A Thousand Days

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

  The report also offered specific suggestions about emergency situations. Its significance, however, lay in the new elements it brought into official thinking. It saw the communist threat as requiring not just a military response, as the Pentagon believed, or just an economic response, as some Latin Americans believed, but a combination of both. Besides military containment, it urged the systematic and semiofficial promotion of democratic political parties and a new stress on economic development through country development plans. These elements carried the task force program beyond Kennedy’s Tampa speech or Dillon’s Social Progress Trust Fund. If the recommendations were accepted, the goal of the United States would be not just the limited program of social development envisaged at Bogotá but a long-term program of national and continental development, shielded against communist disruption and aimed at leading the whole hemisphere to self-sustaining economic growth and democratic political institutions.

  4. BIRTH THROES OF THE ALLIANCE

  This view did not prevail in all parts of the executive branch. A preference for right-wing governments had been implicit in the policy of the early Eisenhower years; and the evolution of the Castro regime in Cuba had persuaded some, especially in the armed services, that the right-wing alternative should now become the explicit object of United States policy. The Cuban experience, it was argued, proved that the United States could never retain control of a Latin American revolution, no matter how plausible it might seem in its first stages. As for attempts to avert revolution through pressure for reform, this would only alienate those who held the real power—the oligarchy (more favorably known as the ‘producing classes’ or ‘those commanding capital resources’) and the military—and open the door to incompetent liberals who would bring about inflation, disinvestment, capital flight and social indiscipline and would finally be shoved aside by the communists. The conclusion was that we should oppose revolution and reform in Latin America and concentrate on helping our ‘tested friends’—those who gave us economic privileges, military facilities and votes in the United Nations and who could be relied on to suppress local communists, tax and land reformers, and other malcontents and demagogues. If we did not support our true friends, we would only convince Latin America that our friendship was not worth having. It was idle to say that a policy of permanent counterrevolution would not work: military support, anti-guerrilla training and unswerving United States backing would keep any friendly regime in power, and the resulting social stability would attract investment and produce growth. Eventually the Latin Americans might become capable of self-government.

  There was a sophisticated case for this policy, and it was made during his visits to Washington by a brilliant former diplomat, John Davies, Jr., who had been drummed out of the Foreign Service by John Foster Dulles and was now running a furniture factory in Peru. Davies argued with cogency in conversation (and later in his book Foreign and Other Affairs) that the process of development was so inherently disruptive that the first requirement had to be the maintenance of order: ‘‘The basic issue is not whether the government is dictatorial or is representative and constitutional. The issue is whether the government, whatever its character, can hold the society together sufficiently to make the transition.” Progressive civilian governments tended to be unstable and soft; military governments were comparatively stable and could provide the security necessary for economic growth. This argument, impressive in the abstract, was perhaps less satisfactory when it got down to cases, because the military who really produced development, were rare in Latin America. Elsewhere they were revolutionaries of a sort themselves, like Nasser, and hardly more agreeable to the capital-commanding class than a Castro. In finding examples of military leadership which asserted control without manhandling the oligarchs, Davies had to force his comparisons: “Consider what Ayub Khan achieved in Pakistan against what Nehru did for India, or the slow but orderly development under General Stroessner in Paraguay as against the disheveled, aid-dependent performance of Paz Estenssoro in Bolivia.”

  In Washington the case for the right-wing alternative seemed to proceed less from thoughtful analysis of the conditions of growth than from unthinking satisfaction with the existing social order. During the Second World War the United States armed services began to become acquainted with Latin America. Our officers naturally associated with members of the oligarchy, who spoke English and invited them to parties, and they naturally developed a fellow feeling for their brother officers south of the border. After the war, the War Department argued that military relations with Latin American governments should be enlarged in the interests of the security of the United States. In 1946 Truman proposed—under Pentagon pressure and over the State Department’s objections—“to standardize military organization, training methods, and equipment” throughout the hemisphere with the evident hope of ultimately producing an inter-American army under United States generalship. In the wake of this policy came a program of arms exports to Latin American countries. This program was reinforced by the Pentagon’s chronic need to dispose of obsolescent weapons and thereby acquire credits against which new ones could be purchased.

  In these years the United States military fell into the habit of conducting their own direct relations with their Latin American counterparts, training them in United States staff schools, sending them on tours of United States military installations, welcoming their arms missions in Washington, showing them the latest available (i.e., most recently obsolescent) ‘hardware’ and engaging in elaborate return visits of their own—all with minimal notice to the Department of State and minimal coordination with the country’s foreign policy objectives. The original rationale for all this was the supposed need to protect the long coastlines of the Americas from foreign attack. In time the notion of a flotilla crossing the ocean to invade Latin America began to lose what thin semblance of probability it might ever have had, and the Pentagon began to cast about for new missions to justify its incestuous relations with the military of Latin America. By 1961 anti-submarine warfare and counter-insurgency were the favorite candidates. The Latin American military naturally responded with delight to all overtures and even, on occasion, were able—as in the case of anti-submarine warfare—to play off the United States Navy against the United States Air Force to get the best possible weapons deal.

  All this had political and economic side effects. United States military aid obviously gave the recipient governments prestige and their military forces power. The service attachés in United States embassies often disagreed with the policies of the Department of State and on occasion communicated the impression that Washington would not really object to actions the local American ambassador might be trying to stop. A few days before Kennedy’s inauguration, General Lemnitzer, the amiable chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had signed a letter to General Stroessner of Paraguay thanking him in terms of extravagant personal encomium for the Christmas gift of a table cloth; his language cheerfully endowed the Paraguayan dictatorship with “Christian spirit” and “moral might.” Such gestures were somehow inconsistent with the spirit of the task force report.

  For their part, democratic Latin American leaders began to use the United States arms program as a means of warding off right-wing coups, appeasing their own military and purchasing time for social reform. Thus Frondizi, who ruled on the sufferance of the Argentine military, hoped to placate his generals and admirals by backing their requests for United States arms. Even Betancourt, confronted by Castro, Trujillo and internal unrest, was determined to make sure of his own army by getting his generals the arms they wanted from the United States. This, of course, encouraged military demands on national budgets: Brazil, Peru, Chile and Argentina were all devoting a quarter or more of their annual expenditures to military purposes.

  By 1961 the special interests of the military were threatening to distort United States policy much as the special interests of business had distorted policy thirty-five years earlier. Still, even in the Eisenhower
administration, the counterrevolutionary case had been a minority view, and in the new administration it had even less hope. After all, the thesis that force was the only thing the Latinos respected was not exactly untested; it was nothing more than a return to the old policy of the Big Stick; and its chief result when tried before had been to make the United States an object of universal detestation. If that policy had endured through the 1930s, the Nazis would have found widespread support throughout the western hemisphere. Only Roosevelt’s renunciation of the Big Stick secured the predominant loyalty of the Latin republics in the Second World War.

  Nonetheless, pressure for a revival of the policy stirred beneath the surface. The chief voice of the counterrevolutionary line within the government was Admiral Arleigh Burke, who represented the Navy on the Joint Chiefs. Like Lemnitzer, he was an amiable man, but with less flexibility of mind, and he pushed his black-and-white views of international affairs with bluff naval persistence. He had opposed the decision of the Eisenhower administration to support OAS sanctions against Trujillo, and he took every opportunity to advocate full support for all anti-communist regimes, whatever their internal character. For men of Burke’s persuasion, talk of an alliance for progress could only seem bleeding-heart, do-good globaloney.

  It was here that Adolf Berle made an essential contribution. For Berle, with all his ardor for democracy and development, comprehended also, in another part of his nature, the shadowy world of intrigue, conspiracy and violence. He had an extensive knowledge of communist movements and a vivid apprehension of communist dangers. He was therefore able to give the new social initiatives an edge of ‘toughness’ which, while it was kept strictly separate from the Alliance for Progress, was still able to protect the idea of the Alliance from those for whom anti-communism was the only issue (as well as in time protect the operations of the Alliance from the communists who sought to destroy it.) This ability to combine awareness of the communist threat with a belief in social revolution was possibly one reason why Kennedy asked Berle to join the administration.

  But the revolutionary point remained primary. For Kennedy fully understood—this was, indeed, the mainspring of all his thinking about Latin America—that, with all its pretensions to realism, the militant anti-revolutionary line represented the policy most likely to strengthen the communists and lose the hemisphere. He believed that, to maintain contact with a continent seized by the course of revolutionary change, a policy of social idealism was the only true realism for the United States.

  5. THE ALLIANCE LAUNCHED

  Berle, believing on principle that the top State Department man on hemisphere affairs should have the rank of Under Secretary, was unwilling to accept the post of Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs. Instead Thomas Mann, whom Dillon had transferred to the hemisphere job in August 1960, stayed on in the new administration, and Berle took a somewhat ambiguous appointment as special adviser on Latin American affairs and chairman of a new and now official Latin American Task Force. This was not an altogether satisfactory arrangement. While Berle knew the State Department well, he had always been something of a loner, and the Foreign Service regarded him with ancient suspicion. Moreover, the professionals mistrusted the new approach to Latin America and were even apprehensive about the phrase “alliance for progress” in the inaugural address. But Mann had played a useful role in helping move hemisphere policy forward in the Eisenhower years; and, though he had an old Latin American hand’s skepticism about the grandiose schemes of the New Frontiersmen and, on occasion, even responded a little to the crotchets of Admiral Burke, he was a good bureaucrat and ready enough to go along.

  Berle and Mann convened the reconstituted Task Force in February. On February 16, Berle again defined the issue—“to develop policies and programs which would channel the revolution now going on in Latin America in the proper direction and to prevent it from being taken over by the Sino-Soviet bloc.” The situation in Latin America, he suggested, resembled that of western Europe in 1947. The Communists had failed then because the Marshall Plan restored western Europe economically while their own opposition to European recovery discredited communism politically. The need now was to confront the Latin American communists with a similar dilemma by offering, so to speak, a moral equivalent of the Marshall Plan, but of course a plan for the development of a continent held down by ignorance and poverty rather than for the reconstruction of a continent rich in managerial and labor skills. The development program, the Task Force agreed, should be on a ten-year basis. It also agreed that new machinery would be necessary; the Inter-American Bank hardly seemed the institution to organize a social revolution. It decided to press for the abolition of the bar against United States assistance to government-owned enterprises. And it concluded by recommending that the President deliver a major address on Latin American policy in the near future.

  In the next week, Dick Goodwin began the White House review of Latin American policy in preparation for the presidential speech. He summoned representatives from all agencies having anything to do with Latin America to a meeting in the Fish Room (so called because Roosevelt had placed a stuffed fish on the wall; preserving the tradition, Kennedy now had a large stuffed sailfish of his own catching in the room). After a prolonged canvass of possible projects, Goodwin adjourned the meeting with the request that each agency submit its recommendations within a week. When I got back from Latin America on March 4, I found him sitting in his attic office in the West Wing behind a desk piled high with memoranda from all over the government.

  He also consulted with Latin Americans in Washington. On March 8 a document of particular interest came in from the group of Latin American economists who had been foremost in the fight for development—Raül Prebisch of ECLA, Felipe Herrera of the Inter-American Bank, José A. Mora of the OAS, Jorge Sol of the Inter-American Economic and Social Council, José Antonio Mayobre, the Venezuelan Ambassador, and others. ‘‘Latin America,’’ the memorandum began, “is in a state of crisis. Deep-running currents are bringing about great changes in the economic and social structure. These changes cannot and should not be stopped for they stem from needs which, in the present situation of Latin America, permit of no delay.” But they must be guided “in order that solutions may be reached which are compatible with the strengthening of fundamental freedoms.”

  “The responsibility for such changes,” the memorandum emphasized, “lies with Latin America,” but international cooperation was imperative if they were to come about in a democratic way. Such international interest had to be free from any suspicion of economic imperialism. “The Latin American masses must be convinced that the tremendous task of transferring modern technology to underdeveloped areas . . . has no other aim than the improvement of their lot.” Nor could it be supposed that the free play of economic forces alone would bring about the required structural change. “Vigorous state action” was necessary; and it would not be easy “to overcome the resistance of private groups without disturbances. The policy of cooperation must take this into consideration.” The group concluded in somber tones:

  We know that Latin America cannot go through the same stages which capitalistic development passed in the course of its historic evolution. We are likewise disturbed at the thought of imitating methods which pursue their economic objectives at the cost of fundamental human freedoms. Latin America still has time to avoid this, but not much time.

  Goodwin’s task now was to reduce the jumble of recommendations to a coherent policy. He finally sought refuge in his house in Georgetown, emerging a day or so later with a draft. Ted Sorensen, to whom he showed it, thought that the program should be formulated in the Kennedy manner as a series of numbered points. Secretary Rusk, reading the next draft, proposed, in the Rockefeller Foundation tradition, a concluding point inviting Latin America to enrich life in the United States through educational and cultural exchange. The Department, in a passing mood of acquiescence, omitted its automatic objection to the use of the word “revolu
tion.” Kennedy went over the draft with special care, strengthening some points, toning down others.

  On March 13 the Latin American diplomatic corps assembled in the East Room of the White House. One hundred thirty-nine years earlier that week the United States had urged the recognition of the Latin republics fighting for independence against Spain. Kennedy noted that the revolution which had begun in Philadelphia in 1776 and Caracas in 1811 was not yet finished; “for our unfulfilled task is to demonstrate to the entire world that man’s unsatisfied aspiration for economic progress and social justice can best be achieved by free men working within a framework of democratic institutions.” The United States had made mistakes in the past; for their part Latin Americans had ignored “the urgency of the need to lift people from poverty and ignorance and despair.” Now was the time, Kennedy said, to turn away from the failures of the past to a future “full of peril, but bright with hope.”

  I have called on all people of the hemisphere to join in a new Alliance for Progress—Alianza para Progreso—a vast cooperative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose, to satisfy the basic needs of the American people for homes, work and land, health and schools—techo, trabajo y tierra, salud y escuela.

  He pronounced the Spanish manfully, but with a distinct New England intonation.

  He went on to outline the program, stressing the need for selfhelp, for national planning, for regional markets, for commodity stabilization and for hemisphere cooperation in education, technical training and research. “If the countries of Latin America are ready to do their part . . . then I believe the United States, for its part, should help provide resources of a scope and magnitude sufficient to make this bold development plan a success.” He emphasized that “to complete the revolution of the Americas . . . political freedom must accompany material progress . . . progreso si, tirania no!” The task was to create an American civilization “where, within the rich diversity of its own traditions, each nation is free to follow its own path towards progress.” His peroration was thrilling: