Alliance for Progress was initiated under Iisenhower as the U.S. answer to Fidel Castro. It was touted as offering all of Latin America a peaceful, easy way to get what the Cubans found they could win only through revolution. Kennedy baptized the plan, giving it its attractive name just a few weeks before the counterrevolutionary Cuban invasion force was landed at Playa Giron by the Pentagon, the -Central Intelligence Agency, and John F. Kennedy personally.
The alliance for Progress has spoken of two billion dollars a year for twenty years for Latin America's development. Somehow the program has never seemed able to get off the ground. ‘ “
The overhaul now demanded would most surely start the dollars: flowing. . But not in the direction of the poor man's pocket in Latin America. Private enterprise and private investment must be made "the main thrust of the Alliance," says the report submitted to Secretary Hodges.
And who are the mysterious figures hiding behind the label of "private enterprise and private investment"? We may guess this from
ny the names signed at the bottom of the demand for an overhaul:
David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank of New York, _ | - '
; Emilio G. Collado, vice president of the Standard 01il Company (New Jersey). : Walter DB. Wriston, executive vice president of the First National City Dank of New York. |
_ The report of the three was endorsed by J. Peter Grace, president of W. R. Grace 2 Co., and head of a committee to which all four belong, sponsored by the Department of Commerce.
These men speak for the inner offices in the counting ‘houses of Lower [anhattan.
Grace declared in a letter to Rockefeller, which was made - public, that "The program in its present form cannot succeed, ‘and we are in great danger of suffering a major defeat to our strategic interests in this hemisphere. ... I have never been | 80. deeply disturbed about a major aspect of United States foreign policy. ,
Can they overhaul the Alliance for Progress so that it will finally take off, provide more billions for Wall Street, _ and still serve as an effective counter to the example and ‘. appeal of the Cuban Revolution?