President Kennedy announced the Alliance for Progress in March 1961. “We propose to complete the revolution of the Americas,” he said, “—to build a hemisphere where all men can hope for the samp high standard of living—and all can live out their lives in dignity and freedom.” A few months later, by adopting the Charter of Punta del Este, twenty hemispheric governments agreed formally to work together for the rapid and radical transformation of Latin America.
Commentators have not dealt kindly with the Alliance. Scholars on both sides of the Rio Grande have pointed to its organizational shortcomings, its apparently over-simple assumptions about the nature of development, and its underestimation of the developmental challenge in Latin America; they have noted that the resources projected for the Alliance cannot come even close to meeting postulated Alliance goals. Writers with political and ideological axes to grind have been especially outspoken in their criticism. Some have branded the Alliance an instrument of United States imperialism, or an agency of socialism. Some declare that it is in thrall to Latin American oligarchs or attack it for arousing unrealizable expectations among Latin America’s less-favored groups. Men who like to think of themselves as “hard-nosed realists” criticize the rhetoric that has accompanied Alliance initiatives; apocalyptic revolutionaries, whether of communist or radical Christian persuasion, have blasted the Alliance as a fraud or, at best, as being far too little too late. Defenders of the Alliance have been comparatively few, and they have felt themselves beleaguered.
The Alliance is vulnerable, of course, by virtue of its fundamental premise: “Peaceful revolution is possible.” Economic, social, and political change that is induced and planned must always threaten some people and must always appear to others as misdirected or too slow. Nevertheless, the impact of the Alliance on the hemisphere has been constructive. Perhaps one should not seek evidence of its contribution to Latin American development in the array of statistics about construction of houses, hospitals, schools, and roads or in such macroeconomic indicators as gross national product and per capita income. More significant evidence may be found in two other manifestations, both admirably reflected in the fine little book being reviewed here.
First, the Charter of Punta del Este and subsequent declarations and agreements provide a reasonably coherent set of norms against which Latin America’s development problems can be assessed and Latin American progress measured. The authors of this book, who belong to the Secretariat of the OAS, have used Alliance for Progress rubrics in their presentation: “The Unemployment Problem”; “Problems of Industrial Development”; “Development of Agricultural Production”; “Trends and Future Prospects of Latin American Commodity Exports”; “Problems of Capital Formation”; “Public Expenditure and Its Financing”; “Import Capacity and Flows of External Resources”; “Mobilization of Human Resources and Institutional Organization for Development”; “Education and Human Resource Requirements”; “Administration for Development”; “National Participation”; “Problems of Urban Development”; “City Planning”; “Agrarian Reform and Rural Welfare”; and the like. A simple listing of labels, of course, conveys little of the quality of this book, which is incisive and provocative despite the flat language in which it is written.
Second and much more important, during the years of the Alliance and—one must assume—at least in part because of its programs and initiatives, a generation of young men and women has emerged in both the public and private sectors. These persons are well trained, problem oriented, incrementalist in their approach, responsible, and committed. This book, prepared by a group of faceless international civil servants, illustrates the phenomenon. The writers recognize and analyze all of Latin America’s crushing problems—population growth, unemployment, institutional inertia, educational deficiencies, economic and social inequities, political inadequacies, and international trading difficulties. But there is no hysteria here, no denunciation of scapegoats, no inflammatory call to the barricades, no despair. There is passion, but it is controlled and constructively directed.
Those who have been following the Alliance since its inception will find in this volume a brief, comprehensive, and objective review of its first five years. Those who are about to undertake an exploration of the Alliance will be well advised to begin with this book, moving from it to other writings on the subject. Understandably, given its auspices, the book cannot come squarely to grips with many important questions of United States-Latin American relations that affect the Alliance for Progress. Nor can it deal with matters of internal Latin American politics except by indirection. But despite these limitations it is an exceptionally useful volume, well documented and well presented.
