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Articles

‘Real Self-Help’ and the Seeds of Neoliberalism: Foreign Aid to Brazil from Kennedy to Johnson

Pages 919-938 | Received 19 Sep 2022, Accepted 31 Jul 2023, Published online: 08 Aug 2023
 

Abstract

Drawing from sources at the Kennedy and Johnson presidential libraries, as well as secondary literature, this article has two main goals. The first is to examine the concept of self-help employed by U.S. officials in the formulation of foreign policy in the 1960s as a discursive metric to evaluate political events in Brazil after the 1964 military coup. I argue that this innocuous-sounding policy trope enabled U.S. policymakers to understate their investment in affecting political conditions in contested areas around the world, particularly in Brazil where it sanctioned a right-wing military coup in 1964. The second, more tentative aim of this article is to situate self-help as a discursive forerunner of what would later be called neoliberalism. Emphasizing technocratic interventions, personal responsibility, and a vision of government that placed the onus for combatting poverty on apolitical individuals rather than a state democratically accountable to its citizens, the notion of self-help carried profound political implications.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. White House Press Office Files, Background Briefings: ‘Press Conference of Lincoln Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State and Sol Myron Linowitz, Ambassador, Representative of the United States on the Council of the Organization of American States’. 12/20/66, Box 81, WHPOF, LBJ Library.

2. For an overview of this period, see James Siekmeyer, Latin American Nationalism: Identity in a Globalizing World (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 113–45.

3. Even before the Cuban Revolution came to fruition, U.S. scholars worried about the combustible potential of nationalism and radical left-wing politics. See, for example, Thomas W. Palmer Jr., Search for a Latin American Policy (Gainseville: University of Florida Press, 40), 40.

4. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 34.

5. For a deep historiographical discussion of the Alliance for Progress, see Michael Dunne, ‘Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress: Countering Revolution in Latin America: Part I: From the White House to the Charter of Punta del Este’, International Affairs, 89, no. 6 (November 2013), 1389–409 and Michael Dunne, ‘Kennedy's Alliance for Progress: countering revolution in Latin America Part II: the historiographical record’, International Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 6 (November 2013), 1389–409. A classic critique of the Alliance can be found in Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onís, The Alliance that Lost its Way: A Critical Report on the Alliance for Progress (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970).

6. Writing in 1967, Robert F. Kennedy claimed that ‘self-determination was central to the Alliance [for Progress]’. See Robert F. Kennedy, To Seek a Newer World (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 112. For discussions of self-help elsewhere in Latin America and the broader Third World, see, for example, ‘Missionaries of Modernization: The United States, Argentina, and the Liberal International Order, 1958–1963’ (Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 2007); Nancy H. Kwak, A World of Homeowners: American Power and the Politics of Housing Aid (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015): Chapters 2-3; David C. Engerman, The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018).

7. Thomas W. Dichter, Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World has Failed (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 61–2. Dichter, a former Peace Corps volunteer and USAID consultant, argues for the wholesale dismantlement of what he calls ‘Development with a capital D’, the complex of U.S.-led efforts to end the immiseration of foreign lands.

8. Brazil under military rule has long been fertile ground for scholars. Classic studies include Thomas Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), Maria Helena Moreira Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), and Alfred Stepan, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). Recent notable contributions have been made by Benjamin A. Cowan, Larissa Rosa Corrêa, James N. Green, Carlos Fico, among many others.

9. For a recent account of how the Alliance for Progress operated in Brazil, see Felipe Pereira Loureiro, A Aliança para o Progresso e o governo João Goulart (19611964): ajuda econômica norte-americana a estados brasileiros e a desestabilização da democracia no Brasil pós-guerra (São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2020).

10. For granular discussions of this subject within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations during the period discussed in this article, see the following fully-digitized volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States series: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XII, American Republics, in Edward C. Keefer, Harriet Dashiell Schwar, and W. Taylor Fain III (eds) (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1996). Available online at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v12 and Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXXI, South and Central America; Mexico, in David C. Geyer and David H. Herschler (eds) (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2004). Available online at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v31.

11. See Jan Knippers Black, United States Penetration of Brazil (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 65–72.

12. Pereira also argues that shifting domestic politics were key in Johnson’s decision-making vis-à-vis Brazil. See Anthony W. Pereira, ‘The US Role in the 1964 Coup in Brazil: A Reassessment’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 37, no. 1 (January 2018), 16.

13. Kennedy spoke in lofty terms about the need for a democratic ‘revolution’ in Latin America, a fact that early historians of his administration saw as being of a piece with the young president’s liberal worldview. More recent works, however, are more skeptical that Kennedy’s pro-democracy statements meant very much at all in the context of a cold war he was eager to wage and win. On the historiography of Kennedy’s foreign policy, see Campbell Craig, ‘Kennedy’s International Legacy, Fifty Years On’, International Affairs, 89, no. 6 (November 2013), 1367–78.

14. As with all terms of any weight, the precise meaning of neoliberalism is contested. This article works from David Harvey’s definition of neoliberalism as ‘a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade’. See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2. See also Miguel A. Centeno and Joseph N. Cohen, ‘The Arc of Neoliberalism’, Annual Review of Sociology, 38 (2012), 317–40.

15. See Amy Offner, Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

16. Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018).

17. Cited in W, Michael Weis, Cold Warriors and Coups D’Etat: Brazilian-American Relations, 1945-1964 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993): 158.

18. Ibid.

19. Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961–1969 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1990): 14. For Szulc’s coverage, see ‘Northeast Brazil Poverty Breeds Threat of a Revolt’, New York Times, October 31, 1960, 1, 4 and ‘The ‘Fidelistas’ of Brazil’, New York Times, November 1, 1960, 38.

20. Diego Mauricio Cortés, ‘Foes and Allies: The Catholic Church, Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO), and the Emergence of the Indigenous Movement in Cauca, Colombia’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 14 (2019), 171–93. For newspaper coverage of Acción Cultural Popular, see Richard Eder, ‘PRIEST URGES U.S. EXPLAIN TO LATINS: Colombian Warns That Reds Must Be Defeated in Selling Way of Life’, New York Times, September 18, 1960, 5 and Jerome Egan, ‘Latin-American Self-Help Efforts of Group to Teach Peasants by Radio Are Outlined’, New York Times, September 29, 1960, 34. After the 1964 coup in Brazil, Brazilian clergy would use USAID funds to start an organization strikingly similar to Acción Cultural Popular in the country’s northeast. See Calazans Fernandes, ‘Igreja comanda luta de bem-estar social’, Folha de S. Paulo, May 31, 1964, 5.

21. See, for example, Fowler Hamilton’s testimony before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, in Congressional Digest, June/July 1962, 41, Issue 6/7, 182–6. Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency Donald M. Wilson also cited lessons learned from the Marshall Plan when he noted that ‘we mustn’t let the [Alliance for Progress] propaganda get out too far ahead of the actual social and economic aid’, in Kristin L. Ahlberg and Charles V. Hawley (eds), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917–1972, Volume VI, Public Diplomacy, 1961–1963(Washington: United States Government Publishing Office, 2017), Document 17. Available online at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1917-72PubDipv06/d17. Accession on: May 9, 2023.

22. Scholars like Sebastian Edwards, Amy Offner, Margarita Fajardo, among others, have all recently grappled with the origins and implications of neoliberal political economy in Latin America. On periodizing neoliberalism, see Bob Jessop, ‘Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Periodization and Critique’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 118, no. 2 (2019), 343–61. Molyneux herself refers to the 1970s as ‘the first phase’ of neoliberalism in Latin America. See ibid., 780. Peter Calvert is more exact, asserting that ‘neoliberalism appeared in Latin America in Chile with the 1973 coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power’. See Peter Calvert, A Political and Economic Dictionary of Latin America (New York: Routledge, 2011): 47. See also Kean Birch and Vlad Mykhnenko, The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order? (New York: Zed, 2010), 9 and Raewyn Connell and Nour Dados, ‘Where in the World Does Neoliberalism Come From?: The Market Agenda in Southern Perspective’, Theory and Society, 43, no. 2 (March 2014), 117–38.

23. Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan, 2006), 2.

24. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files. Speeches and the Press. Speech Files, 1953–1960. Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 6 March 1960. JFKSEN-0907-004. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKSEN/0907/JFKSEN-0907-004. Accessed on: May 19, 2021. Kennedy had delivered almost the exact same speech before Eisenhower’s Latin America trip at Oshkosh State College on February 18. During the campaign, Kennedy outlined a similar approach to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. See, for example, Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files. Speeches and the Press. Speech Files, 1953–1960. ‘A Time of Decision’, or ‘Where Do We Go From Here?’ Senate Floor, 14 June 1960. JFKSEN-0909-043. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

25. Anthony Lewis, ‘Kennedy to Link Self-Help Moves and Foreign Aid’, New York Times, March 13, 1961, 1, 8.

26. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President’s Office Files. Speech Files. Remarks on swearing in Fowler Hamilton as AID Administrator, 3 October 1961. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKPOF/035/JFKPOF-035-051. Accessed on: May 20, 2021.

27. Kennedy mentioned such measures in relation to self-help in an address to Congress on March 22, 1961. Cited in Robert A. Goldwin, ed. Why Foreign Aid? (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), 7.

28. ‘O embaixador dos EUA define a ‘Aliança para o Progresso’,’ O Estado de S. Paulo, November 1, 1961, 23.

29. ‘Kennedy Offers Latins A Self-Help Program’, The Atlanta Constitution, March 14, 1961, 4.

30. Jeffrey Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin America (New York, NY, 2007), 11.

31. During this period, Sarah Sarzynski has noted, powerful entrenched landowners in Northeast Brazil ‘could no longer control the terms of political debate as they had in the past’. While the Alliance for Progress played a part in reflecting and stoking this tendency, she attributes its emergence mostly to Brazilian actors. See Sarah Sarzynski, Revolution in the Terra do Sol: The Cold War in Brazil (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), 27.

32. Tad Szulc, ‘Selling a Revolution to Latin America’, New York Times, December 17, 1961, 10.

33. Ibid.

34. Cited in Sara Lorenzini, Global Development: A Cold War History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 28–9.

35. Gaddis Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945–1993 (New York: Hill and Wange, 1994), 116.

36. E. W. Kenworthy, ‘Eisenhower Asks Latin Self-Help’, New York Times, August 18, 1960, 2.

37. Eisenhower’s 1959 Special Committee to Study the Military Assistance Program, widely known as the Draper Committee, recommended several policies that later formed the basis of Kennedy’s aid policy. These included a focus on long-term aid, the creation of a single government entity to manage aid, and stronger emphasis on self-help. James M. Hagen and Vernon W. Ruttan, ‘Development Policy under Eisenhower and Kennedy’, The Journal of Developing Areas, 23, no. 1 (October 1988), 8. For an in-depth examination of Eisenhower’s approach to Latin America, see Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anti-Communism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

38. Andrew F. Westwood noted the challenge of enforcing self-help requirements in Foreign Aid in a Foreign Policy Framework (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1966), 94.

39. William S. Gaud oral history interview: JFK#1, 02/16/1966. John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection. JFK Library. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKOH/Gaud%2C%20William%20S/JFKOH-WSG-01/JFKOH-WSG-01. Accessed on: May 20, 2021.

40. Leacock, 82.

41. Felipe Pereira Loureiro, ‘The Alliance For or Against Progress? US–Brazilian Financial Relations in the Early 1960s’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 46, no. 2 (May 2014), 323. See also Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 199–204.

42. Philip Geyelin, ‘Aid Overhaul’, The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 1961, 1.

43. Robert W. Komer oral history interview: JFK#6, 01/30/1970, 3. John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection. JFK Library. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKOH/Komer%2C%20Robert%20W/JFKOH-ROWK-06/JFKOH-ROWK-06. Accessed on: May 20, 2021.

44. For the quote about self-help not meaning strings were attached to aid, see ‘Tese dos EUA: a estabilidade deve reforçar o desenvolvimento’, Estado de S. Paulo, April 11, 1961, 56.

45. See, for example, Committee for Economic Development, Cooperation for Progress in Latin America (New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1961), 13.

46. See Christopher Darnton, ‘Asymmetry and Agenda-Setting in U.S.-Latin American Relations: Rethinking the Origins of the Alliance for Progress’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 14, no. 4 (2012), 55–92.

47. Policies with the potential to stoke local political battles included progressive reforms in landholding and housing but also austerity measures associated with the International Monetary Fund. See Loureiro, ‘The Alliance For or Against Progress? US–Brazilian Financial Relations in the Early 1960s’, 327–8.

48. ‘Grace Urges Business to Help Latins’, New York Herald Tribune, February 9, 1961, 28. ‘Latin America Wants A Better Life’, The Hartford Courant, March 24, 1961, 16.

49. See Thomas C. Field Jr., ‘Transnationalism Meets Empire: The AFL-CIO, Development, and the Private Origins of Kennedy's Latin American Labor Program’, Diplomatic History, 42, no. 2 (2018), 317.

50. ‘Boldness on Latin America’, New York Times, February 11, 1961, 22.

51. J. Peter Grace, It Is Not Too Late in Latin America: Proposals for Action Now (New York: W. R. Gracy & Company, 1961): 8.

52. Grace also served Kennedy through the Freedom from Hunger Foundation and as a founder of the Peace Corps. He is perhaps most remembered for heading the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control in the Federal Government under Ronald Reagan in 1982. That wide-ranging audit of waste and inefficiency in the federal government became popularly known as the Grace Commission.

53. Grace, 49.

54. R. Stafford Derby, ‘Self-Help Called Basic: Latin-American Need Viewed’, The Christian Science Monitor, February 14, 1961, 7.

55. Cited in Leacock, Requiem for Revolution, 81.

56. Ibid. Despite evidently feeling unheeded at Punta del Este, Grace would continue to be an influential figure in the Alliance for Progress, later chairing the Commerce Committee of the Alliance for Progress, and other anti-Communist efforts in Latin America like the American Institute for Free Labor Development. On the latter, see Field Jr., ‘Transnationalism meets empire: The AFL-CIO, development, and the private origins of Kennedy's Latin American Labor Program’, and Larissa Rosa Corrêa, Anti-Communist Solidarity: US-Brazilian Labor Relations During the Dictatorship in Cold-War Brazil (1964-1985) (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021).

57. Teodoro Moscoso oral history interview: JFK#2, 5/25/1964, 71, John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection. JFK Library. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKOH/Moscoso%2C%20Teodoro/JFKOH-TEM-02/JFKOH-TEM-02. Accessed on: May 23, 2021.

58. See Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).

59. Walt W. Rostow oral history interview: JFK#1, 4/11/1964, 56. John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection. JFK Library. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKOH/Rostow%2C%20Walt%20W/JFKOH-WWR-01/JFKOH-WWR-01. Accessed on: May 20, 2021.

60. Wayne Morse oral history interview: JFK#1, 11/10/1965, 52. John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection. JFK Library. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKOH/Morse%2C%20Wayne/JFKOH-WM-01/JFKOH-WM-01. Accessed on: May 20, 2021.

61. Walt W. Rostow oral history interview: JFK#1, 4/11/1964, 111-112. John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection. JFK Library. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKOH/Rostow%2C%20Walt%20W/JFKOH-WWR-01/JFKOH-WWR-01. Accessed on: May 20, 2021.

62. Cited in Lorenzini, Global Development, 90.

63. Leacock, 82. See also

64. José Frejat, ‘Brasilianas’, O Semanário, May 10, 1962, 2.

65. See, for example, Teodoro Moscoso, ‘The Alliance for Progress: Its Program and Goals’ (Washington DC: USAID, 1961) 7, 10. Available online at: https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNABL638.pdf. Accessed on: May 10, 2023.

66. On the matter of democracy versus development in Brazil, see John DeWitt, ‘The Alliance for progress: economic warfare in Brazil (1962–1964)’, Journal of Third World Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 2009), 57–76.

67. Thomas C. Field, From Development to Dictatorship: Bolivia and the Alliance for Progress in the Kennedy Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 4.

68. Komer oral history interview, 3.

69. David E. Bell, Director of the Bureau of the Budget from 1961 to 1962 and USAID administrator from 1963 to 1966, later lamented the various challenges the administration faced in implementing the Alliance for Progress, including ‘the very stubborn obstacles to change, the enormous political, emotional, cultural obstacles to the rapid achievement of economic and social progress, and the limited extent to which American aid, either capital or technical, could achieve rapid change in those circumstances’. David E. Bell, oral history interview: JFK#2, 1/2/1965, 114. John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection. JFK Library. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKOH/Bell%2C%20David%20E/JFKOH-DEB-02/JFKOH-DEB-02. Accessed on: May 25, 2021.

70. Loureiro, A Aliança para o Progresso e o governo João Goulart (1961-1964), 122.

71. James N. Green, We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 30.

72. For the OAS report, see ‘Report on the First Year of the Alliance for Progress’, October 26, 1962. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. National Security Files, Alliance for Progress: General, 1962: August-December, Digital Identifier: JFKNSF-290-024-p0017. JFK Library.

73. Bevan Sewell, The US and Latin America: Eisenhower, Kennedy and Economic Diplomacy in the Cold War (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016), 151–2.

74. Andrew David and Michael Holm, ‘The Kennedy Administration and the Battle Over Foreign Aid: The Untold Story of the Clay Committee’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 27, no. 1 (2016), 65.

75. Loureiro, ‘The Alliance For or Against Progress? US–Brazilian Financial Relations in the Early 1960s’, 339.

76. Ibid.

77. See Felix Belair, ‘Foreign Aid: Major Opposition in Congress’, New York Times, August 25, 1963, T6.

78. Memo to Bundy and Dungan, March 11, 1963, 1. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. National Security Files. Subjects. Foreign aid: Clay Committee: 1963: 11 March-27 September. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKNSF/297/JFKNSF-297-012. Accessed on: May 25, 2021.

79. Komer oral history interview, 6.

80. Memo to the president, March 20, 1963, 3–4. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President’s Office Files. Special Correspondence. Clay, General Lucius D., August 1961-June 1963. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKPOF/029/JFKPOF-029-004. Accessed on: May 25, 2021.

81. For a close look at the Clay Committee, see David and Holm, ‘The Kennedy Administration and the Battle Over Foreign Aid: The Untold Story of the Clay Committee’.

82. Memo to the president, ‘Creation of a Committee for Inter-American Development’, September 20, 1963, 1. Teodoro Moscoso Personal Papers. Alliance for Progress, 1961–1964. CIAP/CIES, 1963: September-December. TMPP-003-009. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/TMPP/003/TMPP-003-009. Accessed on: May 26, 2021.

83. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 177.

84. Memo to the president, March 20, 1963, 7.

85. White House Audio Tape, President Lyndon B. Johnson discussing the impending coup in Brazil with Undersecretary of State George Ball, March 31, 1964. Available online at: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB118/index.htm. Accessed on: May 26, 2021.

86. When asked if there were major changes to aid policy from Kennedy to Johnson, Robert Komer said no and pointed to the fact that Gaud and Bell stayed on as evidence. Komer oral history interview, 5–6.

87. Bell, oral history interview: JFK#2, 1/2/1965, 118.

88. Sewell, The US and Latin America: Eisenhower, Kennedy and Economic Diplomacy in the Cold War, 90.

89. Thomas C. Mann oral history interview: JFK#1, 03/13/1968, 27, 29. John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection. JFK Library. Available online at: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKOH/Mann%2C%20Thomas%20C/JFKOH-TCM-01/JFKOH-TCM-01. Accessed on: May 25, 2021.

90. Thomas Tunstall Alcock argues that Mann was unfairly vilified by Kennedy acolytes, who considered him a business-friendly reactionary responsible for burying the fallen president’s idealistic vision for Latin America. In reality, Alcock argues, Mann favored the interests of private capital but also pushed for long-term aid to improve living standards across Latin America. See Alcock, Thomas C. Mann: President Johnson, the Cold War, and the Restructuring of Latin American Foreign Policy (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2018).

91. On the Mann Doctrine, see Alcock, Thomas C. Mann, 80-85.

92. Office Files of the White House Aids, Ceil Bellinger: ‘Statement by the President on Signing of Foreign Assistance Act of 1966’. 9/19/66, Box 20, OFWHA, LBJ Library. See Appendix B for a copy of the document

93. Office Files of the White House Aids, Ceil Bellinger: ‘Message on Food for Freedom’. 2/10/66, Box 12, OFWHA, LBJ Library.

94. Green, We Cannot Remain Silent, 57.

95. Office Files of the White House Aids, Charles Horsky: ‘The Second Inter-American Conference Partners of the Alliance’. 9/12-22/66, Box 57, OFWHA, LBJ Library.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid.

98. Ibid.

99. White House Central Files, Foreign Affairs: ‘Memorandum for the President’. 3/15/66, Box 30, page 7, WHCF, LBJ Library.

100. See Green, We Cannot Remain Silent, 3.

101. National Security Files, Country Files: ‘Note to WWR’. 9/8/67, Box 11, NSF, LBJ Library.

102. White House Press Office, Background Briefings: ‘Background Briefing (Message on Foreign Aid’. 2/9/67, Box 82, WHPO, LBJ Library.

103. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXXI, South and Central America; Mexico, eds. David C. Geyer and David H. Herschler (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2004), Document 232. Available online at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v31/d232. Accessed on: May 11, 2023.

104. ‘Challenges to the Alliance for Progress’ by Stephen Raushenbush, June 1962, Subject Files, 1/20/1961 - 11/22/1963, ‘South America [Latin America]’, Vice Presidential Papers, Box 137, LBJ Library.

105. Ibid.

106. Ibid.

107. Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and ‘Nation Building’ in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: Univeristy of North Caroline Press, 2000), 2.

108. Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution, 37.

109. Office Files of the White House Aids, Ceil Bellinger: ‘Congressional Record—House’. 3/22/67, Box 12, 3278, OFWHA, LBJ Library.

110. White House Press Office Files, Background Briefings: ‘Press Conference of Lincoln Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State and Sol Myron Linowitz, Ambassador, Representative of the United States on the Council of the Organization of American States’. 12/20/66, Box 81, WHPOF, LBJ Library.

111. For more detail, see Werner Baer, The Brazilian Economy: Growth and Development, 5th Edition (New York, NY, 2001), 73–7.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andre Pagliarini

Andre Pagliarini is the Elliot Assistant Professor of History at Hampden-Sydney College in central Virginia. Before that, he taught at Wellesley, Dartmouth, and Brown, where he obtained an MA in Latin American history in 2013 and a PhD in the same field in 2018. He has written widely in outlets like New York Times, The Guardian, New Republic, and Jacobin as well as in scholarly publications like Latin American Research Review, Latin American Perspectives, and The Latin Americanist (forthcoming). He is also a fellow at the Washington Brazil Office and a monthly columnist at The Brazilian Report. He is currently finalizing a book manuscript on the politics of nationalism in modern Brazil with support from a Fulbright research grant and another on the intertwined histories of twentieth-central Brazil and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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