V o L u m e I : a d

upper classes. Military leaders, led by General Augusto Pinochet, finally top-

pled the Allende government on 11 September 1973. Allende committed

suicide in the presidential palace in Santiago on the same day. Pinochet

emerged as the leader of the military junta and ruled Chile until 1989.

James F. Siekmeier

See also

Central Intelligence Agency; Chile; Latin America, Communist Parties in; Nixon,

Richard Milhous; Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto

References

Cockcroft, James D., ed. Salvador Allende Reader: Chile’s Voice of Democracy. Translated

by Moisés Espinosa and Nancy Nuñez. New York: Ocean Press, 2000.

Gustafson, Kristian C. “CIA Machinations in Chile in 1970.” Studies in Intelligence—

The Journal of the American Intelligence Professional 47(3) (2003): 35–50.

Petras, James, and Morris Morley. The United States and Chile: Imperialism and the Over-

throw of the Allende Government. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975.

Sobel, Lester A., ed. Chile and Allende. New York: Facts on File, 1974.

A financial aid program devised by the United States in March 1961 to pro-

mote social reform in Latin America. The program’s architects hoped to curb

violence and prevent communist-inspired revolutions in the region. In its

dealings with Latin America after World War II, the United States had gen-

erally emphasized security imperatives at the expense of social and economic

concerns. Two events in the late 1950s, however, demonstrated the risks of

this course. First, in May 1958 Vice President Richard M. Nixon’s goodwill

tour of South America provoked hostile demonstrations and major rioting

in Caracas, Venezuela, and Lima, Peru. Second, Cuba’s Fidel Castro seized

control of that nation’s government in January 1959, and by 1960 he was

becoming increasingly anti-American and pro-Soviet.

Rejecting the region’s pleas for a Latin American plan similar to the Mar-

shall Plan, the United States had endorsed private investment and free trade

as the keys to Latin America’s socioeconomic development. While this trade-

not-aid approach meshed well with President Dwight Eisenhower’s efforts

to eschew direct aid, it often conflicted with the prevailing economic climate

in Latin America.

By the late 1950s, however, the Eisenhower administration did direct

more of its attention to Latin America’s economic and social problems. Latin

Americans had long sought U.S. support for a regional development bank. In

August 1958 the United States dropped its long-standing opposition to the

bank and in October 1960 supported the establishment of the Inter-American

Development Bank. This shift in U.S. policy continued at Bogotá, Colom-

bia, in September 1960 at a special meeting called by the Council of the

Alliance for Progress

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Alliance for Progress

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Organization of American States (OAS) to study new measures for Pan-

American economic cooperation. In signing the Act of Bogotá, the Eisen-

hower administration laid the groundwork for the Alliance for Progress by

pledging $500 million for economic development and social reform in Latin

America. In return the Latin American nations agreed to implement sound

economic policies and to eliminate obstacles to social and economic progress.

During the U.S. presidential elections of 1960, Democratic nominee

John F. Kennedy criticized the Eisenhower administration and Republican

candidate Richard M. Nixon for “losing” Cuba and failing to align U.S. pol-

icy with the rising aspirations of Latin Americans. After a narrow victory,

Kennedy called for an “alliance for progress” between the United States and

Latin America in his inaugural address.

In March 1961 the Kennedy administration formally committed itself to

an Alliance for Progress with Latin America, a long-term program of U.S. aid

linked to social and structural reforms, economic development, and democ-

ratization. The program took official form at the inter-American meeting

at Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August 1961. The conference proclaimed a

lengthy list of objectives for the program, including democratization, accel-

eration of social and economic development, promotion of education, fair

wages and working conditions, health programs, tax reforms, agrarian reform,

fiscal stability, and the stimulation of private enterprise. To achieve its goals,

112

Alliance for Progress

Patients line up at an impromptu Alliance for Progress clinic set up in a public jailhouse at Potonico, El Salvador, in the

1960s. (National Archives and Records Administration)

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the program would need $100 billion during its first decade. External sources

would furnish $20 billion of the needed $100 billion, with the United States

pledging to provide a major part of that funding. The remaining $80 billion

was expected to come from Latin American sources, both public and private.

The U.S. preoccupation with containing the communist threat was very much

in evidence in its launching of the program, which was designed to provide

peaceful, democratic alternatives to violent social revolution and a “second

Cuba” in the hemisphere.

Nevertheless, the objectives of the Alliance for Progress soon collided

with the harsh realities of international economics and growing domestic

pressures in both Latin America and the United States. The program implic-

itly assumed that most Latin American elites would support reforms to avoid

violent revolution. Many of the elites, however, were not serious about

implementing major reform, realizing that such changes might strip them of

power. With Latin America already experiencing a high level of political

instability, U.S. officials hesitated to apply too much pressure for reform,

fearing that it would only add to the political uncertainty in the region. And

if the program promoted growth but not structural reforms, the traditional

elites would naturally reap most of the rewards of increased growth. Much of

the Alliance for Progress aid went to paying off earlier loans rather than pro-

moting social modernization and economic development. Rapid population

growth in Latin America also undermined potential advances in social and

economic reform.

Domestic politics in the United States also hindered the success of the

Alliance for Progress program. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 removed the

leader most closely connected to the fate of the program. Projected funding

for the program was based on capital needs for a decade, but the annual U.S.

congressional appropriations process meant that presidents could not guar-

antee long-term levels of economic aid.

In the United States, a series of problems undercut the Alliance for

Progress beginning in the mid-1960s. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. John-

son, was primarily interested in domestic issues, while in foreign policy he

became increasingly preoccupied with the deteriorating situation in Viet-

nam. The ability of the program to uplift Latin America was oversold from

its inception. These exaggerated hopes for the program made later disillu-

sionment with it all the easier. Latin American governments were often

unwilling or unable to implement the program’s structural reforms. The U.S.

Congress cut funding for the program, which quickly lost its reform content

and evolved into a conventional aid program. Although there was no offi-

cially declared ending of the Alliance for Progress, like many other programs

of its time, it became subsumed by political pressures and broader Cold War

imperatives and thus never fulfilled its original goals.

Don M. Coerver

See also

Bogotá, Act of; Castro, Fidel; Cuba; Eisenhower, Dwight David; Johnson, Lyndon

Baines; Kennedy, John Fitzgerald; Marshall Plan; Organization of American States

Alliance for Progress

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