Alliance for Progress

Alliance for Progress was a policy inaugurated in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy as a ten-year $20 billion cooperative effort to bring political stability and representative government to Latin America. Events in the late 1950s brought the United States to the realization that within Latin America the economic, social, and political disparities that divided the region's peoples served as breeding grounds for revolution. Building off of smaller-scale, U.S.-funded social investments in Latin America that had begun in the late 1940s, the United States designed development programs that climaxed with the Alliance for Progress Charter. All members of the Organization of American States, except Cuba, signed the charter at Punta del Este, Uruguay, on 17 August 1961. The Alliance hoped to bring political stability and representative government to Latin America through economic reform by providing funds to improve the infrastructure for industrialization (such as roads and dams) and by collaborating in private investment projects. Economic and social justice was encouraged by changing the inequitable tax systems and by providing for schools and health care facilities. The policies were formulated within the context of the cold war because both the U.S. and Latin American leadership feared that Communist-inspired Fidelismo would spread from Cuba to other parts of the hemisphere. The Alliance sought to deter the Communist appeal by supporting social reform and economic growth that would create political stability.

Under the Alliance for Progress, Latin American armed forces placed a new emphasis on counter-insurgency, which included civic action programs, such as literacy training, teaching of technical skills, opening new land, building schools and highways, improving sanitation and health facilities, and other projects useful to civilians. Alliance programs have been criticized for buying supplies primarily from U.S. companies, which limited the impact of foreign development aid. Indeed, 90 percent of all commodity expenditures went to U.S. businesses. Also, the Alliance never spent enough money to make a major impact. The United States opened many health clinics throughout Latin America, but their impact was limited by the very large population growth during the period. The Alliance also shifted emphasis from defense against offshore incursions to internal security. Enthusiasm for the Alliance quickly waned. By 1963 military governments had come to power in several Latin American countries, diminishing the hope for democracy, and in some countries the military lost interest in the civic action programs, using counterinsurgency training only to suppress political opposition.

In the United States, President Lyndon B. Johnson was less committed than Kennedy to democratic reform and favored private over public investment. Plagued by the war in Vietnam, the costs of the Great Society, and civil violence at home, and reassured by the apparent inability of Fidel Castro to encourage revolution elsewhere, the United States gave less attention to Latin America in the late 1960s. When Richard M. Nixon assumed the presidency in 1969, he noted that the Alliance was a concept with great promise that had not achieved its economic and social objectives, and when Congress terminated it in 1972, the Agency for International Development (AID), which had administered most of the Alliance programs, agreed. Despite the problems associated with the Alliance, AID continued to fund social, education, and development programs throughout Latin America into the early 2000s.

See alsoAgency for International Development (AID) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hernando Agudelo Villa, La revolución del desarrollo: Orígen y evolución de la Alianza para el Progreso (1966).

William D. Rogers, The Twilight Struggle: The Alliance for Progress and the Politics of Development in Latin America (1967).

Jerome Levinson and Juan De Onis, The Alliance That Lost Its Way: A Critical Report on the Alliance for Progress (1970).

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "The Alliance for Progress: A Retrospective," in Latin America: The Search for a New International Role, edited by Ronald G. Hellman and H. Jon Rosenbaum (1975).

Additional Bibliography

Gambone, Michael D. Capturing the Revolution: The United States, Central America, and Nicaragua, 1961–1972. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001.

Lleras Camargo, Alberto, and Otto Morales Benítez. Reflexiones sobre la historia, el poder y la vida internacional. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, Tercer Mundo, 1994.

Rabe, Stephen G. The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Taffet, Jeffrey F. Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin America. New York: Routledge, 2007.

                                          Thomas M. Leonard