NATURE AND PURPOSE OF ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400130011-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 11
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE ARTICLE

Approved For Release 2006ICN48.5Rd
SEPTEMBER 16, 1965
NATURE AND PURPOSE Or, AL- As Senator FULSRICHT has pointed out, communism, to hold back the tide that
LIANCE . FOR PROGRES$- ( Juan Bosch and his party were bringing would otherwise sweep them away. That
Mr. RANDOLPH. Mr. President, I -to their country the kind of revolution ? is the surest way I know to hasten the
yield 10 minutes to the distinguished, envisioned by the Alliance for Progress.; day when the great masses of people In
Senator from Oregon. , But by 1965, the Defense Department, the' Latin America will have no other path'
Mr. MORSE. Mr. President, ? yester- U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Re-' to follow to the promise of economic
public, and many other high officials in "freedom than the Communist path.
day the chairman of the Committee on-- the State Department and on the White'
Foreign Relations reported on the find- House staff were frightened by the pros-I , It is a false promise; but we are in
ings and the conclusions he reached from pect. They were frightened by the pros-danger of making the AnotherAnte v e a false
the hearings held by the Committee nn. -nest of returning to the practical'ennl~-'17rO311iSC, too. intervention on
voluntary efforts, the Communist ele=-I though U.S. aid to the Reid junta had
? minican Republic.
I want to endorse what he said 100
percent, both in its generalities and in
its specifics.
But I want to add some observations
of my own.
It is obvious from our activities in the
Dominican Republic that the American
Government does not have a clear idea,
1 an Idea appreciated uniformly through-
out all its departments, of the nature or
purpose of the Alliance for Progress.
Its purpose is to help reform the so-
cial, economic, and political systems of
all nondemocratic nations of the hemi-
sphere. We think of It as a peaceful,
nonviolent revolution, perhaps more in
the nature of rapid evolution than true
revolution. It is inconsistent with 'sup-
port of economic or military oligarchies
or political dictatorships.
We believe that the economic, politi-
cal, and social institutions which have
prevailed in many places in South and
Centro. America for the past 50 years
are totally inadequate to the present
needs of the people. We saw the rise
of Castro as the handwriting on the wall,
and we took It as a warning that if af-
fairs continued in the southern half of
the hemisphere uninterrupted by any
tended to change the status quo in Latin How many countries can we occupy at'
America. We are pouring a billion dol- one time? That is a question the De
menus which won power in Cuba would
be able to lead a Communist revolution
in many more neighboring countries.
So the Alliance for Progress was de-
vised not to suppress the demand for
change, but to aid it and direct It in
certain paths. That is the message the
Department of Defense and the Central
Intelligence Agency have not yet under-
stood. The Alliance for Progress is in-
lars a year of private and public money
into that endeavor. Yet the Defense De-
partment and the__C_IA spend millions answer before they commit U.S. backing
more trying to offset-tfre Alliance and to and intervention to every junta and po-;
forestall Its purposes. tential junta in Latin America that comes+
Certainly they do so at the behest of up to them and whispers: "Communists'
many of the people in the countries to 'are about to get us." Granted that we
the south who are intended to be dis- , are approaching Halloween, the Defense.
placed by the Alliance. The landlords 'Department and the State Department)
and industrial oligarchs whose economic should be told that Halloween goblins'
strangleholds must be broken, will al- have no place in United States-Latin
ways cry "Communist" when they see a American foreign policy.
threat to their domination. They do not - Many of these Latin American oligar-.
care much whether the threat Is gen- shies and would-be military dictators;
uinely Communist or comes from demo- are using the American military to stay
cratie reform elements. They stand to In power. They count.on its gullibility,-
lose out either way, and to many of them and on ,our overriding obsession with,
4 there is no difference.
IVItJItt
t Approved For Release 2006/06/16: CIA-RDP88-01315R000400130011-5
My own fears for. the future of the Al- "" "?? ` -v "" ""ii, u,uu tine people oz Latin,
Hance, and for the future of Latin Amer America will know once and for all that
Ica are well known. - ? the real Alliance for Progress died with
John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
I think the demands of the huge popu-1 - In closing, I want to stress again that
lation growth there are going to ever-` the critical problems of economic growth
whelm the Alliance at its present rate of.'
progress. We must go much further, that confront t' ,e heop'e of Latin Amer-
much faster, if rates of material progress Ica cannot be solved In economies that
continue to be c,omin^te'i by landed aris-
are to be achieved in those countries that' tocracies. Their control must be broken
will avert a turn to outright communism.
The big bottleneck to progress is not -before economic pOi'ulismand industrial
the Treasury of the United States, nor' democracy can develop, and I ask unani-
the Congress. It is the factions in the mows consent that an article dealing with
nations of Latin America that cling to; this topic which' appeared in the July':
the past and to their present power to' issue of the Annals of the Academy of
block reform. So long as these elements' Political and Social Sciences appear at
are aided and encouraged by the U.S. mil- the conclusion of my remarks:
itary aid missions and CIA in thinking' Mr. President, I commend the Sen-!
they will be sustained and preserved by ator from.Arkansas [Mr. FULBRIOHT],
American military might if they can just the chairman of the Committee on For-
demonstrate that a threat of communism eign Relations, on which I have the.;
exir"-. they will continue to block essen- honor to serve, for his speech yesterday'
tial economic reform. wbich I consider to be an. act of far-'?
I would remind the Secretary of De- seein1 statesmanship.;.
fense that he already has an Army of
125,000 men in South Vietnam, because
we backed an oligarch there with 9 years- '
of American financial support, yet he still
.
failed to accomplish anything useful with
it. We still have an Army of several
been resumed and was in full supply.
Between January 1964 and April 1965, the
Incredible sum of 61 million American
dollars were made available to the Reid
government, in a country of about 3i/2
million population. That means per
capita aid of about $17 for every man,
woman, and child in the Dominican Re-
fense Department and its counterparts
in the State Department had better