Hickenlooper Amendment

views updated

Hickenlooper Amendment

The Hickenlooper Amendment was an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962. Named after its sponsor, Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper (Republican of Iowa), the amendment provided for a cutoff of economic assistance from the United States to any government that failed to take adequate steps for the compensation of expropriated U.S. companies. Following a military coup in 1968, the Peruvian government sought to reduce its economic dependency on the United States by nationalizing the International Petroleum Company. In an effort to secure adequate compensation for IPC, the Nixon administration threatened to terminate Peru's economic assistance and its access to international credit institutions. By the mid-1970s, Congress had dropped the amendment from its foreign assistance legislation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eric N. Baklanoff, "The Expropriation of United States Investments in Latin America, 1959–1974," SECOLAS Annals 8 (1977): 48-60.

Frank Church, "Toward a New Policy for Latin America," in Latin America and the United States in the 1970s, edited by Richard B. Gray (1971).

Adelberto J. Pinelo, The Multinational Corporation as a Force in Latin American Politics: A Case Study of the International Petroleum Company in Peru (1973).

Additional Bibliography

Jochamowitz, Luis. Crónicas del petróleo en el Perú. Lima: Grupo REPSOL YPF, 2001.

O'Brien, Thomas F. The Century of U.S. Capitalism in Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.

                                Thomas M. Leonard