Making Peaceful Revolution Impossible

President John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress was intended to forestall Communist revolutions by fostering political and economic reform in Latin America. But Kennedy undermined his own goals by thwarting democratic, leftwing leaders seeking to carry out the kind of “peaceful revolution” his own analysis told him was necessary. This article reveals the Kennedy administration's role in overthrowing the Guatemalan government in 1963—until now only hinted at or even denied in the existing literature—to prevent the return to power of the country's first democratically elected president, Juan José Arévalo Bermejo. New archival evidence from Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, and the United States sheds light on the transnational networks that supported Arévalo's attempt to run for the presidency in 1963, as well as the covert efforts of U.S. and Guatemalan officials to prevent “the most popular man in Guatemala” from taking office—a neglected Cold War milestone in Latin America.

Diplomatic Solutions

This chapter demonstrates how Henry Kissinger engaged in resolving inter-American trade, investment, and treaty disputes. When they recalled the history of inter-American relations between 1969 and 1976, State Department officials who worked in Washington and foreign service officers assigned to posts in Latin America habitually lamented that Henry Kissinger did not prioritize relations with Latin America. They further noted that he launched no grand initiatives for the region, such as the Good Neighbor Policy or the Alliance for Progress. Their assessments were accurate. Nonetheless, the energetic Kissinger devoted more of his time to Latin America than did the prominent Cold War leaders that he succeeded. When he left public service in January of 1977, Kissinger could point to solid achievements in inter-American affairs. He took the lead in resolving both old and new issues that marred relations with Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

Getting Started

This chapter outlines the state of inter-American relations in the middle of the Cold War. President Richard Nixon came to office in 1969 in the aftermath of the Alliance for Progress, the ambitious ten-year, $20 billion economic aid program announced by President John F. Kennedy in March of 1961. Nixon had strong views about the shortcomings of the Alliance for Progress. Unlike Henry Kissinger, who had limited familiarity with Latin American thought, culture, and society, Nixon judged himself knowledgeable about Latin America. Nixon directed Kissinger to develop a comprehensive review of the U.S. policies toward Latin America. Kissinger then threw himself into the exercise with enthusiasm, perceiving the review of trade, investment, aid, and security issues as a learning experience. Nixon also dispatched his political rival and Kissinger's mentor, Governor Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY), on a fact-finding mission to Latin America.

Bolivia between Washington, Prague, and Havana

Challenging the bipolar lens that dominated the framings of traditional Cold War studies, this chapter analyses the polarizing effects of the Cuban revolution on Bolivia’s nonaligned national revolution. Participation in Washington’s anticommunist Alliance for Progress pulled the rug out from Paz’s bold strategy of fence-riding, however, and his eager participation in President John F. Kennedy’s well-funded Alliance for Progress aid program led his government to bitterly break relations with Cuba in September 1964. Paz’s sudden abandonment of Third Worldism mobilized many local leftists and nationalist military officers, who pointed to his volte face as proof that the Bolivian revolution had been hallowed out by the many political and economic conditions that accompanied massive U.S. aid funding.

The U.S. Embassy in Santiago and the Presidential Election of 1964

This chapter discusses the role of the U.S. embassy in Santiago in the Chilean presidential election of 1964. One of the leading candidates in the race, Salvador Allende, was an avowed Marxist and the standard-bearer of the Popular Action Front (FRAP), a coalition of Socialists and Communists formed in 1958. Allende's main contender was Eduardo Frei Montalva, the undisputed leader of the Christian Democratic Party. For the United States, an Allende victory in the presidential election would entail a huge setback in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, the United States supported the candidacy of Eduardo Frei, whose project seemed an excellent alternative to the revolutionary path proposed by the Marxist Left and a good representation of the goals and values of the Alliance for Progress. The U.S. ambassador in Chile, Charles Cole, and more so the political staff of the embassy in Santiago, played an important role in shaping the race and advising the main chiefs of Eduardo Frei's political campaign, and even Frei himself, in the course of 1964. The mostly untold story of the U.S. embassy's involvement in the 1964 presidential race is an excellent example of the way in which U.S. foreign policy was carried out on the ground and, in many situations, in the open.

The United States and Chilean Politics in the Cold War

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between Eduardo Frei's Revolution in Liberty and the United States. For the United States foreign policy apparatus, the Christian Democratic Party of Chile appeared to be a model partner in the realization of the goals of the Alliance for Progress, the Latin American policy conceived by President John F. Kennedy and continued, though without the same level of enthusiasm and hope, by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In its original conception, Kennedy's Latin American policy had ambitious economic, social, and political goals. The channeling of aid from the United States to Latin American countries in the 1960s sought to reflect the interplay between those aims, even if the implementation of the Alliance for Progress sorely lacked in consistency and constancy. In the case of Chile and Eduardo Frei's Revolution in Liberty, the exceptionally generous provision of aid by the United States went hand in hand with a deep involvement of agents of U.S. foreign policy, especially the political staff of the embassy in Santiago, in the day-to-day functioning of Chilean politics—welcomed and, in many cases, invited by local actors.