FOUR YEARS OF THE ALLIANCE: THE RECORD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73-00475R000401020012-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 20
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 24, 2014
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: September 1, 1966
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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AVAVIAWL, 17WW
Four Years of the Alliance
The Record
? By the end of the fourth year of the Alliance for Progress, the
phrasemakers were wholly discredited. President Kennedy's Am-
bassador to the Organization of American States, DeLesseps S.
Morrison, had early perceived that "brilliant as they were in
theory, they (the phrasemakers of the Alliance) were impractical
. in the grass roots area of international politics and when they
were brought into the White House and began at once handling
major Latin American matters?though they knew little about
Latin America?the one drawback added to the other could only ;
make trouble." 1 The glibness of this group which as newsmen
put it "had solutions even for problems that did not exist" could
? prevail in the era when across the board "we did not realize how
little was being accomplished", as a fine British estimate of the
Kennedy period concluded.2 But after four years the lack of
knowledge and the absence of capacity to deal with major prob-
lems in inter-American affairs was too obvious to be denied, and
the Deputy U.S. Coordinator for the Alliance somewhat sheepishly.
* This is the fourth in a series of reviews of the Alliance performance
published in this quarterly. Volume 16 No. 1?"The Alliance for Pro-
gress: The First Year." Volume 17 No. 3?"The Alliance for Progress:
The Second Year." Volume 18 No. 4?"The Alliance for Progress: The
Third Year."
1 DeLesseps S. Morrison, Latin American Atirsion (New York, 1965),
p. 199. Italics added. This book should be in every university library.
It is immensely important to an understanding of our Latin American -
policy, and no other book can serve in its place..
'See Chicago Sun Times, May 6, 1965 in which an article from my
? Observer (London) was reprinted. ? ? ?
Continuien
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conceded that "our exuberance had exceeded our knowledge and
sophistication."
The cost of the experience in actual disbursements had been
$3.2 billion but politics still dictated a refusal to learn. 'When
Senator Robert Kennedy protested that "some of the idealism,
the heart of the Alliance, is not there to the same extent it has
been in the. past," and when a Kennedy speech-writer, perhaps
the chief phrasemaker in the now-discredited dique, mobilized
a new flood of rhetoric to the cause of social justice and political
? democracy, Lincoln Gordon, fresh from an educational experience
as Ambassador in Rio and. himself an early member of the
clique, wearily told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that
? "I am an economist, which Mr. Goodwin is not. . . . It is easy
to get excited about the rhetoric of social justice and political
democracy (but) I don't want them pursued in merely rhetorical
terms. . . . You can't have real social justice without something
to distribute."
And when another of the phrasemakers superciliously told re-
? porters at a news conference that since he trusted in an eventual
? trickledown of benefits to the masses, they need not be con-
cerned with the apparent fact, that the half-billion dollars of
burden on consumers imposed by U.S. participation in the coffee
cartel had not been reflected in improved real wages and instead
had been siphoned off to safe havens abroad and to a widening
of the gap between rich and. poor, the newly-educated Gordon
. -
The National Observer, July 26, 1965.
4 Hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Nomi-
nation of Lincoln Gordon to be Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-
American Affairs, February 7, 1966, p. 15. ?- 'New York Times, February 26, 1966. At the Rostovi briefing of
the press, May 14,1965, Rostow indicated that we were no longer con-
cerned with the need for improvement of the condition of workers on
? plantations, etc. The new approach was to hope that eventually some
of the loot from operation of the coffee cartel might triclde down to the
masses by way of modernization and mechanization and a migration to
the cities. The earlier thesis of course was that improvement in the
standard of living for the downtrodden could not.wait and that violent
revolutiow might occur unless something immediate was .forthcoming.
Now, the trickle down theory apparently prevailed at the Inter-American
'Committee on the Alliance for Progress.
o
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provided Mr. Rostow an answer that "we must not deceive our-
selves by the hope that somehow or other general economic
growth will trickle down into adequate social investment and
agricultural modernization." 5
After four, years of exciting if untrue testimony before con-
gressional committees about the progress in agrarian reform,
testimony which was considered necessary if the bureaucracy were
to survive and expand, the Agency for International Development
(AID) finally conceded that "no great progress has been made
except in isolated cases in the technical improvements in agri-
culture, in increasing agricultural productivity or in carrying out
programs of agrarian reform." 6 And the Inter-American De-
velopment Bank conceded that "there has been very little actual
land redistribution during the last four years."
After four years of phony claims concerning the effectiveness ,
of the approach to the housing needs of the masses, the Agency
for International Development conceded that it had discovered
that the housing effort of the Alliance had reached too high
, an income level and that it should not have been aimed so
- largely at housing for the relatively well to do?, . ?
After four years of the most unfounded optimism regarding
the revival of foreign private investment, culminating in the
clumsy construction by the Secretary of Defense of - two false
claims "supporting" each other ("there is a growing- confidence
in the stability of political institutions and viability of the -econ-
omies tangibly reflected (sic) in a rising inflow of foreign in-
vestments")", the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that
in fact the flow of private capital had never recovered from the
impact of the ignorant Alliance imagery, that the target figure
set by President Kennedy as absolutely essential to success of the
Alliance was as remote as ever, and that the total direct invest-
ment flow for the four years had been less than the target figure
?Hearings before House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign As-
sistance and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1966, p. 855.
'Hearings before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Foreign L
, Assistance Act of 1965, H.H. 7750, pp. 32-33. - : - -; F
Hearings before the House Appropriations Committee on Depari
, ment Of Defense Appropriations, 1966, Part III, Marcb-2, 1965, pp.
I 20-21. - ? - :f !"., ? s:/
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for each year which President Kennedy had asserted must be
reached unless "all our hopes of a decade of development in
Latin. America are to be lost."
After four years, in a period when the terms of trade were
improving and the multiplier effects of the $3.2 billion of US.
treasure might have been expected to show results, it was re-
vealed that in the fourth year of the Alliance real wages had
actually declined for the greater part of the labor force of Latin
America! Yet, as Professor Viner had suggested many years
earlier, the reduction of mass poverty had to be a (or the?)
crucial test of the realization of economic development. As the
New York Times noted: "In the whole of Latin America the
rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer", and
these social imbalances which had been the original target of the
Alliance must inevitably prove disturbing in the extreme.
After four years of seeking to create a showcase for the Al-
liance for Progress, which would serve as. a stimulus to the rest of
the area, and after four years of successive moves among the
countries as the failures became too obvious? Colombia had been
selected and an immense volume of money and effort concen-
trated on it, only to find in the fourth year of the Alliance that
the showcase had shattered into a fearful economic collapse
which simply could not be concealed despite heroic efforts
by the American Embassy to do so. It was peculiarly appropriate
that after disproportionate commitments of $370 million in Al-
liance for Progress assistance for this showcase, plus $80 million
per year in a windfall by U.S. participation in the cartel created
to raise prices of coffee to the United States consumer, the Presi-
dent of Colombia was protesting that since some $900 million
of Colombian funds had been drained away to safe havens abroad,
the United States should be furnishing more money to replace
the funds taken out by citizens of Colombia (the very antithesis
of the concept of.the Alliance). And it was symbolic that Ciudad
Kennedy, the low-cost housing project hailed by President
Kennedy himself as the model and great achievement to be fol-
'Direct investments in the fourth year of the Alliance still ran below
those of the last year before the Alliance had entered upon operation. ,.
The four-year total was some $900 million below the nunimum set by
Kennedy as absolutely essential to hope for success of the Alliance.
em b incr. Cont nued
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lowed elsewhere under the Alliance, should now be recognized as
"the biggest and ugliest-looking government-sponsored slum in
the hemisphere," to the point where the political opposition
could make political capital out of alleged lack of suitable
planning, the unsightly appearance, the lack of recreation facili-
ties, the filth, etc. Fortunately, U.S. observers noted, no sign
had been mounted to focus attention on the fact that this was
the creation of the joint Alliance-Colombian effort!
After four years of emphasizing in its appeals for funds to '
sustain the bureaucracy?national and international?the progress
in comprehensive planning and the piously affirmed daim of
focussing disbursements precisely where the comprehensive plan-
ning is most effective, an advisor to the World tank reduced
the State Department's testimony to ashes: "The experience of
the Alliance for Progress has been that the practical choice is
often reduced to partial planning or no planning at all. ,-Every
Latin American country was originally expected to prepare a
ten-year comprehensive plan in order to qualify for aid under
the Program. But it soon became evident that most Latin Ameri-
can countries were unable or unwilling to prepare such plans,
and that the few which were willing to formulate plans would
need much time before their plans were prepared. The Bolivian
comprehensive plan has never been viable and almost. nothing
has been done to implement the Colombian ten-year comprehen-
sive plan. Instead, a four-year investment plan has become the
basis for coordinating public capital disbursements. Only Chile,
Ecuador and Venezuela still have comprehensive plans but they
have had little influence on private investment." "
After four years of costly propaganda requiring the financing
of a great new bureaucracy for the purpose, Costa Rica's brilliant
ambassador to the Organization of American States could report
that "In Latin America the bulk of the public still continues to
look on the Alliance as a U.S. aid program instead of as a grand
inter-American revolutionary undertaking in which the major '
effort must be made by each of the Latin American countries '
10 Albert Waterston, Development Planning, Lessons of Experience
_
(Baltimore, 1965), p. 100. ? ? z
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themselves." " Again he noted that "almost all the criticism
of the Alliance that is made in our countries is based on the er-
roneous conception that this is simply a special loan program
of the United States rather than a joint revolutionary under-
taking." The inability to score a success even in the public-
relations aspect of the Alliance was especially noteworthy be-
cause with the ignorance which had marked the U.S. economic
policy determinations, this was alone the field where a measure
of success might have been expected. As Senator Case, a liberal
member of the Congress, has noted when asked whether he ?
thought the Johnson Administration had lost ground in its ap-
peal to the great mass of the Latin American people from what the _
Kennedy Administration had achieved in that respect: "I don't
thing the Kennedy Administration achieved very much I think ?
its heart was in the right place but I don't think we got very
far frankly. It was more a public relations matter." " Yet,;
even the public-relations effort failed.
After four years, the President of the United States was pledg-
ing himself "to encourage our Latin American neighbors, where
possible, to limit their outlays for military purposes." But when
Congressman Zablocici at House Foreign Affairs Committee hear-
ings on February 25, 1965 asked the Pentagon whether "there is
any inconsistency in continuing a high level of military assist-
ance to a country that will not undertake sufficient self-heli
measures to qualify for economic development aid," General
O'Meara replied that there is no inconsistency. And Secretary of
Defense McNamara explained the philosophy: "By this, mili-
tary assistance we are able to substitute our expenditures for
theirs for military purposes." Unfortunately, however, the sub-
stitution never worked out to a diversion of funds from military
waste to urgent social and economic requirements. This was
. ? r
11 The Evening Star (Washington), February 10, 1965. The Ani-
bassador (Gonzalo 5. Facio) insisted that "the Alliance cannot be directed
as a cold and indifferent program of .economic development. It must
be understood as an expression of representative democratic thinking;
. . . We have not yet succeeded in having the programs supported by
all the energies of our peoples and governments because the Alliance is not
equipped with a true political mystique." (Statement to the press, Sept
8, 1965).
12 Transcript for TV appearance, September 19, 1965. ,n.1,.? ?.:':)
Contimia
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z
nicely demonstrated when the Brazilians, the larger part of their
imports from the United States now being financed by U.S. dona-
tions and concealed donations, their external debt defaulted
through rollover of service, and real wages for their workers
declining scandalously, announced in London four months into
the fifth year of the Alliance, that they had $18 million to spend
immediately on sophisticated military equipment? and could well
sign contracts for much larger sums spread over a period of years.
For, nothing that they might do to slow the inflow of funds for
economic development could under the Pentagon's thesis delay
the arrival of funds for military assistance, and these "savings"
were obviously available to spend in Europe on sophisticated
military equipment. (Twelve days after the call for arms in
London, with which the dictatorship hoped to keep the military
leaders in line, the New, York Times carried unintentionally a
suitable footnote: "Military doctors in Sao Paulo announced that
only two out of every five men called up for service in the armed
forces are medically fit, with malnutrition high on the giounds
for rejection, underscoring in their estimation the gravity of the
public health problem of Brazil".. ? ,
While the AFLCIO, now as deeply involved in the benefits
from the bureaucratic establishment as were the government
bureaucrats themselves, was proclaiming that "as a result of the
many programs of the Alliance for Progress, workers can now
look forward pretty well to getting an education for their child-
ren (and) they can look forward to eating fairly well," 13 the
President of the First National City Bank of New York who
might have been expected to voice such a statement in defense of
the status quo, instead chose to tell the truth: "The Alliance is
not meeting the most minimum human needs in Latin America?? "
z.
The naive chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcom-
mittee on Inter-American Affairs had once thought that all Lath
American problems reduce to the simple solution of "more money
from the United States" and had so reported to the Senate in an
incredibly stupid document. Now, after four years of implementa-
tion of his formula, he sobbed. "The Alliance is ncit financing
23 See AFL-CIO press release of February 21,
'The Latin American Times, September 9, 1965. ?
_
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reforms worthy of the name in most of the nations of this hemis-
phere. . . . Of course we are told right along that the Alliance
finances reform measures and that it is designed to raise the
living standards of the lower classes, but that is not the real theory
of the Alliance today. Today it concentrates on strengthening
upper classes so they will be in a better position to prevent any
unrest among the deprived people from getting out of hand,
meaning to prevent it from posing any real threat to the status
quo." 15
The frustration of all the hopes that had been raised might
have been expected to result in a serious analysis of the hard
facts, both here and in Latin America. But such an appraisal
might have sorely affected the existing bureaucratic establishment
and thus represented a risk to these prime beneficiaries of the Al-
liance which simply could not be taken as long as the U.S. Con-
gress must vote appropriations. And on the part of the Latin
Americans, any such appraisal had to be resisted lest it touch off
a demand for real reform, lest it jeopardize the growing gap
between the rich and the poor which the Alliance was in fact
promoting, lest it make blackmail less effective as an instrument
of policy. There developed a loss of confidence on both sides
even as public discussion became dangerous the closer it came to
revealing the hard facts.
Politically, this showed itself in Washington's adoption of the
thesis that Latin America is "not ready" for democracy. This was
not a new thesis by any means. When the Alliance was being
born, an Assistant Secretary of State had warned the congress
that -in most of Latin America there is so little experience with
the benefits of political legitimacy that there is an insufficient
body of opinion which has any reason to know its value and hence
to defend it." Now, Assistant Secretary of State Gordon lectured
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the fact that "political
development is a process in time," and that in Brazil for instance
the military dictatorship which he had supported so vigorously
demonstrated that the time for constitutional democracy still lay
far ahead for Brazilians." They_were just "not ready" for such
a mature concept. -
25 Congressional Record, June 8, 1965, pp. 12313-12314.
le See Hearings . . Nomination, op. cit., p. 8.
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Again, Assistant Secretary of State Mann insisted that "I am
not one of those who are anti-military in Latin America. I think
the military is a force for stability." '7 And to this, General
O'Meara, U.S. Army, Commander-in-Chief, Southern Command, ,
had an explanation to add: "The amenability of the military
forces to suggestions from American forces can be very important
in the future." "
The influential Senator Hickenlooper, drawing on the education
he had received from State Department witnesses before the For-
eign Relations Committee, pontificated that "These countries
still have to have a strong-man government. I think we made a
mistake in making a fetish out of what we call democracy in
countries that in many cases do not have the least concept of
what community and state responsibility may mean for the indi- '
vidual." "
"I don't think the Dominican Republic and its people were
ready for democracy," chimed in Assistant Secretary of State
Vaughn, (and) "I am not sure they are today." "
And the U.S. press could hardly ignore such "experting."
Jenkin Lloyd Jones, one of the very best of the newspapermen,
typically wrote: -Latin Americans generally are not honest
enough to make popular government work. The upperdogs are
callous to the underdogs, and the underdogs increasingly dream
of the good day when they can 'rob the upperdogs. This is not
the way you build great nations." n ?
To all this downgrading of the Latin American capacity for
democratic government, the New York Times, aghast at the dis-
closures regarding the Pentagon's "political study programs" in
Latin America, was moved to dissent: "The truly extraordinary.
17 Hearings before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on' H.R.
7750, p. 157.
18 Ibid., p. 351.
19 Hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Foreign
Assistance 1965, p. 213.
20 Hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the
Nomination of jack Hood Vaughn to be Director of the Peace Corp:,
February 9 1966, pp. 2-3. ?
91 The Evening Star (Washington), May 29, 1965.-.
? -?
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1 U.
misjudgment lies in the premise that the Latin American govern-
ments cannot take care of their own internal political problems
and need the U.S. Defense Department to help them out."
With the Latin Americans downgraded in this fashion, it was
a short distance to the next step as was demonstrated in the
Dominican Republic fiasco. How easy to reach the judgment
that there need no longer be scrupulous adherence to treaties
and international law, and to announce cynically. that an emer-
gency, so defined by the United States unilaterally, justified uni-
lateral intervention in disregard of international law. How easy
to arouse the House of Representatives to support Resolution
560 looking to the introduction of U.S. armed forces to forestall
alleged subversive threats self-defined in the Pentagon. How easy
to conclude that the OAS was merely a collection of mendicant
states waiting to be bribed.
The fault did not lie alone with the United States, of course.
A- a former ambassador to the OAS from one of the few remain-
ing independent nations in Latin America said: "It is unpardon-
able for the powerful to abuse their strength but it is also un-
pardonable for the weak through convenience or cowardice to
renounce their own dignity." "
But the Latin Americans were hastening to underline the fact
that they had earned the downgrading. No small honor this!
Better contempt than being overlooked completely! The image
of the blackmailer renouncing his own dignity came through
loud and clear when the Chileans announced, to. the enthusiastic
cheers of their fellow-mendicants, that they would press for
compensation for support of political measures that the United
States might seek. The one important thing in the proposition
was that the money be paid them without any binding relation-
ship to achievement of the goals of the Alliance for Progress
such as had prompted the United States thus far to tie strings to
the flow of cash, however weak the knot might be. As the
Chileans formally. put it: "una compensacion ha de ser de caracter
economico . I. . auxilio permanente y no voluntario, ni con fecha
fija." " A shamed Latin American writer of integrity, was
' ' ?
22 Luis Quintanilla, quoted in Chicago Tribune, June 9, 1965.,.1,
23 Diario Las Americas, March 25, 1965..
_
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moved to warn of the direction of policy: "convertir a la
politica exterior del continente en un mercado de extorsiones o
de chantajes por todo lo alto." "
Occasionally a prominent Latin American was unable to suffer
the debasement which the bureaucrats were imposing on their
people and their countries seemingly for their bureaucratic ad-
vantage. Such was the former Minister of Finance of Argentina,
who maintained his pride in the once-proud Argentine tradition.
"There is no international assembly," he wrote bitterly, "at which
our Argentine delegates neglect to assert our 'super-honorable'
condition of under-development or neglect to assert that we feel
identified 'with the aspirations of our 'twin brothers' of Togo,
Ruanda, Burundi, Jordan and Thailand rather than with the ad-
vanced nations with which we were formerly associated." He
refused to share the exultation of the new Argentine bureaucrats
in the fact that "the Secretary-General of the United Nations has
been kind enough pursuant to this self-downgrading to include
Argentina as one of the countries linked by destiny and aspira-
tions with the two-thirds of humanity whose annual per-capita
income was $136."
The International Commission of Jurists had urged, in its cam-
paign for the rule of law, that even the implementation of reforms
and of structural changes "must not be made the excuse for en:-
dangering the principles upon which rest the fundamental liberty
and dignity of the individual." 26 But the grubbing bureaucratic
establishment?national and international?which the Alliance
had brought into being apparently found no sacrifice too great
if only their position could be maintained and even expanded.
The absence of reforms and structural changes need not disturb.
Any more than the loss of self-respect by once-proud nations and
individuals. \ _
;
Indeed, after four years of the Alliance there wasemerging a
new measure of the very goals. One of the original phrase-
;.
54 Diario Lai Americas, March 28, 1965.
25 Dr. Federico Pinedo, Economic Survey, August 24, 1965. Pinedo's
comments on the philosophy "which has brought a formerly prosperous
and progressive country to the verge of relative poverty and relative '
stagnation" deserve serious study. .,, -... .?
26 Bulletin, April 1965 ? 4si?s'
_,..
/
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A.
makers, now grinding out material for Senator Robert Kennedy,
still waxed lyrical as Kennedy moved his lips: "In every American
land a revolution is coming, a revolution which will be peaceful
if we are wise enough, compassionate if we care enough, success-
full if we are fortunate enough, but a revolution which will come
whether we will it or not; we can affect its character, we cannot
alter its inevitability." 2? But in less beautiful cadence, Adolf
Berle, chairman of the original Kennedy Task Force on Latin
America, indicated that the Alliance was now ready to settle for
much less: "To those of us who knew the area forty years ago
and survey it now, it is clear that in most areas transformation
is in fact going forward about as rapidly as history usually
allows. . . . It is fashionable to say here that Latin American
progress requires social revolution. But it does not lie in the
mouth of an American to prescribe the horrors of civil or class
?
war for other nations.""
If even the "limited acceptance of the rules of international
legal conduct vh. giving way to an era of nninhibited power
struggle," as one fine student of international law gloomed,"
the abandonment by the United States of the rule of law (which
incidentally had counterparts in the economic field upon which
comment is made later in this volume) was being accompanied
by an abandonthent of the truth which constituted perhaps an
27 Kennedy's Latin American junket was considered part of the cam-
paign for the Presidency, which the "Nei, Yorker" was conducting.
Quote from Baltimore Sun, March 23, 1965.
"In the early days of the New Frontier, Berle had been considered
the real hope for achievement of effective policy since he knew Latin
America and knew public policy. He seems however quickly to have
been edged out from the, policy making machinery. ?
29Dr. Wolfgang Friedman, Director of International Legal Studies
at Columbia University asked: "Is the still very fragile structure of
international law being gradually strengthened or is on the contrary
even the limited acceptance of the rules of international legal conduct
giving way to an era of uninhibited power struggle?" He insisted that
"the most fundamental principle of the law of nations as it has been
built up during the last three and a half centuries is that of the right
of integrity of any independently constituted state big or small regard-
less of its political ideology." He found that "the armed occupation
of the Dominican Republic in May 1965 cannot be justified by any
cannons of international law."
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13
even greater casualty of the Alliance for Progress. It does not
ease the pain to be reminded that this was in general the era
of the "credibility gap" in Washington when truth was being
discounted with reference to its place in a democracy. The
Financial Post of Toronto spoke perhaps for all decent citizens
when during the Dominican Republic incident it editorialized:
"Seldom if ever has there been so much sanctimonious evan-
gelical fervor expended in telling untruths and half-truths, in
exaggerating and distorting information. . . . Why it was neces-
sary to dispense so much fiction and with such fervor is diffi-
cult to fathom."" On the floor of the Senate, demands for a
return to the truth were continuous from both sides of the aisle.
The conservative Ellender (Democrat) cried out: "The Agency
for International Development should be admonished to cease
and desist deceiving the Congress." 51 The liberal Case (Repub-
lican) protested that "if the democratic process is to be sus-
tained it is essential that the public be told all the facts; the
withholding of information is bad enough; it is completely in-
tolerable that our government deliberately misinforms its citi-
zens." " When the Agency for International Development re-
fused to permit release of a General Accounting Office report
which was devastating in its criticism of a glaring waste and
mishandling in the distribution -of food under the Alliance for
Progress, for the reason that it dare not risk public comprehen-.
sion of what was happening to the flood of money mobilized for
the Alliance for Progress, the protests of Senator Williams and.
his colleagues proved unavailing."
"June 5, 1965.
"'Congressional Record, September 23, 1965, p. 23975.
32 Ibid.
33 Congressional Record, March 22, 1966. Not only was the watch-
dog for the Congress being compelled to conceal from the public its
findings, but soon the State Department reached the place where it did
not want to be credited even with assertions that it had itself made.
At the high (low) point in accountability, during the hearings on the
Dominican Republic incident, the Department reportedly indignantly
denied that its own published Bulletin should be considered to carry
"authentic" information and even regretted the use made of White
House transcripts as if they represented an appropriate spokesman for
this government. (See Washington Star, November 25, 1965.) "If any
question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied." -(R.K.)
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Here was the ultimate in downgrading, the downgrading of
our own citizens. And curiously we were as helpless as the Latin
Americans against this display of contempt for the democratic
process. The press could insist that "there is a crucial corollary to
the democratic idea, that government must within: maximum
limits tell the country the truth and that its reputation for veracity
must be respected at home and abroad." " But the Alliance
was now far too disreputable in its record to permit the public to
get in on the secret. Its continuance rested now on the extent to
which performance could be kept from the eyes of the taxpayer. ?
One of our wisest economists, Milton Friedman, might insist
that we must look beyond the intent of laws which attempt to
alleviate or correct real social ills and give more attention to the
actual results of such laws. But this was no longer possible.
The government would not permit it. The universities were too
heavily mortgaged to the Agency for International Development
to be able to risk independent analysis. The press could not ?
get the facts. All the safeguards of democr, 1c government had
been bottled up by the bureaucrats. ?
Now, belatedly, questions began to be asked which should
have been heard at the beginning of the program. "The authen-
ticity of our goals in Latin America is currently subject to wide
skepticism," worried Congressman Rosenthal. " What goals?
What skepticism? Had there been anything but muddled think-
ing when the phrase makers had dominated public opinion?
? About the time the Alliance was being puffed into being, the
London Times had protested that "a great deal of muddled think-
ing still clouds the immediate prospects (of foreign aid). Why
are the industrial nations giving aid? Is it simply, part of the
cold war? Is it promoted by purely altruistic motives? Or is
it a way of giving a boost to exports?" .
Four years too late, the House Foreign Affairs Committee
bethought itself to ask why actually are funds being made avail-
able for the Alliance for Progress, and it came up with the find-
ing (watered-down successfully by the State Department) that
"it ic the sense of the Congress that in the administration of these
34 James A. Wechsler (New York Post).
sa Congressional Record, October 18, 1965,'
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funds greater attention and consideration be given those coun-
tries which share the view of the United States on the world
situation." " But surely the State Department need not con-
cern itself with the views of the Congress as this point. An
Assistant Secretary of State answered: "I am not sure that the
. objective of the Alliance is specifically to combat communism.""
So that the Latin Americans could be assured that they need waste
no time concerning themselves with the Congressional viewpoint .
that it would be nice to be on the same side as their benefactors.
DeLesseps Morrison, only a few weeks after Punta del Este,
when the phrasemakers had arranged specially favorable treat-
ment for Chile because unlike 13 other Latin American coun-
tries Chile had not gone along with the United States, had pointed
out that he was met thereafter with "sardonic comments of col-
leagues that the way to get favorable action from the United
States was to rebuff her publidy." " But the Congress had been
advised by the State Department to ignore such considerations as
representing only the personal view of a U.S. politician who
merely happened to know more about Latin America and inter-
national politics than the phrasemakers around the President.
And implementation after Punta del Este had precisely reflected
the point about which Morrism worried, except where votes
were bought directly for cash as needed at international confer-
ences. Support for the U.S. position, the State Department
pointed out in its new-found contempt .for Latin America, would
never reflect conviction but merely, the expediency arising from
donation-applications in the "In" box, and the deference to this
creditor's position. The Department in its new-found contempt
for Latin America, insisted that the countries could be relied upon
only as political toadies, their self-respect surrendered in the
truckling for donations.
. Four years too late, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
rejected the notion of a moral obligation on the part of the United
States and insisted that these countries "need to be informed that
"Report of, the House Foreign Affairs Committee on H.R. 7750,
pp. 38-39. .
37 Hearings before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, "Communism in Latin America,
1965," p. 95.
"Op. cit., p. 221. ?
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they have no inherent 'right' to assistance from the United States
and that such aid depends in part on the maintenance of a climate
of mutual cooperation." 39
Four years too late, the Congress woke up to the fact that U.S.
exporters were losing ground fastest in precisely those markets
where the flood of Alliance money was greatest, so that there
had dearly been no implementation with a view to bolstering the
balance of payments position of the United States or to exacting
a sense of gratitude from the mendicants.
Four years too late, after aid had been cut off to Mexico, it
was beginning to be-appreciated that aid had been cut off in
precisely the country where the largest returns in social im-
provement per dollar of U.S. expenditure were possible, so that
clearly the principle had been established that the goal was not
to maximize the gains to Latin American people from disburse-
ments of Alliance funds. -
Sometimes an individual Senator or Congressman was shocked.
Senator Morse, for instance, whose long-standing affliction of
logorrhea had so obstructed an intelligent approach to Latin
American problems, found that "the result of our extensive aid
has been to produce more pleas for money from the countries that
have received the most. What has gone to them before has
apparently produced little or no economic stability or improve-
ment in these countries." "
Oddly enough, one of the great economists of the modem era
had forecast just such chaos on the new frontier when the phrase-
makers first took over: "Aid is not and will not be granted with
the sole consideration of supporting or promoting growth. It
will be given to countries whose growth rate exceeds ours, and it
will be given to countries which are not enjoying any per-capita
growth at all. It will be given as a reward for merit and effort
and also in the hope of bringing merit and effort into existence.
It Will be given to friend and foe, for strategic and political
reasons, in submission to blackmail and as bribe, and out of sheer
"Report of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Foreign As-
sistance Act of 1965.
4? Congressional Record, June 8, 1965, p. 12316. ?
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? 17
humanity without any other genuine reason." " And so it came
to pass.
But in the face of the failure, how does it happen that the
bureaucrats could continue to get away with it? When the press
was screaming that "we must re-examine the hard facts and
abandon the mythology,"2 how could a collection of bureaucrats
continue the attack on the U.S. Treasury and continue the failure
to meet the Latin American problems which had so wisely been
interpreted alternatively to herald an ultimate shattering de-
nouement?
First and foremost, there was the skillful manner in which
potential "opposition" was quieted. Robert Kennedy had re-
turned from oratorical safari in Latin America impressed with the
fact that the basic Latin American understanding of U.S. policy
was their belief that "American business determines the internal
policy of the United States and that the government is in the
control of Wall Street." 43 The Agency for International Develop-
ment correctly anticipated that the business community constituted
a potential threat to concealment of the gruesome facts of the
Alliance performance. And it did the easiest thing possible. It
bought off the business community. It was no accident that after
four years of the Alliance, at a dinner honoring Secretary Rusk,
General Lucius Clay could state "that under Rusk the State Depart-
ment had done more to help American business interests abroad
than ever before." Actively practicing what he had labelled
"dollar-diplomacy modern-style" in a perfectly incredible revival
of that odious term, the portion of Alliance disbursements that
was milked off by the business community for purposes which had
no relationship to the objectives of the Alliance for Progress and
which represented an utterly improper use of taxpayers' funds was
a modern-day .scandal." And of course, criticism of the bureau-
crats was stilled.
41 Jacob Viner, "Economic (foreign Policy on the New Frontier;'
Foreign Affairs, July 1961.
42 Washington Post, March 20, 1966. The same demand appeared in
dozens of good newspapers around the country.
43TV appearance on "Meet the Press', Transcript, p. 2, December
5, 1965.
?"The Evening Star (Washington), February 6, 1966.
"This subject is discussed in subsequent chapters in this
%
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? A.
In a similar fashion the academic community had been sterilized
by the skillful spreading of money for research and travel, and
and by creating an awareness of the potential of participation in
the AID grab-bag for those willing to accept the gospel straight
from Washington. How, many young scholars could resist the
aids to easy publication deriving from access to "official use only"
government reports and even from posts on the payroll intended
to help them get the story across "independently," and how
many need even suffer qualms as to inevitable questions con-
/ cerning the integrity of such research and the relationship of the
I official involvement to the university's role of free inquiry, when
they saw even their university presidents succumbing to the lure of
great overseas contracts eyen to the point of being willing to .
provide cover for CIA operations. When the Pentagon's Project
Camelot blew up in Chile, it raised broad serious questions about
the role of social scientists under government contract, the role
of social scientists with respect to policy questions, the assumption
by social scientists of a vested interest in policies that might en;
sue from an economist's shift from description to prescription,
academic slippage, the low level of competence that characterized
the field of Latin American studies in this country, the need for
objective scholarship." But after four years of the Alliance, one
thing had become clear: if there was to be objective inquiry into
the performance of the program on a sufficiently high level to
warrant attention, it would not come from the universities.
Eleswhere in the American community there was the simple
fact that the necessary information and competence could not be
mobilized. The U.S. government was certainly not going to
allow the facts to be known to the general public, when it was
already withholding them from the Congress. The international
agencies which had been set up to service the Alliance had no
concept of public service adequate to risk their very existence.
The Latin Americans in general knew that to allow the specifics
of the operating situations, apart from the general philosophic
?
48The reader is urged to examine "American Academic Ethics and
Social Research Abroad, The Lesson of Project Camelot," by Kalman
H. Silvert. (American Universities Field Staff Report July 1965). This
is perhaps the most important paper published since the decline of
integrity began in our universitiei under the pressure of government
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meanderings to which they were so addicted, to become known
was to risk public indignation in the United States to the point
where thereafter money might become available only where it '
served the objectives of the Alliance for Progress, which was
the very last thing they wanted. Their own performance was ,
geared to breaking away from insistence on adequate self-help,
from control of U.S. funds by the U.S. agencies, from the scru-
tiny of the U.S. Congress. They preferred thus to stick with
the old inflammatory nonsense which had served so well to pre-
serve the status quo by shifting responsibility for Latin America's
sorry state onto the United States.
Sufficient for them, as for instance for the old-liberal Romulo
Betancourt, to tick off the old and erroneous plaints which had
served so well to divert attention from the necessary reforms
and actions, and occasionally to seek out a new equally erroneous
plaint. Betancourt prescribing for the obvious failure of the
Alliance protested that only $1.5 billion had been put in_by the.-.
United States. (The correct figure v 3 $3.2 billion and it had
been held that "low" only because the full $4.4 billion in au-
thorizations which was well above our billion a year commitment
could not be disbursed in the face of the Latin American inability
or unwillingness to meet the minimum conditions for such ex-
penditure). He mourned for the deteriorating terms of trade.
(The terms of trade were actually improving). He protested
lassitude of the United States in processing Latin American requi-
sitions for aid. (The Latin Americans had simply in fact proved
ineffective in providing a reasonably minimum response which
would have permitted the eager-to-disburse AID officials to get
rid of the money entrusted to them."
By the end of the fourth year there was the spectade of in-
discriminate sprinkling of donations under political pressure, and
the practical matter that political considerations?domestic in the
sense of concealment of facts being necessary to prevent a loss
in the image of the party, and external in the sense of being un-
able to make demands abroad for effective performance when
claims within the United States and before the Congress had to
47 P7ashington Daily Newt, April 21, 1965. Betancourt said that he'
found "your people seriously concerned because the Alliance has not
yielded all that was expected of it."
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VC 111 LerMS or errectiveness already achieved?prevented a sys-
tematic attack on the recognized social and economic problems.
The policies of the mendicant nations were in fact serving to ob-
struct or retard rather than to promote social progress and eco-
nomic development.. This failure necessitated continued de-
partures from the truth, and an all-out effort by the whole
bureaucratic establishment to prevent the facts from becoming
known. On this last, at least, success was assured, for the
bureaucracy itself had been the prime beneficiary of the Alliance
and understood best where its own interests lay. -
Prescriptioneering was rampant, but it tended to be about as
pertinent as the Canadian export group's interpretation of the
grave issues of the intervention in the Dominican Republic in
terms of the loss of market for dried salted pollodc and smoked
bloaters. The noted columnist, Walter Lippmann, historically
so error-prone in his judgments, found that 'the Alliance rests
upon a shallow foundation . . . on which it is doomed to fail."
But, lost in the discredited cliches of terms-of-trade and the like,.
he ended up prescribing that "the under-developed heartland of
the South American continent and the fragmentation of the peri-
pheral nations is the paramount deficiency." The bankers were
lost in their contemplation of the profits that derived from the
new dollar-diplomacy modern style and could only gloat that "it
was not until President Johnson put Thomas Mann at the helni,
that the pendulum took a decisive turn toward realism in Our
Latin American policy""
Assis Chateaubriand, Brazil's press lord, insisted that the Latin
Americans have a greater need of being lifted form their present
level of immaturity of intelligence than of material support from
the Alliance." And a brilliant Mexican economist of most im-
pressive credentials, Victor L. Urquidi, lamented that "secondary
political considerations stand in the way of dearly defined policy
and good administration, and virtual paralysis grips both govern-
ment and private initiative." 5?
But it remained for a spokesman for the Inter-American Com-
mittee on the Alliance for Progress (CIA?) to provide. unin-
tentionally the reason why no prescriptioneering based on the
hard facts need be invoked. After four years of disillusionment
and failure, he proclaimed that "the future continues bright be-
cause the United States has agreed to extend the period in which
it will provide financial support for the Alliance. Why worry
about performance, achievements, results? Why worry about
objectives, goals? Why indeed! The pork barrel was being
replenished.
" G. A. Costanza, "Latin American Myths and Realities," Barron's,
May 31, 1965.
49 The Evening Star (Washington), October 1, 1965.
"Encounter, September 1965, "Rediscovering Latin America," 43. -27.
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