Alliance for Progress
The Alliance for Progress (Spanish: Alianza para el Progreso), initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961, aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Governor Luis Muñoz Marín of Puerto Rico was a close advisor on Latin American affairs to Kennedy, and one of his top administrators, Teodoro Moscoso, the architect of "Operation Bootstrap", was named the coordinator of the program by President Kennedy.
For a Peruvian political party, see Alliance for Progress (Peru).
The Alliance for Progress was a 10-year plan proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to foster economic cooperation between North and South America, particularly aimed at countering the perceived communist threat from Cuba. The program was signed at an inter-American conference in Uruguay in August 1961.
The main objectives of the Alliance for Progress included:[2]
The Alliance for Progress aimed to strengthen ties between the United States and Latin America, promoting economic growth, political stability, and social progress. However, the success of the program was limited due to various challenges, including political instability, corruption, and insufficient implementation of the proposed reforms.
The United States government began to strengthen diplomatic relations with Latin America in the late 1950s during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In March 1961, the newly inaugurated President Kennedy proposed a ten-year plan for Latin America:
The program was signed at an inter-American conference at Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August 1961. The charter called for reaching these targets:
First, the plan called for Latin American countries to pledge a capital investment of $80 billion over 10 years. The United States agreed to supply or guarantee $20 billion within one decade.[5]
Second, Latin American delegates required the participating countries to draw up comprehensive plans for national development. These plans were then to be submitted for approval by an inter-American board of experts.
Third, tax codes had to be changed to demand "more from those who have most" and land reform was to be implemented.[4]
Business lobbying[edit]
The alliance charter included a clause encouraged by US policy makers that committed the Latin American governments to the promotion "of conditions that will encourage the flow of foreign investments" to the region.
U.S. industries lobbied Congress to amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to ensure that US aid would not be furnished to any foreign business that could compete with US business "unless the country concerned agrees to limit the export of the product to the US to 20 percent of output". In addition, the industries lobbied Congress to limit all purchases of AID machinery and vehicles in the US. A 1967 study of AID showed that 90 percent of all AID commodity expenditures went to US corporations.[7]
Reception[edit]
Ivan Illich advanced a "potent and highly influential critique" of the Alliance, seeing it as "bankrolled and organized by wealthy nations, foundations, and religious groups."[8]
The journalist AJ Langguth noted that many Brazilian nationalists scorned the Alliance as Brazilian foreign aid to America due to the belief that American corporations were withdrawing more money from the country than they were investing.[9] Though Brazil did indeed run balance of payments deficits with the United States during the years of the Alliance, the size of these deficits was well exceeded by the grants and credits provided by the US to Brazil, even before factoring development loans and military aid.[10] Brazil also enjoyed large overall balance of payments surpluses during the Alliance years.[11]
Military version[edit]
During the Kennedy administration, between 1961 and 1963, the U.S. suspended economic and/or broke off diplomatic relations with several governments that it did not favor, including Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru. The suspensions lasted for periods of three weeks to six months.[12]
The Alliance for Progress achieved a short-lived public relations success. It also had real but limited economic advances.[12] But by the early 1970s the program was widely viewed as a failure.[19]
The program failed for three reasons:
The Organization of American States disbanded the permanent committee created to implement the alliance in 1973.[5]