This is a current affairs book containing political, economic, and social commentary, and prescriptions for policies of governments and business firms. The Foreword states that “Latin Americans and North Americans have perpetuated a rich lore of mythology about themselves and each other. These myths are barriers to mutual understanding. . .. This book is an attempt to unmask the mythology that blocks understanding of Latin Americans by North Americans, and of North Americans by Latin Americans” (xii). Had the author established a mythology in orderly fashion, and then balanced it with firm realities, his title would have been justified. As it is, the title seems to have been composed, like some chapter headings (“The Setting for Salvation”) by a free versifier rather than by the author, who is a lawyer and member of a group of businessmen and scholars who prepared a report entitled “Alliance for Progress” for the then president-elect John F. Kennedy.
In chapters on pretorianism, monoculture, “The Shame of the Cities,” and “Death of an Alliance” stem warnings of disasters to come are enunciated. “The Western world cannot be a disinterested spectator of the epic drama of Latin America, which, as in the Greek tragedy, moves inexorably toward its inevitable fate” (29). In the course of this part of the book, Mr. Nehemkis offers some new and interesting material on the rise and decline of President Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic in 1962-1963. Mr. Nehemkis was a member of the mission of the Organization of American States that observed the election of December 20, 1962, at the request of the Dominican government.
Students of foreign policy, however, will regret that Mr. Nehemkis’ cavalier approach to some topics results in, for example, this tantalizing pair of sentences, and no more: “Perhaps to atone for the years it had supported the Trujillo dictatorship, the United States played a key but secret role in the conspiracy which led to Trujillo’s assassination on May 30, 1961. The heroism of an American Foreign Service officer, an agent of the CIA, and an expatriate American flier and his Dominican wife (who were the nerve center of the conspiracy) is a tale of adventure still to be told” (127). In what sense was it the “United States” that played this key role? If Mr. Nehemkis intends to insinuate that the government of the United States organized a conspiracy to kill Trujillo, the seriousness of the charge demands appropriate treatment, and not this coy allusiveness. There are other instances of this type, such as the uncertain source for the statement that the former “Instituto Internacional de Educación Política” in Costa Rica was “a school financed by the CIA for training younger Latin Americans for political action” (133).
A more careful consideration of these and other matters, would have been conducive to this reader’s giving more serious attention to the author’s pessimistic judgment about the Alliance for Progress and his chapter entitled: “The Revolutionary Force of American Business.” His suggestion for an international, mixed private and public consortium to assist the development of the Central American Common Market is an interesting one, and one that, as he proposes, might have promising applicability to other regions of the Americas.
At the end, Mr. Nehemkis raises several challenging questions in one remark: “History will record as one of the ironies of our time that the gravedigger of the feudal societies in Latin America was the presence there of American business” (260). This statement does less than justice to the makers of the Mexican Revolution, and presents a judgment that could hardly be accepted by the victors in the recent Chilean election, or in the Bolivian Revolution. If this statement is valid, for any countries, what are the implications for the Alliance for Progress; what are the responsibilities of “American business”; and what are the legacies for anti-American solidarity? And, for Cuba, was American business really involved in a self-destructive entente with Castro?
