PEACE CORPS: THE COIN AND ITS REVERSE SIDE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400220022-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 19, 2004
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: February 1, 1970
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2005/01/12 : CIA-RDP88-01315R0004f02,2OR2c t C_ Z
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HAVANA, TRICONTfl ENTAL,, No .16
Jan - Feb 70
S 1 c~.r~ `vim p !ti
0
c Corps:
in cind its Reveme,
'Me
.Last year, a group of 40 former volunteers in the Peace Corps of the North
'American Government spent several weeks in Cuba. As one of the members of
.the group said, the object of the visit was to compare. what was happening in
Cuba with their experiences In the countries where they had worked as Peace
Corps members. Several of the visitors met with Tricontinental to express their
opinions concerning the organization to which they had belonged and its impact
on the countries where ? they had worked and on them personally. They are Paul
and Rachel Cowan, stationed in Guayaquil, Ecuador, from 1965 to 1967; Anna Zen-
tella, who carried out her functions in Costa Rica; David Bragin, who was in
Ecuador for three years; James Herod, who worked for the American Friends
Service Committee in a work camp In Lebanon in 1956; Joseph Sklar, of New
'York, a volunteer in Peru for two years and q Peace Corps official for three -
-years more to Venezuela and Guatemala; Anita Fecht, Peace Corps member in
Chile from 1066 to 1968; Gertrude Pax of Ohio, member of a religious work
group in Brazil from 1962 to 1967; and Gerald Schwinn, who joined the Peace
Corps to go to Nigeria in 1963.
Although all Were in agreement in expressing their disenchantment with what
,at first they had considered "the Peace Corps' good intentions in helping to
resolve the problems that affect the underdeveloped peoples," the ex-volunteers,
,as can be observed, are not'unanimous in analyzing the origins of the organiza-
tion npr in examining what Its penetration and espionage activities In the Third
World countries represent within Imperialism's global strategy against national
liberation movements. And imperialism's objective is precisely this: to check the
advance of the liberation struggle, occasionally offering certain palliatives to the
people or presenting a totally unreal image of the government In Washington.
This is the reverse of the coin.
rn the present interview certain opinions in this regard are clearly superficial
and do not go beyond the purely anecdotal or accidental. But at the same time,
the statements of the interviewees have the value of expressing the complete-,
failure of an instrument of Imperialism in the tgstimony of those who once'
believed in Its efficacy.
What made you join the Peace Corps?
P. COWAN: In 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected President
of the United States, the Peace Corps was created as a part of his
electoral platform. The organization immediately assumed im-
portance for young people in the United States. Many believed that
they could contribute something to help the poor and elderly in'
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They thought it symbolized a
noble and disinterested United States, in which 'many of us believed
at that time, before the ,Viet-Nam war, the invasions of Playa Giron
and the Dominican Republic. Now, in 1969, it is important to
state that the Peace Corps, the Green Berets, the war in Viet-Nam.
and the invasion at Playa Giron were all put forth at the same
time by the same people.
The Peace Corps has been in existence for nearly a decade now,
and its role in preserving the international status quo has become
increasingly clear. But before I explore it in detail I want to list
some of the motives that the individual volunteers bring to their
work. I do so in order that some readers of this magazine can see
past the enthusiastic voices and broad smiles of the Americans
the Peace Corps has sent to their countries, into their personal-',
ities. I should add that the volunteers who go abroad today are '
less. idealistic and more ambitious than were their counterparts,
Approved For Release 2005/01/12 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000400220022-3z~E3zlud
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