A Thousand Days

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

  No one need have worried. Wildly enthusiastic crowds lined the streets in Caracas and the next day in Bogotá. “Do you know why those workers and campesinos are cheering you like that?” Lleras Camargo asked Kennedy. “It’s because they believe you are on their side.” That night at the San Carlos Palace the American President set forth the promise of the Alliance. “We in the United States,” he said, “have made many mistakes in our relations with Latin America. We have not always understood the magnitude of your problems, or accepted our share of responsibility for the welfare of the hemisphere. But we are committed in the United States—our will and our energy—to an untiring pursuit of that welfare and I have come to this country to reaffirm that dedication.” Then he said, “The leaders of Latin America, the industrialists and the landowners, are, I am sure, also ready to admit past mistakes and accept new responsibilities.”

  Each year he made a Latin American trip, with the democratic revolution his constant theme. On his arrival in Mexico City in June 1962 he saluted the Mexican Revolution and added that “the revolution of this hemisphere” would be incomplete “until every child has a meal and every student has an opportunity to study, and everyone who wishes to work can find a job, and everyone who wishes a home can find one, and everyone who is old can have security.” Then he and Jacqueline rode into the city amidst unending cries of “Viva Kennedy” and a pink snowstorm of confetti. The following spring he carried the message to a meeting of the Central American Presidents in Costa Rica. Speaking at the University of Costa Rica (he began his remarks: “It is a great pleasure to leave Washington, where I am lectured to by professors, to come to Costa Rica where I can speak to students”), he reminded his audience of the changes Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had wrought in the United States and then affirmed a continent-wide “right to social justice,” which meant “land for the landless, and education for those who are denied education . . . [and the end of] ancient institutions which perpetuate privilege.”

  He often wondered how he could strengthen the governments most deeply pledged to these objectives. For a time he even mused about the possibility of a ‘club’ of democratic presidents—Betancourt, Lleras, Jorge Alessandri of Chile, José Orlich Balmarcich of Costa Rica, José Rivera of El Salvador—which might meet regularly in Palm Beach or Puerto Rico, hoping that this might be an incentive for other chiefs of state to commit themselves to the struggle for democracy; but this idea presented obvious problems, and nothing came of it. In the meantime, he seized every opportunity to signify his respect for men like Betancourt and Lleras. When Betancourt came to Washington in February 1963, Kennedy welcomed him as representing “all that we admire in a political leader.”

  Your liberal leadership of your own country, your persistent determination to make a better life for your people, your long fight for democratic leadership not only in your own country but in the entire area of the Caribbean, your companionship with other liberal progressive leaders of this hemisphere, all these have made you, for us, a symbol of what we wish for our own country and for our sister republics.

  3. THE SHOWCASE THAT FAILED

  The President’s emphasis was absolutely correct. Democratic leadership in the Latin countries was fundamental to the success of the Alliance. Without it United States aid and exhortation could do little. If anyone had doubted this proposition, it received full verification in the tribulations of the Dominican Republic. Since 1930 Rafael Trujillo had operated a cruel and efficient dictatorship on the eastern half of the lovely but tragic old Spanish island of Hispaniola. His oppression of his own people was considered beyond the reach of the Organization of American States; but, when he sent his agents to Caracas to kill Betancourt, the OAS rallied and in August 1960 recommended that its members break ambassadorial relations with Trujillo and embargo the import of arms and petroleum. In early 1961 Washington began to hear increasing reports of unrest on the island. In February Adolf Berle predicted a blow-up of some sort within three months. He was astonishingly prescient. On May 30 a group of disgruntled army officers stopped Trujillo’s car late one night and shot him down.

  The assassination took Washington by surprise. The President, who was then in Paris on his visit to de Gaulle, was confronted on his return by a Dominican regime under Joaquín Balaguer, who had been the nominal president under Trujillo, with Trujillo’s son Ramfis still in charge of the armed forces. Kennedy examined the situation realistically. “There are three possibilities,” he said, “in descending order of preference: a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo regime or a Castro regime. We ought to-aim at the first, but we really can’t renounce the second until we are sure that we can avoid the third.”

  The problem was whether a country where potential political leadership had been Suppressed, murdered or exiled for more than a generation could easily acquire the instincts and skills of selfgovernment. For the next three months the President endeavored to assess the democratic prospects. He sent Robert Murphy, one of the most experienced of American diplomats, and John Bartlow Martin, one of the best of American reporters, on quiet trips to Santo Domingo. Martin came back with a 115-page report so enthralling that Kennedy read it all with relish one autumn afternoon as he listened to the World Series. The accumulating information suggested that Balaguer was making an honest attempt to bring about a transition to democracy. The presence of young Trujillo remained troubling, however; and his control of the army presumably limited our capacity to do anything about him. Toward the end of August the State Department proposed that we try to induce the army, Balaguer, Ramfis Trujillo and the moderate opposition to stick together in order to lay the foundations for movement toward self-government. Kennedy agreed. “Balaguer is our only tool,” he said. “The anti-communist liberals aren’t strong enough. We must use our influence to take Balaguer along the road to democracy.”

  Others at the meeting in the Cabinet Room supported this policy, some in terms that suggested a certain scorn for the democratic opposition. One described the intricate factional differences within the opposition in such vivid language that the Attorney General passed me a note, “This is as bad as New York City.” Finally Morales-Carrión, evidently distressed over this part of the discussion, spoke up with sober eloquence. “The democratic opposition,” he said, “are the people who represent the only possibility of democratic government in the Dominican Republic. They are the counterparts of the people who made democracy effective in Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Naturally they are not too well disciplined at the moment. They have lived under tyranny for thirty years. Now the lid is off, political life has revived and it is not always under control. But we must understand them and their position and their hopes. Otherwise we will lose all chance of bringing democracy to the Dominican Republic.”

  The President listened with a mixture of sympathy and doubt. Finally he said, “Yes, yes, but the whole key in all those countries is the emergence of a leader—a liberal figure who can command popular support as against the military and who will carry out social and economic reform—a Nehru or a Munoz. No such figure has emerged. We don’t know who he will be. The great danger in the next six months is a take-over by the army, which could lead straight to Castro. That is the situation we have to deal with now—that is why we must get a modus vivendi among all the forces prepared to commit themselves to democracy, instead of letting them tear themselves apart and let in the far right or the far left. The eventual problem is to find someone who will symbolize the future for the island.”

  In the Dominican Republic the democratic opposition insisted on the expulsion of Ramfis Trujillo as the condition for any rapprochement with Balaguer. Washington instructed its representatives there to support this view. Finally in mid-November Ramfis agreed to leave the country. But the next day two of his uncles made an unexpected return to the island, Ramfis canceled his departure and the developments seemed to portend a military coup to restore the Trujillo family to power. Washington read the cables with risin
g concern. The President directed the Secretary of State to put out a statement saying that the United States would not remain indifferent if the Trujillos attempted to “reassert dictatorial domination.” Then Kennedy decided on a bold stroke: the dispatch of eight American ships, with 1800 Marines on board, to steam visibly off Santo Domingo just outside the three-mile limit, ready to go in if the Balaguer government asked for them. Given the ingrained Latin American hatred of gunboat diplomacy, this course involved obvious risks. On the other hand, it would be, for once, Yankee intervention to sustain a democratic movement rather than to destroy it, and the President was prepared to take his chance.

  We waited with some apprehension until surprising and heartening word came in from Santo Domingo. It must have been a unique moment in Latin American history: the people dancing in the streets, cheering the United States fleet and shouting enthusiastic vivas for the gringos. The presence of the fleet encouraged General Pedro Rodríguez Echavarría of the air force to rise against Ramfis. The Trujillos quickly fled, this time for good; and Kennedy’s action won commendation throughout Latin America. Only Fidel Castro objected. The incident provided striking evidence of the change in Latin American attitudes Kennedy had wrought in the seven months since the Bay of Pigs.

  But the ordeal of Dominican democracy was just beginning.* As Washington saw the problem, transition to democracy required the broadening of the Balaguer government by the incorporation of representatives of the democratic groups opposed to Trujillismo. These groups were the Unión Cívica, a miscellaneous collection of factions, under the leadership of Viriato Fiallo, which had steadfastly opposed Trujillo and now enjoyed wide popular support; the 14th of June movement, which had moderate and leftist wings and strongly appealed to Dominican youth; and the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano, under Juan Bosch, with more experienced leadership but as yet incapable of mass action.

  Strenuous efforts were made after the Trujillos’ downfall to bring these disparate elements together. The American Consul General, John Hill, was reinforced by Morales-Carrión, who for several years had been in touch with the anti-Trujillista movement and had friends in all camps. For several weeks, Hill and Morales-Carrión worked hard at getting a consensus among the Dominicans. But the animosities and suspicions engendered by the Trujillista period made mediation a thankless task. On December 15 President Kennedy stopped in Puerto Rico on his way to Venezuela. That evening the President, Goodwin, Woodward, Bowles, Hill and Morales-Carrión met at La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion. After carefully considering the situation, President Kennedy decided on a personal appeal to Balaguer and Rodríguez Echavarría. His intervention was the catalyst that made possible the establishment of a Council of State, committed to a program of political democracy and the preparation of elections. When Rodríguez Echavarría, who hated the Unión Cívica, then attempted a coup, the popular reaction defeated him.

  The Council, under its chairman, Rafael Bonnelly, was never a strong government; but it brought peace and personal freedom to the Dominican Republic and in December 1962, with the technical assistance of the OAS, it held the only democratic election that the people had known in generations. The election resulted in the victory of Bosch, who had returned the year before from twenty years of exile. An old friend of Muñoz, Figueres and Betancourt, Bosch was strongly in the progressive democratic tradition. “The Alliance for Progress,” he said after the election, “is a political and economic ideal for which we, the democratic, revolutionary leaders of Latin America, have been fighting for a long time.” Kennedy instructed our government to give Bosch full support, hoping that the Dominican Republic might become a democratic showcase in the Caribbean.

  But Bosch was essentially a literary figure, better as short story writer than as statesman. In spite of the invasion of the islands by swarms of Washington economists and engineers, of foundation experts and private consultants, in spite of grants and loans and blueprints, the Bosch government was not able in 1963 to reduce unemployment or prepare a national development program. In the meantime, Bosch alienated the upper classes by his words without winning over the lower by his deeds, while his faith in civil liberties allowed his foes, especially in the army, to stigmatize him most unjustly as pro-communist. But one cannot blame Bosch too much. Even had he been a Nehru or a Muñoz he would have confronted problems of overwhelming difficulty: a nation without democratic tradition or experience, a government without trained administrators, an army dominated by Trujillistas and an economy burdened by a staggering inheritance of foreign debt leaving him, he thought, no choice but to pursue orthodox monetary policies.

  Kennedy watched the Dominican troubles with disappointment but not with much surprise. It confirmed his sense both of the limited capacity of the United States to work unilateral miracles and of the dependence of the Alliance on Latin American leadership.

  4. COMMUNISM IN THE WINGS

  The Alliance for Progress represented the affirmative side of Kennedy’s policy. The other side was his absolute determination to prevent any new state from going down the Castro road and so giving the Soviet Union a second bridgehead in the hemisphere.

  It was idle to suppose that communism in Latin America was no more than the expression of an indigenous desire for social reform. Latin America had long occupied an honored place in Leninist meditations about the future of world politics. Not only were Marxist ideas far more relevant to Latin American feudalism than they were, for example, to African tribalism, but communist success in Latin America would deal a much harder blow to the power and influence of the United States. Communist parties had existed for forty years in the major countries. Latin Americans, regularly summoned to training schools in Moscow or Prague, learning everything from political doctrine to paramilitary warfare, carried their lessons back to their homelands. Khrushchev himself made no secret of his hopes for the western hemisphere. “Latin America,” he said in 1960, “reminds one of an active volcano.” And, while the Alliance was the best way of attacking the long-run sources of communist appeal, it could not by itself ward off short-run attempts at disruption and subversion: if I may borrow back a line I once contributed to a speech of Dean Rusk’s, “Vitamin tablets will not save a man set upon by hoodlums in an alley.”

  Communism had both targets of priority and targets of convenience in Latin America. Venezuela and Brazil, for example, seemed to be the chief targets of priority. The main target of convenience in 1961—that is, one which became attractive less for intrinsic desirability than because it was there—was a small country, still an English colony, British Guiana.

  British Guiana had a population of about 600,000, almost evenly divided between the Negroes of the towns and the East Indians of the countryside. The people enjoyed a considerable measure of self-government and, if things went according to schedule, were due for full independence in another year or two. An election in September 1961 brought the Indian party, the People’s Progressive Party, and its leader Dr. Cheddi Jagan into office. Jagan was unquestionably some sort of Marxist. His wife, an American girl whom he had met while studying dentistry in Chicago, had once been a member of the Young Communist League. His party lived by the clichés of an impassioned, quasi-Marxist, anti-colonialist socialism.

  Jagan was plainly the most popular leader in British Guiana. The question was whether he was recoverable for democracy. Senator Dodd of Connecticut had pronounced him a communist agent, but then he had said the same thing about Sékou Touré. The British, on the other hand, were not unsympathetic toward Jagan. Though they had earlier imprisoned him more than once, they now claimed it was possible to work with him and that he was more responsible than his rival, the Negro leader Forbes Burnham. Their view, as communicated at the highest level, was that if Jagan’s party were the choice of the people, London and Washington should do their best to keep him on the side of the west by cooperating fully with him and giving his regime economic support. Otherwise he would turn to the communist bloc, which would only guarantee
Soviet influence in an independent British Guiana.

  This was the situation when Jagan, after his election, expressed a desire to come to Washington and talk about assistance for his development program. At that point the State Department saw no real alternative to the British policy. The aid budget made tentative provision for assistance in the magnitude of $5 million. Then in late October 1961 Jagan arrived. He made his American debut, like so many other visiting statesmen, on Meet the Press, where he resolutely declined to say anything critical of the Soviet Union and left an impression of either wooliness or fellow-traveling. This appearance instantly diminished the enthusiasm for helping his government. The President, who caught the last half of the show, called for a re-examination of all aspects of the problem, saying he wanted no commitments made until he had seen Jagan himself.

  Jagan talked with the President on the morning of October 25. He turned out to be a personable and fluent East Indian but endowed, it seemed to those of us present, with an unconquerable romanticism or naïveté. He began by outlining the economic circumstances of British Guiana and his own development plans. When he explained that, as a socialist, he felt that only state planning could break the bottlenecks, Kennedy said, ‘‘I want to make one thing perfectly clear. We are not engaged in a crusade to force private enterprise on parts of the world where it is not relevant. If we are engaged in a crusade for anything, it is national independence. That is the primary purpose of our aid. The secondary purpose is to encourage individual freedom and political freedom. But we can’t always get that; and we have often helped countries which have little personal freedom, like Yugoslavia, if they maintain their national independence. This is the basic thing. So long as you do that, we don’t care whether you are socialist, capitalist, pragmatist or whatever. We regard ourselves as pragmatists.” As for nationalization, the President said that we would, of course, expect compensation, but that we had lived with countries like Mexico and Bolivia which had carried out nationalization programs.