OUR AILING ALLIANCE

...Delays have developed in establishing clear-cut criteria for granting aid, while the continuation of emergency assistance on the basis of vague pledges to reform tends to prolong an intolerable status quo which the Alliance was designed to correct...

...Moscoso was not being unduly modest...

...American military assistance to Latin America was never intended to serve internal political purposes, but this is precisely the way it is being used today—largely to deny the will of the people, abrogate free elections, dilute reform, and destroy democratic institutions...

...It simply does not make sense to go on underwriting that ancient curse of Latin America, the power of the military, at the expense of democratic government and urgent civilian needs...

...As yet I am not satisfied that we have either...

...Alarmed by Mr...

...U.S...

...For example: f Most of the Latin American nations have moved languidly, when they have moved at all, to embark on the internal reforms without which the whole noble concept of the Alliance must collapse...

...The heart of the program—a partnership of United States' capital investment and technical skills with Latin American commitment to social, economic, and political reform in an effort to achieve continent-wide prosperity and democracy—that heart still beats erratically and sometimes seems muffled altogether...

...The military cried fraud, but an elections bureau investigation demonstrated that the elections were honestly conducted...

...No provision of the Alliance, in our judgment, is more important than the requirement of self-help and internal reform as a condition of U.S...

...Abolition of U.S...

...It simply does not make sense to spend a billion American dollars a year to overthrow the status quo in Latin America while we and they together put up more than a billion dollars a year to subsidize that status quo...

...In day-to-day operation, the Alliance has revealed some built-in contradictions, notably, for example, the disparity between the words that emphasize revolutionary change, and the deeds that reveal reluctance to encourage revolutionary transfers of political power from the privileged few to the people...

...Fearful that Apra, which, incidentally, was the only avowedly anti-Communist party in the election campaign, might come to power, the military proceeded to smash the democratic government of Peru and establish its own dictatorship...

...Kennedy's decisive action, the ruling military junta soon promised free elections and set a date, restored civil rights, permitted freedom of the press, released former President Prado, restored party headquarters to Apra and the Christian Democrats, and proclaimed its respect for all international commitments— steps which led the Kennedy Administration to resume diplomatic relations...

...The Alliance has thus far failed to capture the imagination of the masses of Latin Americans who still feel no personal involvement in a program designed primarily to give them a greater measure of hope and opportunity...

...Moreover, given the immensity of the problem, the enormousness of the opposition from both the feudal Right and the Communist Left, and the fact that the program was ten years late in coming, one year of operation hardly provides a fair basis of evaluation...

...The results were not long in coming...

...The President's skillful handling of the Peruvian crisis made the best of a nasty mess, but it could not obliterate the harsh fact, proclaimed to all the world, that it was American-trained officers and American-made military hardware that had destroyed democratic government in Peru...

...Recent developments in Peru provide fresh and dramatic evidence of the foolishness of our contradictory policies...

...coordinator, of the program, "when we have achieved a working alliance and extensive progress...

...There have been some modest gains, to be sure, and more are in sight...

...There can be no basic reform in Latin America unless there is basic reform in the power structure, and there can be no basic reform in the power structure so long as the United States continues to encourage and finance some of the very forces opposed to basic reform, especially the military cliques which are largely anti-democratic and opposed to social reform...

...It would put a stop to the stupid and self-defeating policy of encouraging and financing those who reject the great social and political goals of the Alliance program...

...In the year since the Alliance for Progress was formally launched at Punta del Este in a sea of joyful eloquence, progress has been slow, fitful, and disappointing...

...Our Ailing Alliance It is a measure of the developing maturity of the officials who administer the Alliance for Progress program that they chose to "mark" rather than "celebrate" the first anniversary of the Alliance this past month...

...In Ecuador, for example, a country of aching poverty, we are spending $28,000,000 for military assistance it cannot possibly use effectively...

...The reasons are not hard to find...

...In an unprecedented reversal of past policy, he suspended diplomatic recognition and ordered a halt on U.S...

...administration of the program has been understaffed and has included too few leaders equipped to give it creative drive and daring execution...

...It is noteworthy that it was a U.S.-supplied Sherman tank, commanded by a U.S.-trained colonel, that rammed the iron gates of Pizzaro Palace when President Prado was deposed and taken prisoner...

...President Kennedy acted boldly to cope with the crisis in Peru...

...There will be time enough to celebrate," said Teodoro Moscoso, U.S...

...But having noted all this, we return to our theme that the Alliance for Progress has little to celebrate on its first anniversary...

...Elections in that country gave the largest vote to the Apra Party, which is somewhat left of center and strongly pro-democratic...

...During the past decade, the United States has poured more than half a billion dollars into the military establishments of Latin American governments...

...It was this that led Senator Gruening to call for abolition of U. S. military assistance to our southern neighbors...

...The democratic institutions of government are in many cases so fragile and the resistance to reform by the feudal oligarchies so bitter that progress, with but a few hopeful exceptions, has been negligible up to now...

...Major General Nicolas Lopez Lindlez, commander of the army, had been decorated with our Legion of Merit by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara for "consistent support of democratic principles" only eight months before...

...Both steps need to be taken at once...

...Mr...

...military assistance would go far toward releasing the Alliance for Progress from one of the inner contradictions that imprison it today...

...The program of the Alliance does not, and perhaps by its very nature cannot, come to grips with one of the most critical problems of Latin America—how to cope with falling commodity prices for the goods the continent produces for export and the rising prices for the products it must import...

...Our military aid, said Senator Ernest Gruening, Alaska Democrat, in a brilliant speech in the Senate, has "fanned the arms race among Latin American countries which lack the resources for minimum public needs...

...Moreover, while abolition of military assistance would not by any means begin to solve all the problems of those who administer the Alliance, it might do much to create in the minds and hearts of the people of Latin America a new confidence in the purpose and plan of the Alliance and perhaps provide that emotional commitment to, and identification with, the program that are so fatally lacking today...

...assistance...

...This aid was originally designed to build a "hemisphere defense against outside aggression," but it continues at full blast today although even the most casual reader of headlines knows that the armies and navies and airforces of Latin America, and the obsolete equipment we press on them, are worse than worthless in this age of nuclear striking power...

...Our southern neighbors, spurred on by the Pentagon, spend a billion dollars a year on useless military purchases and maintenance— just about, ironically, the amount the United States is committed to spend each year for the internal improvement of these countries...

...assistance, thus serving notice on the rest of Latin America that military domination is inconsistent with the democratic philosophy of the Alliance for Progress...

...Three of the four officers who commanded the coup had received their training in the United States...

...After all, the Alliance for Progress was not intended to be an emergency relief operation, but rather a program of basic reform in "a decade of development...

...Thus, with one hand we hold out assistance conditioned on internal reform, and with the other we hold out assistance to the very forces bent on preventing that reform...

...This last debit in the ledger, although perhaps the most difficult to come to grips with, goes to the heart of our problem...