The U.S. in Latin America

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how as early as 1958, the Milton Eisenhower report criticized U.S. behavior on Latin America and how Latinos accused the U.S. of denying them credits in the desired volume, of fixing prices to their detriment, of neglecting the necessity of social reform and of supporting the region's dictators. It looks at how under the pressure of the Cuban Revolution, John F. Kennedy launched an unprecedented development programme for Latin America which took into account Eisenhower's demands. It discusses the Alliance for Progress that Kennedy launched to help Latin America in the 1960s. It evaluate its failure by the 1970s and examines the reasons for that failure, with particular reference to Frei's Chile.

From the Paper:

"Idealism and liberalism would soon be replaced by realism in the White House. The Kennedy administration's passion for the development of Latin America, strongly influenced by the realities of Fidel Castro in Cuba, was replaced, after JFK's assassination, by Lyndon Johnson and his Latin American Affairs chief, Thomas Mann. Both men saw Latin America from the position of Texan oil entrepreneurs, "Mexico and the rest". As LaFeber argues Mann was, "the perfect choice to dismantle the Alliance at the same time Johnson continued the old Kennedy rhetoric". If the Alliance contained fundamental flaws under Kennedy's idealists, then once the realism of Johnson and Mann, followed by the globalism of Nixon and Kissinger, came to power, the last chance for the Alliance to prove a success was extinguished."

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