Friday, December 6, 1963 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Alianza--Hearing Latin America's 'Voiceless Ones'
As famous as the white beaches and magnificent hotels which face the ocean at Rio de Janeiro are the shabbily dressed children and one-room shacks of the "favela" or shantytown section of the city.
To Teodore Moscoso, administrator of the Alliance for Progress, these people are the "voiceless ones," the ones who need the most, yet who are heard the least.
Recently, however, many 'favela' residents were moved into new three-room homes with kitchens and baths in another section of town.
THIS EPISODE in Rio is one example of the progress the Alliance is beginning to make. Moscoso said in August, on the second anniversary of the Alliance, that he finally had found signs of progress in the controversial program. As "brick and mortar" evidence, he noted U.S. Alliance funds, amounting to $1.5 billion in the past two years, 140,000 new homes, 8,200 new classrooms, 700 new waterworks, 900 new health centers, 160,000 farm loans, 4 million school books, meals for 9 million children, land reform laws in five countries, tax reforms in 11 countries and a preliminary agreement to stabilize coffee prices. The coffee agreement has now been realized. A five-year agreement to help stabilize Latin America's coffee sales, which have declined $600 million a year from 1957 to 1961.
All is not roses for the Alliance, however, even though it is beginning to show signs of progress. "We were just beginning to make real progress," Moscoso says, "and now Congress has clobbered us."
The Alliance, like many other elements of American foreign aid, has been hurt by the House's $1 billion cut of President Kennedy's original $4.5 billion foreign aid request for fiscal 1964. Earlier Congress had promised $600 million a year over a four-year period, and now it will allow only $450 million.
But even this is minor in comparison to some of the real stumbling blocks which have been thrown into the path of the Alliance since its organization in August of 1961.
If this cut stands, Moscoso says. U.S. aid to all of Latin America will amount to little more than the amount Russia is supplying to Cuba alone.
AT PUNTA DEL ESTE,
Uruguay, in 1961, all Latin
American countries except Cuba, which boycotted the program, agreed to a 10-year program for the economic growth and social development of Latin America. A minimum of $20 billion was to be poured gradually into the nations, with the U.S. agreeing to foot more than half the bill. The remainder supposedly was to come from international agencies, Western European nations and Latin American nations. To qualify for the money, each country would have to develop plans and submit them to the Alliance for approval.
But trouble came when the Alliance tried to move.
Last year on the first anniversary of the Alliance, Moscoso said in a solemn tone, "there was nothing to celebrate." There would be no Alianza fiesta this year. Critics of the Alliance were more numerous than supporters.
The major criticism was that the U.S. was footing the whole bill and that Latin American countries were more concerned with overthrowing governments than helping their people. Some Latin dictators actually had said they couldn't see why their people should get higher wages.
EVEN THOUGH the U.S. seemed to be supporting the Alliance single-handedly, there were other critics who said it was not spending enough. There had been $1.1 billion authorized and only $186 million spent in the first nine months.
While Alliance officials claimed they had completed or planned 168,000 new houses in Latin American countries, critics cited figures showing a need in Brazil alone for 8 million housing units and an additional 400,000 every year for the increase in population. The protagonists also asserted that much of the Alliance for Progress's progress had been started before the Alliance was even born.
Moscoso admitted himself that much of the aid money was not going to feed the mouths of hungry Indians, or to procure potable water, or new housing, but to cover the deficits and shaky currencies of several Latin nations. The Alliance was feeding starving governments, not people — governments which change leaders so often even experts get mixed up.
gled up in red tape and American bureaucracy.
OF COURSE, there were other changes, such as Latin accusations that requests for Alliance money were being tanfor Progress seems to be pulling out of the rut it has been stuck in since its inception in 1961. Even though Moscoso's success report is small in comparison to the need in Latin America, it does show progress.
Even though the Alliance does seem to be moving now, Moscoso still is not overly optimistic. He points out that the Marshall Plan was not a success in its first two years and it was only a recovery plan. The Alliance for Progress is a development plan. It takes more time and more work to raise Peruvian Indian families from poverty to a normal life than it does to merely clothe and feed displaced persons. And it takes longer to build millions of new homes to replace one-room shacks than it does to build new buildings to replace bombed-out ones. Moscoso says the future of the Alliance is going to have problems, and he believes now is the time to realize and prevent them.
ONE PRESENT DILEMMA facing the Alliance is the cries of some Latin leaders that, "the Alliance for Progress is not La Alianza para el Progreso." These critics charge that Latin
America does not have enough voice in the operation of the Alliance, yet at the Punta del Este conference, they didn't want to run the operation.
Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek and former Columbian President Alberto Lleras Camargo have proposed setting up an Inter-American Development Committee made up of one permanent U.S. and five rotating Latin delegates, who would decide who should get what and for what. Debate on this will come up this month when the finance ministers of the Americas meet.
If Latin nations will live up to their agreement and aid the Alliance, along with Western European nations which also have a large stake in Latin America, and Congress will try to take a fresh look at the Alliance, instead of cutting its throat, maybe when the 10-year program comes to an end in 1971 a meaningful amount of economic improvement and social reform will have come to the "voiceless ones" of Latin America. The ones who are heard the least, yet need the most.
Alliance critics still exist, such as Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, who recently said, "the Alliance has not even gotten off the ground—in fact, it is neither an Alliance nor is there progress." Yet Alliance
JOLANA WRIGHT Chi Omega A Holiday function calls for a Coach House dress!
COACH HOUSE
Climbers For Town and Country
12th and Oread
VI3-6369
Phillip Magers
SUA and ASC present
WAYNE MORSE
U. S. Senator / Oregon
"Foreign Policy under the New President"
Wednesday, December 11 8 p.m. Hoch Auditorium Admission Free
Everyone is invited to attend a reception in Sen. Morse's honor following the program. Jayhawk Room-Kansas Union
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