Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XII, American Republics

9. Memorandum by the Acting Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (Smith)¹

Washington, March 20, 1961.

CHECKLIST OF PROGRAMS AND ACTIONS TO IMPLEMENT THE TEN-YEAR PLAN FOR THE AMERICAS

1. Initiate the massive planning effort required by the 10-year plan.

a. Convoke a Ministerial meeting of the Inter-American Economic and Social Council promptly.

b. Greatly strengthen the Council in order that it may become the central planning body for the plan.

c. Formulate for early presentation to the Council detailed procedures for developing for each Latin American state its long-range economic plan.

(1) Such country plans will:

(a) Establish targets and priorities;

(b) Ensure monetary stability;

(c) Establish machinery for vital social change;

(d) Stimulate private activity and initiative; and

(e) Provide for a maximum national effort.

(2) Such plans will be the foundation of all development efforts.

(3) Such plans will provide the basis for the allocation of outside resources.

d. Assemble under the direction of the Council, working with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Inter-American Bank, the leading economists and experts of the Hemisphere, who will:

(1) Help each country devise its own development plans, and;

(2) Provide a continuing review of economic progress in the Hemisphere.

2. Attack the social barriers which block economic progress by committing, as soon as appropriated, the $500 million Inter-American Fund for Social Progress (the Bogota fund) to:

a. Combat illiteracy;

b. Improve the productivity and use of land;

c. Wipe out disease;

d. Attack archaic tax and land tenure structures;

e. Provide educational opportunities; and

f. Initiate projects designed to make the benefits of increasing abundance available to all.

3. Support the economic integration of Latin America in order to create larger markets and competitive opportunity:

a. Provide full backing for the Central American common market; and

b. Promote the creation of free trade areas in South America.

4. Initiate the cooperative case-by-case examinations of Latin American commodity market problems for the purpose of finding practical methods of ending frequent violent changes in prices of commodities produced in Latin America.

5. Expand the Food for Peace emergency program by:

a. Helping to establish food reserves in areas of recurrent drought;

b. Providing school lunches; and

c. Offering feed grains for use in rural development.

6. Develop programs to ensure that all people of the Hemisphere share in the expanding benefits of modern science:

a. Invite Latin American scientists:

(1) To work with American scientists in new projects, such as in medicine, agriculture, physics and astronomy;

(2) To help plan regional research laboratories.

b. Strengthen cooperation between American universities and laboratories.

c. Expand existing science teacher-training programs to include Latin American instructors.

d. Assist in establishing science teacher-training programs in other American countries.

e. Translate and make available new teaching materials in physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics.

7. Rapidly expand the training of those needed to man the economies of rapidly developing countries by:

a. Expanding the technical training programs, using the Peace Corps wherever needed; and

b. Assisting Latin American universities and research institutions.

8. Actively seek to increase confidence in the collective security system of the Organization of American States in order to permit a sensible limitation of arms.

a. Devote to constructive use a share of those Latin American resources now spent on arms; and

b. Use existing Latin American armies not only to defend their countries, but to build them.

9. Invite Latin Americans to contribute to the enrichment of life and culture of the U.S. by:

a. Obtaining Latin American teachers to teach their literature, history and tradition in U.S. educational institutions;

b. Increasing opportunities for U.S. students to attend Latin American universities; and

c. Increasing access to Latin American music, art and philosophy.

10. Develop ways of making clear to the Latin Americans that:

a. Assistance from the social fund will depend not merely on need, but on the demonstrated readiness of each government to make the institutional improvements which promise lasting social progress.

b. Outside resources will be focussed on projects which have the greatest multiplying effect on (1) mobilizing domestic resources; (2) contributing to institutional reform; and (3) reducing the major obstacles to a development in which all can share. To this end:

(1) Provide assistance for improving land usage only to those nations in which the benefits will accrue to the great mass of rural workers.

(2) Increase housing for middle income groups through improved credit mechanisms.

(3) Expand mass housing through self-help projects by:

(a) Providing low cost materials, land and technical guidance:

(b) Using the owner’s labor to construct his house; and

(c) Repaying costs of materials with long term mortgages.

(4) Broaden educational opportunities by

(a) Self-help school construction, and

(b) Use of local people as part-time teachers.

(5) Improve rural living conditions by encouraging higher and more diversified agricultural production; better distribution of wealth and income, and wider sharing in the process of development:

(a) Establish rural credit facilities;

(b) Help finance resettlement in new lands;

(c) Construct access roads to new settlement sites;

(d) Conduct agricultural surveys; and

(e) Introduce agricultural extension surveys.

11. Develop specific guidance for the administration of funds by the Inter-American Development Bank to reflect the principles stated in paragraph 10.

a. Administer $394 million of the Bogota Fund under a special trust agreement with the U.S.

b. Insure that most of these funds will be used to make loans with flexible terms, including low interest rates for repayment in local currency.

c. Insure that the bank’s major fields of activity will be:

(1) Land settlement and improved land use.

(2) Housing.

(3) Water supply.

(4) Sanitation.

(5) Technical assistance related to the mobilizing of domestic financial resources.

12. Direct the International Cooperation Administration to develop specific criteria for administration of its funds to reflect the principles stated in paragraph 10.

a. Program $100 million for activities which are generally not self-liquidating by developing grants for:

(1) Education and training;

(2) Public health projects; and

(3) Strengthening general governmental services in fields related to economic and social development.

ASSIGNMENTS TO CARRY OUT THE NEW LATIN AID PROGRAM

1. Assign the responsibility for this program to a senior officer or group of officers in the government through whom Presidential authority and responsibility may be exercised and whom the President can hold responsible for the execution of the program which involves such a tremendous variety of public and private organizations and resources.

2. See that State, USIA and CIA pull out all the stops on an information program built around the Kennedy speech at the White House reception and the aid message. The output of all the official and unattributed media in Latin America should be reviewed in light of the new effort—objectives, courses of action, slogans, program emphases, should be cranked into the output. This information program must be in depth and ways should be found to getting all of the official and unofficial spokesmen for the government and the country to be coherently together on a continuing basis. The “Alliance for Progress” must become as well-known as the “Monroe Doctrine” and the “Good Neighbor Policy.”

3. See that instructions are issued through proper channels to the Departments of Health, Education and Welfare; Labor; Agriculture; Commerce; Interior; Defense and the National Science Foundation so that they can participate constructively in planning, program execution, and staffing.

4. In addition, the above agencies must undertake activities in the U.S. directed towards mobilizing the private components of the program—the foundations, universities and U.S. business enterprises—to play their part.

1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Latin America. No classification marking.