Remembering the alliance for progress.

• Author: Haverstock, Nathan A.
• Position: INTER-AMERICAN SYSTEM

The years 2008, 2009, and 2011 mark the 50th anniversaries of three events that led to the formation of the Alliance for Progress, an ennobling program that left behind an impressive record of physical good works. More importantly, it fostered the belief that lives on today--that ordinary people working together in solidarity can accomplish extraordinary things.

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To exploit the power of such an idea, Brazil's President Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira sent an aide memoire to his fellow chief executives in the Americas in August 1958. In it, he urged them to join forces and mount a development effort of unprecedented size in what he called "Operation Pan America."

This was the precursor of the Alliance for Progress. It was followed in 1959 by the launching of the inter-American Development Bank, a first-of-a-kind regional institution to finance social and economic development, thanks to the support of US President Dwight Eisenhower. In March 1961, his successor, John F. Kennedy, proposed the creation of "an alliance for progress" at a gathering of Latin American diplomats in the rose garden of the White House. His dramatic turn of phrase, which resonated in the ears of those who heard it, coupled with his commitment to send young Americans abroad to serve as volunteers with the Peace Corps, sparked an enthusiastic response everywhere in the Americas.

In a personal salute to the exciting days that were ahead, this article describes one very small facet of this novel experiment in sustained hemisphere collaboration. It is illustrative as a microcosm of the vastly larger forces that the Alliance unleashed. The Alliance for Progress Weekly Newsletter was an unpretentious-looking, low-budget publication produced from 1963 until 1973 in two languages, English and Spanish, on mimeograph machines at the Organization of American States. (A Portuguese edition, based on the English, was also circulated in Brazil.)

The newsletter's usual format was four 8x10-inch pages folded over into a self-mailer. In lieu of a masthead, the newsletter carried the notation "Alliance for Progress Information Team" at the bottom of the first page. The members of the team were Dick Schroeder (the boss), Paul Harrison, Paquita Vivo, Roberto Aragon, Juanita Olmos, Stella Garcia-Pena, and myself.

The publication was a team effort in every respect. The copy for each issue was passed around for editing to everyone. Frequently, we all had to fill in for...