Passion for the Poor

...Alba has little use for the military...

...Alliance Without A Hies has shortcomings and weaknesses...

...Those who would pedantically pick at this book (and they would find a rich harvest indeed) are bound to miss the point...

...I have often suspected that many who put forth this view may at least in part have fallen victim to a deliberate and cynical effort by the oligarchs to brainwash their North American cocktail party friends...

...This means above all the people on the land who make up the bulk of Latin America's population...

...What Alba advocates is a crusade for political organization of the masses to teach them to hold and use power...

...There are inaccuracies, such as the statement that Hitler was popularly voted into power, or that only a small minority of Latin Americans listen to the radio (what about the millions of transistor radios in slums and Indian huts...

...A Mance Without Allies has many weaknesses...

...Occasionally, Alba uses unscholarly sources for hard statistics, such as the newspaper Excelsior in Mexico City for expenditures of dollar reserves by Latin America in 1948...

...It reminds one of Goethe's Faust: "Grey, dear friend is all theory, but green the golden tree of life...

...What Alba advocates is a vast Peace Corps-type operation of high political content, initiated and run by idealistic Latin Americans...

...Logically, then, radical land reform must have top priority in any development program with a chance for success...

...It is badly organized, poorly edited and therefore repetitive...

...Not because President Kennedy failed to make the right diagnosis, nor primarily because of anything the U.S...

...It would be a poor program at the outset, attracting pesos, sucres and soles from the people in the mud huts and slums to pay its organizing expenses...

...But he is not too worried about financing, since "we have already seen that the millions and hundreds of millions of dollars never reach the people anyway...

...According to Alba, the original Kennedy program is dead...

...But Victor Alba, a Spaniard-turnedLatin American who has made a career of talking plainly to his fellow Americans north and south, is not interested in the technical soundness of detail...

...firms should follow their good instincts in practicing modern, 20th century capitalism instead of letting Latin American businessmen talk them into the emulation of oligarchic ways...

...The oligarchs use the Communists to fan a phony nationalism and antiYankeeism whenever the Americans threaten to get serious about social reform...

...Eventually, he hopes, United States organizations and individuals dedicated to this "movement of puritans toward purification" would contribute to its coffers...

...There are highly questionable judgments, such as the claim that the APRA in Peru, allied with the reactionary Odr?­a group, is a "clearsighted democratic revolutionary party...

...For this is a passionate manifesto, designed to rouse passion and create a new Alliance for Progress...

...The oligarchs have controlled the Latin American countries throughout their national existence, and Alba holds them responsible for the "colonialism," the backwardness of the masses, and the social injustices that distort and torture life throughout the region...

...Alba is an expert on the condition and desires of the voiceless millions of Latin Americans who must shape their own fortunes...

...He urges, therefore, that we start all over againbut this time not with official agencies, experts riding in Cadillacs, round tables, technicians producing fat reports for committees who submit them to subcommittees, etc...

...Today Alba sees an unholy and cynical alliance between the oligarchs, the middle class and the military for one purpose that serves them all: to keep the 65, 70, or 80 per cent of the population (the percentage varies from country to country, but in virtually all cases it is the majority) "submerged...

...Conceived to revolutionize Latin American societies through peaceful means, it has become "a bureaucratic structure, mountains of mimeographed paper, a sarcastic smile on the lips of the oligarchs, and pangs of guilt on the part of the politicians of the left who did not take advantage of the Alliance and make it theirs...

...In his view they serve not a single useful purpose and therefore should be done away with...

...Why has the old Alliance failed...

...In recent years, the word oligarchy has gradually dropped out of learned discussion on Latin America...

...While Alba addresses most of his advice to Latin Americans, he does draw a few "conclusions for North Americans": There will be a revolution, so get on its side the status quo is against your interests end government-to-government aid and give assistance only to organizations that channel it directly to the people U.S...

...His forte is passion...

...These people believe that it is simplistic to attribute all evils to the oligarchy...

...And we need him to supply it on a fulltime basis, for there are too few passionate men on the people's side...

...The Communists, of course, are eager to oblige, since non-violent reform and genuine progress are anathema to them for their own reasons...

...Indeed, many of its analytical sections-particularly the lengthy economic and social discussions in the first half-are almost an intrusion...

...Finally, there are overstatements, such as "the axiom that the more reactionary a country's policy, the more leftist-oriented is its foreign policy...

...What is more, Alba is convinced that they have not learned a thing, that they are determined to continue acquiring millions at the expense of the masses to add to their American and Swiss bank accounts...

...He recalls that "the transfer of power from the oligarchy to other social groups has always been achieved through violence,' including in the United States...

...Alba does not consider this a great tragedy...

...To help accomplish this all U.S...

...Democratic methods," he argues, "can exist only where democracy exists, ergo, not in Latin America...

...Reviewed by ROBERT B. GOLDMANN Economic Editor, "Vision" After the thousands of dry official and "pragmatic" reports, speeches, texts, brochures and books about the Alliance for Progress that have poured out of government and university presses, this book is a relief...

...It is more important to Alba that the movement be pure, because -and this is an example of the refreshing bluntness of this book"the political air of Latin America is so dirty, so full of every sort of filth, that the first task is to learn to breathe clean air...

...In Latin America it may yet be possible "without great violence," but the methods will be "undemocratic...

...The translation generally is good, but every now and then an overlong sentence or a gauche phrase slows up the reading...

...has done or failed to do...

...Alba goes on to contend that "the peaceful revolution" is "unattainable at this point...

...And the middle class, which in the postwar era became the fountainhead of nationalist, statist and anti-Yankee parties and movements, has directly spawned most of Latin America's Communist leaders...

...The submerged masses, he says, are the only allies which the Alliance has not sought out or tried...

...The Alliance has failed first and foremost because the governments of Latin America, in Alba's view, represent the oligarchy, and the oligarchy was determined from the start to make it fail...

...They maintain that in many countries the oligarchy is no longer the force it used to be and that it is losing strength steadily...

...Together, these three groups hope to form a "part of the new oligarchy...

...military missions-which he suspects of undermining the little good there is in Washington's policy and of directly supporting the oligarchs -should be sent home "immediately...

...The word "oligarchy" is ubiquitous in these pages...

...In Alba's analysis, all these groups have ties to the Communists...

...Along with the "technocrats and young military men," it aims at "efficiency and development by methods it considers the most expeditious-capitalization through overexploitation and even further reduction in consumption by the masses...

...At any rate, to Alba the oligarchy is neither Out nor receding, nor changing its ways...

...Its generalizations are too sweeping, its analysis too one-sided, and its prescriptions for action too romantic to be taken at face value...

...This time, he says, we should start with the only resource that can make a success of Latin American development-the people...

...This is where Alba would attack the problem...

...The middle class is not much help either, Alba says...

...The Alliance was a threat to the oligarchs, but they soon found a way to turn it into a blessing by having its ample funds channelled to the governments they control...

...But this book is a tract, not a treatise...

...Paraguay and Honduras sent troops to the Dominican Republic as contributions to the Inter-American "Peace" Force...

...It is considered an Out word by the In group of economists, planners, State Department experts, inter-American bureaucrats and, of course, "knowledgeable" businessmen who have guided the fortunes and misfortunes of the Alliance for Progress...

...assistance to them should be cut off and U.S...

...They also offer the unimaginative and unsympathic too ample an opportunity to take issue with matter on which the author is far less than expert...