Land and Tax Reform in Latin America

Report Outline
Drive for Social Reform in the Americas
Latin American Efforts at Land Reform
Reform of Present Systems of Taxation

Drive for Social Reform in the Americas

The President and the Alliance for Progress

By Flying South for one-day visits in Venezuela and Colombia, December 16 and 17, President Kennedy will remind the people of the United States as well as of Latin American countries that success for the Alliance for Progress is a prime goal of his administration. Participation by the President himself in the dedication of new school and housing projects carried out under the program will demonstrate dramatically his interest in this joint effort to improve economic and social conditions in Latin America.

It has been emphasized from the beginning that the Alliance for Progress is to be, not just another foreign aid program, but a cooperative venture. The Latin American countries are expected not only to contribute, according to their ability, to the cost of projects but also to carry out basic economic and fiscal reforms that will improve the chances that the alliance will yield permanent gains. When President Kennedy broached the idea of the alliance, in a talk to Latin American diplomats at the White House last March 13, he said: “Unless necessary social reforms, including land and tax reform, are freely made—unless we broaden the opportunity of all of our people—unless the great mass of Americans share in increasing prosperity—then our alliance, our revolution, our dream and our freedom will fail.”

Marshall Plan aid for European recovery after World War II was conditioned on self-help and economic collaboration on the part of the participating nations, but the reforms now sought in Latin America represent a fundamental departure in this country's approach to the problem of assisting underdeveloped nations. Adlai E. Stevenson, United States representative at the United Nations, has spelled out some of the “new truths” about helping such countries that have been learned since the war. “We learned that economic development can court political disaster if it merely benefits the fortunate few while the gulf between rich and poor grows still more dangerously wide,” Stevenson told the Inter-American Press Association on Oct. 16. “We learned that it was impossible to build a modern economy on foundations of massive poverty, illiteracy, feudalism, tax avoidance and social injustice. We learned, in short, that a social revolution in some cases is a precondition of political stability and economic growth.”