“La ayuda americana”: una esperanza frustrada

Here we have a useful booklet. Anyone interested in or studying American aid programs to Latin America should be required to read this small compilation. Not that it is an impartial overall study—it is nothing of the sort. It is simply a collection of speeches given in the Bolivian Senate when debating Alliance for Progress programs for Bolivia. Most of the speeches are critical of American aid, which has, in the last decade, saved Bolivia from a catastrophe. What is so illuminating about this booklet is simply the freshness with which prejudice comes to the surface—that giving aid will simply not buy friends and change the temper and way of life of Latin America. Yet while every one of these speeches criticizes the American aid and attributes to it the most ridiculous ulterior motives, one still can detect a real lust for more funds.