, and to build up the one-sided or rudimentary national economies and turn them in dynamic, regionally integrated directions.— TEODORO Moscoso, Administrator of the Alliance for Progress, Sunday Times, August 12, 1962...
...There is no longer any pretense that the Alliance is our answer to the Cuban revolution...
...The New Republic (August 13, 1962) writes: Will the military, which so hates the reformist party of Haya de la Torre, really permit free electioneering and a free ballot within a year...
...the official diplomacy of U. S. government and the private diplomacy of business...
...Argentina and Peru illustrate this unexpected development in 1962...
...Such tales can be duplicated in many countries...
...3. Inflation 4. Backward economic systems The reader of this special issue of DISSENT will discover the difficulties presented by the above problems...
...transform the 1960s into an hisoric decade of democratic prog ress...
...The resurgence of the "Cuban crisis," thanks to a calculated Russian provocation, has revived talk about the "Monroe Doctrine...
...The investments were channeled through an elaborate setup which, presumably, would only grow in efficiency and effectiveness: the Agency for International Development (AID...
...Yet the President, we note, admitting the slow progress of the Alliance program complained about the general "lack of funds and resources" available to him for the foreign-aid program...
...For their part, the countries of Latin America agree to devote a rapidly increasing share of their own resources to economic and social development, and to make the reforms necessary to assure that all share fully in the fruits of the Alliance for Progress.— "Declaration of the Peoples of America," adopted mid-August 1961, at Punta del Este, Uruguay, by the OAS...
...According to the most optimistic estimates, by February 1962 the United States had already invested over $1 billion in long-term loans (50 years), in outright grants and in other forms of aid...
...We ought to have launched the Alliance with a clear and categorical renunciation, once and for all, of any belief in or recourse to this notorious "Doctrine...
...In brief, a story of how tons of powdered milk benefited everyone but the children for whom it was destined, of how it went on sale at sky-high prices and was made available only to supporters of the distributing authorities who were about to undertake a campaign for political reelection, etc...
...And in this endeavor, the military will have the backing, as it has today, of influential private American investors in Peru...
...Contrast this with certain specific political developments in Latin America since the start of the Alliance program...
...We—Latin and North Americans—have undertaken to change the southern continent's social and political institutions...
...Here again, one sees two diplomacies at work...
...mobilize their resources, enlist the energies of their people, and modify their social patterns so that all, and not just a privileged few, share in the fruits of growth.— PRESIDENT KENNEDY, March 13, 1961...
...An American ambassador renounced, a healthy response of indignation shamefully withdrawn (the United States will now recognize the Peruvian dictatorship and grant 60 to 70 per cent of the loans already committed), and a tip-off given to the oligarchies of the southern republics that they need fear nothing...
...Is there any hope that it will move, if not in the direction of the rhetorically revolutionary objectives, then at least in the limited direction of doing some good...
...It poisons the program at its source...
...At first, there seemed tion already noted for the gap beto be two Alliances for Progress: One, tween its words and deeds seems to resounding and rhetorical (see above...
...the Food for Peace program and other agencies including the Peace Corps...
...The other issues of political and economic structure, land reform, Communism and Castroism, are subjects developed at length in the pages that follow...
...The junta presumably hopes that it can find ways of preventing APRA from winning a majority of the popular vote and of Congress for a second time...
...under the best of possible circumstances one might have expected only a beginning of their solution...
...The Alliance for Progress is a stupendous undertaking...
...We leave aside whether or not the Alliance program accurately reflects Latin America's major economic needs (it can well be argued that the best terms of trade for Latin America lie rather in the development of its trade relations with Europe...
...It was to prevent Torre's party, APRA, from governing that the military took power...
Vol. 9 • September 1962 • No. 4
