Chapter 74: Oye Como Va - 1962 - 1972 in Latin America
Throughout the Eisenhower administration, and especially in the late 1950’s, the United States began to pursue a policy of strengthening diplomatic relations with her Latin American neighbors to the south. In March of 1961, the newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy decided to double down on this new direction and proposed a bold, ten year plan for pan-American economic cooperation in Latin America: “...we propose to complete the revolution of the Americas, to build a hemisphere where all men can hope for a suitable standard of living and all can live out their lives in dignity and in freedom. To achieve this goal political freedom must accompany material progress...Let us once again transform the American Continent into a vast crucible of revolutionary ideas and efforts, a tribute to the power of the creative energies of free men and women, an example to all the world that liberty and progress walk hand in hand. Let us once again awaken our American revolution until it guides the struggles of people everywhere-not with an imperialism of force or fear but the rule of courage and freedom and hope for the future of man.” The initiative, christened the “Alliance for Progress” by the Administration, was part of President Kennedy’s vision for making the world a better place, while also spreading American ideals about liberty and capitalism to its “backyard” in the western hemisphere. Signed at an inter-American conference at Punta del Este, Uruguay in August of that year, the charter of the Alliance called for the following: an annual increase of 2.5% in per capita income; the establishment of democratic governments; the elimination of adult illiteracy by 1970; price stability, to avoid inflation or deflation; more equitable income distribution, land reform, and further economic and social planning. The Charter also had three additional requirements. First, Latin American countries had to pledge $80 billion in capital investment over the next ten years, which would be added to an additional $20 billion supplied and guaranteed by the United States within that same decade. Second, Latin American delegates required the participating countries to draw up comprehensive plans for national development. These plans were then to be submitted for approval by an inter-American board of experts. Third, tax codes were to be updated, to demand “more from those who have the most” and land reform was to be implemented as well.
The Alliance was met with both support and skepticism at home and abroad, with the Administration’s advocates cheering it as a “second Marshall Plan” and a plainspoken display of good neighborliness and sensible friendly foreign policy; and its detractors decrying it as either “thinly veiled economic imperialism” in the words of Gore Vidal, or “a damned waste of money” according to Barry Goldwater. Regardless of the political capital involved in keeping it afloat, President Kennedy strongly believed in the Alliance, and made helping it flourish an absolute priority whenever possible throughout his two terms in the White House. Governor Luis Munoz Marin of Puerto Rico was a close advisor on Latin American affairs to Kennedy, and one of the principal architects of the Alliance, alongside Teodoro Moscoso, the mind behind “Operation Bootstrap”, which had largely transformed Puerto Rico from an agrarian island territory to a modern, industrial one, and the administration believed it could serve as a model for the entire region. Together, Marin and Moscoso kept the President informed on the progress of the Alliance, and the President repaid them by using the titanic weight of his popularity and charm to keep it well funded in Washington.
Because of the program, economic assistance to Latin America nearly tripled between fiscal year 1960 and fiscal year 1961. Between 1962 and President Kennedy leaving office in 1969, the U.S. provided around $3.5 Billion in aid each year, that amount rising to nearly $5 Billion in the latter half of the decade, as the U.S. economy boomed and with it, the Federal government’s budget surplus, leaving the Administration plenty of wiggle room in terms of its bottom line. All told, $34 Billion in American foreign aid was sent south over the course of the Kennedy Administration and though not perfectly successful at attaining all of its noble aims, the Alliance for Progress did see some of its lofty goals achieved. Economic growth in regional output per capita in Latin America was 3.0% throughout the 1960’s, surpassing the alliance’s initial goal of 2.5%, and came in stark contrast to the relatively slow 2.2% growth rate per capita of the preceding decade. By the latter half of the decade, and into the 1970’s that growth rate per capita would accelerate first to 3.3%, then 3.5% by 1973. Fifteen nations (including regional powers Mexico and Brazil) met or exceeded their goals, four nations did not, and only little Haiti actually saw negative growth during the Alliance’s heyday. Though not completely wiped out, adult illiteracy in the region was severely curtailed. In some countries, the number of attendees to universities doubled or even tripled, and access to secondary-level education for the common people increased by leaps and bounds. Many working class Latin Americans were provided with new schools, textbooks, and housing. One in four school-age children were provided with an extra food ration, free of charge. The Alliance also saw the beginnings of much needed long-term reform in the region: improvements in land use and distribution, especially in Chile; improved tax codes and administrations; the submission of detailed development programs to the Organization of American States (OAS); the creation by many countries of central planning agencies; and greater local efforts toward providing housing, education, and stable financial institutions. New health clinics were constructed across the region, as growing populations placed strains on existing medical services there. Minimum wage laws were created, and the United States worked to ensure that they were meaningful, rather than simply nominal. When Nicaragua’s government attempted to issue minimum wages to its people so low that there would have been no appreciable impact on real wages, President Kennedy dispatched Secretary of State McNamara to the country to apply pressure to raise them. Overall, the quality of life in Latin America was on its way up, thanks to the Alliance and the firm belief in it held by President Kennedy.
One would be remiss to study the history of Latin America in the 1960’s and not cover the vast forces at work politically across the region during that time. Elected under the shadow of the Cuban Revolution and nearly shattering his fledgling administration with the ludicrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, John F. Kennedy demanded a new American policy in Latin America, of which the Alliance for Progress was only one component. Because of U.S. aid in economically developing the region, and the Kennedy Doctrine: supporting Democratically elected governments, regardless of their political leanings in a hopeful process toward friendship and trade-based relationships, the region avoided many near-scrapes with totalitarian rule during this period. In Venezuela, President Romulo Betancourt faced determined opposition to his leadership from extremists and rebellious army units, yet continued to fight for educational and economic reform. A fierce opponent of dictatorships of the left and the right alike, Betancourt was a committed social democrat and made himself a staunch ally of Kennedy and the United States. It was not always easy for Betancourt to defend his tenuous position, however.
In 1962, a fraction split from President Betancourt’s party of government, Democratic Action and formed the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). When leftists supporting the movement were involved in unsuccessful revolts at Navy bases throughout the country, Betancourt temporarily suspended civil liberties and restored order. In response, radical elements on the left formed the Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN), a communist guerrilla army, to overthrow the Democratically elected Betancourt administration. This action was wildly unpopular with moderates however, and drove the leftists underground, where they would proceed to engage in rural and urban acts of terrorism. These attacks included sabotaging oil pipelines, bombing a Sears-Roebuck warehouse, kidnapping American Army Colonel Michael Smolen, attempting to assassinate football legend Alfredo Di Stefano, and bombing the United States embassy in Caracas. The organization’s ultimate goal was to rally the rural poor to mass revolution, ala Cuba, and disrupt the nation’s 1963 elections, something they would ultimately, thankfully fail to do. After numerous attacks, the MIR and Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) members of Congress were finally arrested. The elections, held December 1st, 1963, were declared by the United Nations: “The most open and honest in Venezuela to date”, and March 11th, 1964 was a day of pride for the people of Venezuela. For the first time in the nation’s history, the presidential sash passed from one democratically elected chief executive to another. It should be noted that prior to Betancourt changing the law, all presidents in Venezuela were elected by Congress, rather than directly by the people. He was Venezuela's first democratically-elected president to serve his full term, and was succeeded by Raúl Leoni. It was thus Romulo Betancourt who established a democratic precedent for the nation that had been ruled by dictatorships for most of its history and changed the view of the outside world of Latin America being a “playground of warlords and dictators”. It was revolution not by violence, but by popular vote. Without historical reference until then, Betancourt created the political model that would survive in Venezuela and throughout Latin America for many years afterward. He would go down in history as one Caracas’ finest leaders.
It became clear after the fact that Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had been arming the rebels, so Venezuela protested this meddling to the OAS. In response, President Kennedy gave his new foreign policy teeth, taking bold action in the wake of the revelations. The U.S. suspended economic ties and broke off diplomatic relations with several dictatorships, starting in 1961, including Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru. The U.S. finally decided it best to train Latin American militaries in counter-insurgency tactics at the School of the Americas, in an effort to help Democratically elected governments fend off rebels who hoped to illegally install communist regimes against the will of the common people. In effect, the Alliance for Progress included U.S. programs of military and police assistance to counter Communism, including Plan LAZO in Colombia from 1959 to 1964. On his end, President Kennedy’s dedication to supporting democratically elected governments in the region would be tested when foreign policy talks in the White House turned to the developing nation of Brazil, and its left-leaning nationalist President, Joao Goulart.
Above: U.S. President Kennedy and Brazilian President Goulart, on a state visit to the United States, 1962.
Despite the overwhelming desire of JFK to refrain from overthrowing democratically elected governments, as evidenced by his eventual handling of the coup attempt in Greece later in the decade, Brazil presented a unique issue for the administration. In his efforts to strengthen American relations with Latin America, he quickly came into contact with President Goulart of Brazil. At first the two seemed to get along just fine. It soon became a fear of Kennedy’s cabinet however that Goulart was becoming too friendly with anti-American radicals in the Brazilian government. Kennedy was obsessed with preventing Brazil from “becoming another Cuba or China”, especially as Kennedy faced reelection in 1964, and did not want his foreign policy to be seen as weak in any way. To this end, the President held his nose and authorized his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, then Secretary of Defense McNamara, and U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon to work with the CIA to draw up a plan to overthrow Goulart in a military coup. The plan was to have Goulart removed sometime early in ‘64, while he was away on a foreign trip, so the story would carry weight through the election cycle and disarm Republican cases against the President. Bobby complimented his brother for “having the courage to do what had to be done in Brazil” and described Goulart as “a wily politician”, pointing to the Brazilian’s decision to appoint hard left-wingers and “communists” into prominent state offices in his administration. The President avoided thinking about it overmuch, but accepted that this was just the way things had to be.
Dallas changed everything. Given a new outlook on life after being spared an untimely death, and seeing his poll numbers skyrocket in public sympathy, JFK found the confidence he needed to stay the course in Latin America and follow the Doctrine he truly believed in, rather than what he was told would be politically advantageous. Against the advice of Bobby, McNamara, and all his other foreign policy advisors, save Dean Rusk, Kennedy pulled the plug on plans for the coup attempt and instead made further peaceful overtures to the Goulart government. The two met again, this time in Sao Paulo, and discussed how to engender closer relations between their peoples. In exchange for removing the “communists” from power and closely aligning with the U.S. in Cold War geo-political posturing, Brazil could expect favorable trading status with their powerful northern neighbor, as well as “continued security”; a thinly veiled threat which Goulart understood and accepted. Goulart used money received through the Alliance for Progress and his relationship with the Americans’ to pursue what he called “a basic reform policy” whose tenets precipitated greater intervention in his country’s economy by the central government and had several key aims: combating adult illiteracy via educational reform, including the development of new universities and a promise to spend 15% of all government income on education; reform of the nation’s tax code, which included a progressive income tax and control of any transfer of profits by multinational companies with headquarters abroad; the profits promised to be reinvested in Brazil; expansion of voting rights to the illiterate and low-ranking military officers; and desperately needed land reform which sought to modernize and make more efficient the nation’s vast countryside. As many of these goals were in line with those laid out in the Alliance for Progress’ charter, Kennedy settled into an agreement with Goulart which was questioned by contemporaries, but would be lauded retrospectively by historians for its foresight. Kennedy’s restraint precipitated a warming of relations between the U.S. and Brazil, and enabled Brazil’s eventual rise to the status of a secondary power…
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OOC: I know that the above section runs counter to an answer to a question on the subject I have made in the past, but I feel this is more in line with TTL’s President Kennedy’s values. I apologize for any confusion caused by any of this, and am happy to answer clarifying questions.]
The Kennedy years were indeed good times for many countries in Latin America. That being said, not all was yet as it should have been in some parts of the region. Mexico experienced its own “economic miracle” thanks to internal development combined with foreign investment and the Alliance, yet it remained a relatively poor country, and that newfound growth was by no means distributed equally. Social inequality became a major cause of discontent in the country, leading to a so-called “Dirty War” fought between the increasingly authoritarian PRI government and democratic protesters. President Kennedy criticized the government in Mexico City vigorously, especially after the Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968 which claimed the lives of nearly 500 anti-government activists, and channeled American support and protection to Carlos A. Madrazo, a former leader of PRI and a tireless reformer dedicated to seeing a more democratic Mexico. Madrazo first caught Kennedy’s attention in 1965, when he had been fired from his leadership of PRI by then Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz under suspicion of “disloyalty”. Insisting on replacing useless old bureaucrats and government officials with dynamic, idealistic members of his own, more youthful generation, Madrazo earned many enemies in Ordaz’s government, but reminded President Kennedy a little bit of himself. Kennedy invited Madrazo to the White House to be the guest of honor at a state dinner and privately encouraged him to run in Mexico’s next Presidential election, scheduled for July 5th, 1970. The former Governor of Tabasco, still active in PRI politics and eager to get back “into the game” agreed with the American leader, and announced his candidacy shortly into the administration of Kennedy’s successor, President Romney. Despite two attempts made on his life during an incredibly tumultuous election which would see PRI’s one party rule, which had held since universal suffrage was enacted in the country in 1917, come to a dramatic close, Carlos A. Madrazo rallied the masses and public opinion behind him, managing to pull off the impossible. He would be elected Mexico’s 50th President in one of the great electoral upsets of the 20th century. A celebrated man of the people, Madrazo’s Presidency would provide much needed electoral reform and stability to the country, and enable it to capitalize on its newfound economic growth, building a nation which would be much more pleasant and safe for all of its people in the future. Madrazo would go down a hero in Mexican history and be hailed as one of its finest leaders...
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The conclusion of John F. Kennedy’s time in the White House and the election of George Romney sounded a note of uncertainty for the future of U.S. relations with Latin America. Though Romney had begrudgingly admitted during the 1968 campaign that the Alliance for Progress was “a solid bit of foreign policy”, he insisted that “the gravy train needs to stop sometime” and vowed to cut funding for the program in half when he took the oath the following year. During the transition, President Kennedy pleaded on behalf of his pet project, pointing to turning tides in Brazil, Venezuela, elsewhere, and he hoped eventually in Mexico as proof that the Alliance was working. Romney softened his opposition to the program somewhat, maintaining 3/4ths of its budget, and overruled Secretary of State Nixon when his adviser recommended that the Alliance be shut down altogether. He wasn’t about to be as generous as that liberal dreamer Kennedy, but he wasn’t Ebenezer Scrooge, either. Though often embarrassed at his derogatory nickname “Mex” for having been born south of the border, the new President was not ashamed of the country of his birth itself. Indeed, when Madrazo won his great surprise victory on July 5th, 1970, Romney was the first world leader to call and congratulate him. During their conversation, Romney said: “Yesterday, my people celebrated their freedom from tyranny and oppression. Today, your people celebrate theirs.” Madrazo and Romney struck up a close friendship in the years that followed, and pursued warm relations in trade and diplomacy between their nations. Despite these overtures however, Romney’s foreign policy was not nearly as idealistic or patient as President Kennedy’s had been. The “First Irish Brahmin” favored slow, diplomatic action and a firm insistence on democracy and liberty in its allies abroad. “The Romney Doctrine”, as written by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, seemed a return to the realpolitik of the Eisenhower and Truman years. Favoring a harder line against left-wing insurgents to match First Secretary Andropov’s implicit support of militants in Southeast Asia, Romney turned up the pressure on Latin American countries to distance themselves from Moscow and Beijing, and threatened to cut off funding from nations who could not “play ball” with the United States. In accordance with this new policy, Romney ordered an economic war on the Republic of Chile after Salvador Allende, a devoted socialist, was elected President of that country in 1970. The resulting downturn in the economy there led to increased unrest and severely destabilized the Allende government. Still not wholly pleased, Nixon and Kissinger were beginning to discuss plotting the overthrow of Allende in a military coup, to be orchestrated with help from CIA Director Richard Helms when the President was assassinated in Milwaukee.
Democratic supporters of the Alliance, such as Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York decried the Romney Administration’s policies as “dishonest” and “a betrayal of what the Alliance stands for”, but were largely quieted in the wake of the President’s murder. It seemed unseemly at the time to criticize the dead too harshly, and so Kennedy and the nation’s other liberals rested their hopes, until the 1972 election, on the newly sworn in President George Bush, who promised in his rushed “inauguration” speech to the country to create a “kinder, gentler nation” than the one he inherited from his predecessor. What that would mean for Salvador Allende and U.S. - Latin American relations, however… only time would tell.
Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: Hollywood Finds Several New Stars
