Hemispheric Alliances

Liberal Democrats and Cold War Latin America

Andrew J. Kirkendall

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781469668024
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Hemispheric foreign policy has waxed and waned since the Mexican War, and the Cold War presented both extraordinary promises and dangerous threats to U.S.–Latin American cooperation. In Hemispheric Alliances, Andrew J. Kirkendall examines the strengths and weaknesses of new models for U.S.–Latin American relations created by liberal Democrats who came to the fore during the Kennedy administration and retained significant influence until the Reagan era. Rather than exerting ironfisted power in Latin America, liberal Democrats urged Washington to be a moral rather than a militaristic leader in hemispheric affairs. Decolonization, President Eisenhower's missteps in Latin America, and the Cuban Revolution all played key roles in the Kennedy administration's Alliance for Progress, which liberal Democrats hailed as a new cornerstone for U.S.–Latin American foreign policy. During the Vietnam War era, liberal Democrats began to incorporate human rights more centrally into their agendas, using Latin America as the primary arena for these policies. During the long period of military dictatorship in much of Latin America and the Caribbean, liberal Democrats would see their policies dissolved by the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations who favored militant containment of both communism and absolutism.

Chapter 1 Liberal Democrats and Latin America

Toward Engagement

In 1955, Adlai Stevenson “seemed surprised” when his sometime speechwriter, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., told him that, in planning for a Latin America trip, he should “by all means stay away from Venezuela,” where “a rather squalid dictator” (Marcos Pérez Jiménez) was in power. Schlesinger, who had taken a strong interest in political trends in Latin America, particularly since he attended the 1950 meeting of the Inter-American Conference for Democracy and Freedom in Havana, had become friends with a number of liberal and social democratic leaders in the region. He was appalled when the Eisenhower administration expressed its admiration for the Venezuelan dictator, and he hoped that liberal Democrats, if elected, would promote democracy, unionism, and social reform in the Western Hemisphere. He was certainly more than disappointed that he had to explain to Stevenson, whom he greatly admired, why a trip to Venezuela was ill advised. “I do not see how the Governor could visit Venezuela without having some contact with the regime; and a picture of Stevenson shaking hands with Pérez Jiménez would profoundly disappoint and disillusion the people in the hemisphere who most admire Stevenson and are most like him, from [Puerto Rico Governor Luis] Muñoz Marín down. Pérez stands for exactly the kind of thing we have to get away from in this hemisphere.”¹ But Latin America was no higher on Stevenson’s list of priorities than it had been on those of so many U.S. leaders, Democrat or Republican, since the end of World War II.

The Eisenhower years seem more tumultuous in retrospect than they appeared to many at the time. The onset of the civil rights movement at home and the dramatic acceleration of the process of decolonization abroad certainly represented major changes. Eisenhower had criticized the Truman administration for a decline in U.S.-Latin American relations by 1952, but would do little to address many of the hemisphere’s concerns. Good relations with the hemisphere were, to a large extent, assumed. By the end of the Eisenhower presidency, however, Latin America had become central to the Cold War in a way that it never had been before.² In opposition, Democrats did not take the lead on U.S. foreign policy in Eisenhower’s first term, although, administration rhetoric notwithstanding, it continued largely to be defined by containment. But the 1950s saw some influential liberal Democrats, ultimately even Stevenson himself, searching for a new framework for U.S.-Latin American relations. The Good Neighbor Policy continued to have emotional appeal, and people continued to invoke it; it remained an important part of how many in the United States wanted to see the U.S. role in the Western Hemisphere. Its relevance to Cold War conditions was not altogether clear. Containment was considered essential. It was also insufficient, and many did not find it inspiring. In opposition, intellectuals, scholars, former government officials, and congressmen moved, haltingly, toward a new Latin America policy.

Arthur Schlesinger’s interest in the region would be strong and long-lasting, and, like many of his colleagues, he would be focused on particular individuals he admired. He encouraged ties between Stevenson and Costa Rica’s José Figueres, who, unlike Stevenson, became the president of his country in 1953. Throughout the 1950s, Figueres’s government became a model for what many liberal Democrats thought could and should be achieved in the region. In 1954, Schlesinger visited Figueres at his coffee plantation home and shared Stevenson’s “Call to Greatness,” a collection of his Godkin Lectures at Harvard University.³

Stevenson had been involved in the early organizational phase of the United Nations and was governor of Illinois when he first ran as the Democratic presidential candidate in 1952. He was known for his eloquence and was seen as an intellectual. A critic of Joseph McCarthy, he was committed to a liberal Democratic struggle against global communism. He was no provincial. Following his defeat in 1952, he had embarked on a “world” tour, which did not include Latin America, but rather those areas of the world that concerned U.S. foreign policy makers most: Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. He developed a critical distance from European colonialism, which he recognized as being on the way out. Over the course of the 1950s, he and other liberal Democrats began to focus on issues of global socioeconomic development. As a lawyer, he visited African countries on behalf of clients interested in pursuing economic opportunity on the continent. Despite frequent plans to visit unfamiliar parts of the Western Hemisphere, however, he found various reasons to postpone a trip for many years. Over the years he expressed an occasional interest in the democratic forces in Latin America. But there was little public interest in Latin American democracy in the mid-1950s. Following a speech in which, following Schlesinger’s advice, he praised Figueres, one newspaperman scoffed, “Well, what does the Governor think about the plight of the whooping crane!” For Stevenson, this reinforced his wariness about investing too much in the region.⁴

As the 1956 elections approached, people with an interest in Latin America sought to encourage the presumptive candidate to pay more attention. In early 1955, Rutgers University economist and rising Latin Americanist Robert Alexander encouraged him to visit the region and begin to speak out. “Latin American democratic exiles” from Venezuela, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic who lived in the New York area had asked Alexander to arrange a meeting with Stevenson, and Alexander offered to introduce Stevenson to them. Nothing came of this, but the young professor was persistent. Following Stevenson’s announcement at the end of the year that he would be running again, Alexander asked him to “devote at least one formal and fairly lengthy speech to the problems of hemispheric relations.” Recent U.S. policies had let those who were friends of the United States become “sorely disillusioned.” Their impression was, according to Alexander, that only economic interests in Latin America mattered as far as the United States was concerned. A speech on Latin America by Stevenson would make Latin Americans believe that a Democratic victory in the presidential election would result in “a more comprehending and helpful attitude.” Alexander noted that the 1952 presidential candidate was widely admired “south of the border.” While expressing some sympathy for Alexander’s point, Stevenson noted his own lack of knowledge about Latin America and expressed “misgivings” regarding how interested people were. He still saw no “political value” in addressing such issues. Alexander wrote him again in late December, recognizing the public’s lack of interest but focusing on the Latin American interest in Stevenson and the need for him to say something “concrete about their problems.” The recipient of a Ford Foundation grant to study labor relations in South America, Alexander promised to send him reports on his findings. As the election year progressed, Stevenson expressed gratitude for receiving Alexander’s “first-hand information,” but he primarily mentioned Latin America when he was campaigning in the state of Florida. While he credited the Rutgers professor for influencing what he had to say there, he seems to have primarily relied upon former Franklin Roosevelt administration official and New York Liberal Party Chairman Adolf Berle for what were, in any case, largely generic remarks regarding hemispheric unity and a brief critique of “sterile military expenditures.”⁵

Latin American leaders themselves, for their part, sought to engage Stevenson. Figueres wrote Schlesinger admiring letters regarding Stevenson, knowing that the historian would share them with the presidential candidate. Figueres lamented that the U.S. public was not “sufficiently aware of the role of the United States as a world leader.” Stevenson would have to be “simultaneously the President of a contented country that wants little change, and the leader of a destitute world that badly needs a great deal of change.” Those suffering from colonialism or dictatorship would put their hope in him. Figueres criticized what he called the neglect of the Cold War “philosophical front.” Stevenson could be the philosopher-president offering an “international New Deal.”⁶

In the late 1950s, there were indications that the United States was not going to be able to continue to pay little attention to Latin America. The Eisenhower administration, for its part, seemed to be unaware how it was viewed there. U.S. officials and the U.S. population at large were shocked at the displays of “anti-Americanism” during Vice President Richard Nixon’s trip to South America in May 1958, when he was spat upon and attacked. Ironically, the Eisenhower administration’s intent in sending Nixon had been “to help destroy the myth” that the United States supported dictatorships. (Rioters in Caracas had been angered that the United States had granted asylum to the recently deposed Pérez Jiménez.) Nixon and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles blamed international communism, but Central Intelligence Agency Director Allen Dulles assured his brother that there would be unrest in Latin America even “if there were no communists.” Expressing regret for Nixon’s treatment, Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek, committed to “fifty years’ development in five” years in his own country, made a dramatic proposal called Operation Pan-America. The United States should commit itself to large-scale economic aid for countries in the Western Hemisphere in order “to fight the causes of unrest and discontent.” The administration’s response initially was rather tepid.⁷

But as his second term neared its end, President Eisenhower spent ten days in four Latin American countries, a trip that was vastly more successful than his vice president’s almost two years before. (As president, he had only visited Mexico and Panama before.⁸) Although he was a lame duck president, as historian Stephen Rabe has suggested, U.S.-Latin America policy was undergoing another of its periodic shifts. Nixon’s trip, combined with the rise to power of Fidel Castro and the beginnings of a radical transformation of Cuban society, led U.S. officials to pay attention to Latin America as they had not since the early stages of World War II. The faith in “trade, not aid” that had been the consensus under both President Truman and President Eisenhower, moreover, was diminishing. An Inter-American Development Bank was founded.⁹ Eisenhower’s seeming enthusiasm for military leaders was also now called into question. Even before Castro began to establish close relations with the Soviet Union and to inspire and train hemispheric insurgents, the United States had begun to recognize that its limited interest in Latin America had become problematic.

It is noteworthy that the countries Eisenhower visited in 1960 were all democracies, given the concern throughout the previous years that he and Secretary Dulles, by now deceased, had a predilection for military leaders. In Chile, President Jorge Alessandri was not only operating in a long-standing democratic political framework; he also shared Eisenhower’s fondness for unalloyed free enterprise. Brazil, whose alliance with the United States during World War II had been so critical, was now more democratic than it had ever been. Venezuela’s democracy had only recently been established, following the overthrow of Dulles’s favorite Latin American leader; its new leader, Rómulo Betancourt, had strong ties to Frances Grant, Adolf Berle, and other liberal Democrats. (Grant’s “Second Inter-American Conference for Democracy and Freedom” was held in Venezuela in 1960.) Argentina was less democratic than it might have been since the former democratically elected leader Juan Perón himself was not allowed to be a candidate, and it was more than likely that he would have won a truly free and fair election. The countries were not directly defined as having been chosen because they were democracies. Indeed, President Eisenhower himself had to be convinced not to go to Paraguay because of its dictatorial regime. While recognizing that it might not be advisable, he privately commented that his recent Asian trip had left him with “the growing feeling that a benevolent form of dictatorship [was] not a bad form of government for newly-developing countries that were not prepared for full democracy.” Nevertheless, in Latin America, “The present situation” warranted “a review of the policy and action of the U.S. government with respect to dictatorial governments,” John C. Dreier, U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, wrote to Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Roy Rubottom.¹⁰ As Castro turned left, some came to argue that it was U.S. support for Fulgencio Batista that had led to the radicalization of the Cuban political situation. Some longtime Latin Americanists in the State Department like John Moors Cabot suggested the need for a “positive constructive policy toward Latin America.” Although Assistant Secretary of State Rubottom denied that one had been lacking, he did note that U.S. policies in the region were viewed as having been “the products of reaction more than of action.” This was inevitable, he thought, inasmuch as they “related to and reflected the broader struggle in which we are engaged.”¹¹

Fear drove U.S. policy over the next few years, in ways that both spurred engagement and benefited the region, and distorted U.S. policy and hurt it. Fear and a sense of urgency were most pronounced among the Latin American reformers with the strongest ties to liberal Democrats and with those liberal Democrats who were already most engaged.

But the late 1950s was a time of hope and opportunity as well as fear. Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, noted in late 1959 that few in the United States realized “the enormity of the social revolution through which Latin America is passing.” Morse, a former law school dean who served on the National War Labor Board under Roosevelt and who was a proponent of what he called “constitutional liberalism,” had left the Republican Party because of the unwillingness of its leaders, including President Eisenhower, to criticize Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. He had briefly been an independent before joining the Democratic Party in 1955. He was always a liberal who often was not convinced that anyone else besides himself deserved the label; he supported labor unions and civil liberties and opposed military aid. His new party affiliation made it possible for him to get a position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he had long coveted. Morse believed that “out of this turmoil” in Latin America, one could see “encouraging signs of progress, not only in economic development but in the growth of free and responsible political institutions.” He stressed the notion that Latin America was living through what journalist Tad Szulc called the “twilight of the tyrants.” The United States needed to offer “sympathetic help” to those seeking to change their countries, and it should return to what he saw as the tradition of supporting “the underdog.” A failure to be ourselves by sacrificing “longer term principle for short-term expediency” had made the United States “bad actors in a role” that did not “come naturally.”¹²

Morse blamed liberals themselves in part for “rigid and sterile” thinking about Latin America. They had “clung to policies of five or ten years ago simply because they were formulated by a liberal administration.” “But a policy that was sound and wise five or ten years ago is not necessarily sound or wise today.” “What American security objective,” he had wondered, “is served by arming Batista?” U.S. interests, he insisted, could only be defended by U.S. arms or by NATO. He defended military aid for countries th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Liberal Democrats and U.S. Hemispheric and Global Leadership
• Chapter 1: Liberal Democrats and Latin America: Toward Engagement
• Chapter 2: Let Us Begin: The Many Fronts of John F. Kennedy’s Latin American Cold War, Part I
• Chapter 3: The Many Fronts of John F. Kennedy’s Latin American Cold War, Part II
• Chapter 4: Kennedy’s Unfinished Legacy and Intended and Unintended Consequences
• Chapter 5: Let Us Continue: Toward the Johnson Alliance
• Chapter 6: Robert Kennedy, Kennedy Men, the Kennedy Legacy, and the Johnson Alliance
• Chapter 7: The End of the Alliance for Progress and the Origins of the Human Rights Issue in U.S.-Latin American Relations
• Chapter 8: Jimmy Carter and Human Rights in South America
• Chapter 9: The Carter Administration in Central America and the Caribbean
• Chapter 10: Liberal Democratic Resistance and Accommodation in the Reagan/Bush Years
• Conclusion: Cold War Legacies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index