07 March 2011

Looking Back: The Alliance for Progress and Its Legacy

President John F. Kennedy sought closer U.S. ties with Latin America. In 1961, he launched the Alliance for Progress, a program to boost regional development and reform.

By Lauren Monsen
Staff Writer

Washington — When President John F. Kennedy launched an ambitious foreign aid program for Latin America known as the Alliance for Progress, he proposed it as a 10-year plan to help “build a hemisphere where all men can hope for a suitable standard of living and all can live out their lives in dignity and freedom.”

Introduced in 1961, the initiative called for broad social and economic reforms — including more equitable tax policy, income distribution and land reform — aimed at producing accelerated development and more just societies across the Western Hemisphere. Kennedy placed a high priority on U.S. engagement with Latin America, recognizing that the region’s struggles with poverty and illiteracy could place democratic institutions at risk. Also, with the Cold War at its height, Kennedy was determined to limit the regional influence of Cuba’s communist regime.

The alliance is perhaps largely forgotten now, but it marked a fresh approach to U.S.-Latin American relations, said Arturo Valenzuela, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. “The Alliance for Progress was a signature effort by President Kennedy to strengthen the common bonds between the United States and Latin America by addressing universal aspirations to rise above the challenges of poverty and autocracy that faced the region in the 1960s,” Valenzuela recalled.

According to Jeffrey F. Taffet, an associate professor of history at the United States Merchant Marine Academy and author of Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin America, “there was a perception of [U.S.] condescension” throughout the hemisphere, “which Kennedy was trying to change.” Kennedy wanted to establish a U.S. partnership with Latin America that carried no hint of paternalism or exploitation, said Taffet, “and Latin Americans took him seriously because they sensed that he really meant it.”

In his January 1961 inaugural address, Kennedy pledged to “our sister republics … to convert our good words into good deeds in a new alliance for progress — to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty.” He formally announced the Alliance for Progress at a White House reception for the Latin American diplomatic corps on March 13, 1961.

“Throughout Latin America, a continent rich in resources and in the spiritual and cultural achievements of its people, millions of men and women suffer the daily degradations of poverty and hunger,” Kennedy told the region’s ambassadors. “If we are to meet a problem so staggering in its dimensions, our approach must itself be equally bold.”

Kennedy outlined a plan requiring “a vast cooperative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work and land, health and schools — techo, trabajo y tierra, salud y escuela.” The United States pledged $20 billion in assistance and called on Latin American governments to provide $80 billion in investment funds for their economies. At the time, it was the biggest U.S. aid program created for the developing world.

The program took flight in August 1961, at a gathering in Punta del Este, Uruguay, where representatives of the United States and all Latin American states except Cuba endorsed a charter promoting land and tax reform, democratic governance and economic modernization.

Before long, however, the alliance encountered obstacles. Kennedy had trouble obtaining congressional approval to fully fund the program, and bureaucratic hurdles — both in Washington and around the hemisphere — made progress erratic.

Although the Alliance for Progress did not reach many of its goals and ultimately was dissolved, it produced some measurable achievements. The program “is probably best judged in terms of how it affected individual people across the hemisphere,” said Taffet. The alliance supported the construction of housing, schools, airports, hospitals, clinics and water-purification projects throughout Latin America and distributed free textbooks to students.

Because of alliance funding, “more people in the region could send their kids to better schools, move into better homes and attain a middle-class lifestyle,” Taffet added. “Whether or not the alliance changed regional economies or political situations is hard to say, but individual people did benefit from this initiative.”

If Kennedy was disappointed by the alliance’s limited success, his energetic championing of the program’s goals made a strong impression on people throughout the hemisphere. “To this day, he remains much admired, and there are schools and streets in Latin America that bear his name,” said Taffet. “Kennedy promoted the notion that the United States can be a benevolent partner in the region. We hope to build on that legacy.”

The 21st century, however, has its own unique circumstances. “Today, the world has fundamentally changed: the Cold War is over and many Latin American countries are thriving democracies with robust economies,” said Valenzuela. “While the Obama administration’s policy in Latin America is similarly motivated by our interest in a prosperous and stable continent, we are guided by a new spirit of cooperation and respect for what the region has accomplished.”

“The countries of the Americas are now partners that can work with the U.S. on both a regional and global level to address common challenges and opportunities together, rather than as a region that looks to U.S. assistance in order to achieve success.”

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)