Alliance forProgress (1961–69)

Abstract

The Alliance for Progress (1961–69) was a Cold War regional foreign aid initiative aimed at countering the radicalizing effects of the 1959 Cuban revolution in Latin America. The Alliance was based on anti‐communist academic theories of Third World modernization, and its aid funding was conditioned strictly on political reforms within participating countries. Targeting 2.5 percent growth over a ten‐year “decade of development,” President John F. Kennedy's Alliance envisioned $20 billion of US public and private investment flowing into Latin America over ten years. Scholarly views on the Alliance have been divided, with historians balancing its political and economic successes in avoiding a second Cuba and achieving annualized growth rates of around 3 percent against its ultimate failure to shore up democracy in a region soon beset by a wave of military coups d'état .