Progress of the Alianza

Report Outline
First Years of Alliance for Progress
Initial Accomplishments of Alliance
Dimensions of Task Ahead for Alliance

First Years of Alliance for Progress

Criticism of Program at Conference in Brazil

The alliance for Progress, now a little more than two years old, is suffering sharp growing pains. The late President Kennedy's ambitious 10-year program to bring “homes, work and land, health and schools” to the peoples of Latin America has come under strong criticism from givers and recipients alike. North Americans and Latin Americans are accusing each other of responsibility for the failure as yet to achieve the lofty economic and social aims voiced at the program's birth.

At the second annual review conference on the Alianza para el Progreso, held Oct. 29 to Nov. 16 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, delegates expressed dissatisfaction with several aspects of this great undertaking. Latin leaders criticized the United States for niggardliness and for insisting on requirements, such as internal reforms, that hold back development programs in their countries. Peru's President Fernando Belaunde Terry, speaking in Lima Oct. 24, had attacked the “slowness” of Alliance for Progress and other aid programs and deplored the “excessive interference” which they entailed in the internal affairs of borrowing nations.

Other Latin American leaders have opposed continuation of the alliance in its present form because they think it too much resembles a unilateral U.S. aid program; they object to United States insistence on approving all projects before purse strings are loosened. The Latin Americans want a larger role in program and project development and approval. Brazilian President Joao Goulart, in a welcoming address at Sao Paulo on Nov. 11, appeared to question the usefulness of the alliance as an instrument for solving Latin American economic problems.