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Rose Mary Woods
Staff of Richard M. Nixon
450 Park Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10022
(212) 661-6400
Executive Secretary
12/9/68
Memo: To: Dr. Kissinger
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
41
12/9
ROBERT C. HILL
TELEPHONE
P. O. BOX 350
AREA CODE 603
LITTLETON
444 3446
NEW HAMPSHIRE 03561
November 27, 1968
My dear Mr. President Elect:
On Saturday, November 9, 1968, I met with the
Ambassador of Chile to the United States, Dr. Santa Maria,
and representatives of his government including the Minister
of Finance, at the Miami International Airport. They were
en route to Chile. As I told Miss Woods, it was only a
courtesy visit. They, of course, had several questions. I
made it clear that no one could speak for you at the present
time.
The three questions that were of interest were
as follows:
1. Your statement of Trade not A.I.D. I pointed
out that this had been quoted out of context, and I read from
your public statements on A.I.D. This appeared to satisfy them.
2. Did I believe you had animosity toward Latin
America, because of your experiences there? I felt this question
should be answered in the negative, and I pointed out your visits
to the area since 1960, and the warmth of your reception on your
last visit to Chile.
3. The President of Chile, Mr. Frie, has been in-
vited to M.I.T. in February 1969. At that time the President
would like to call on you unofficially in Washington. I said
this would be brought to your attention, but for them to deal
directly with your appointment secretary.
4. Much to my surprise, I was told by the Minister
of Finance for Chile that the contracts with the copper companys
might be reviewed again, in the near future. This could raise
serious problems for the United States companies.
Other comments that have come to my attention
since your election are as follows:
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
2.
1. Venezuela has been uneasy about the United States
election. After the election December 2nd in Venezuela, you may
wish to have a representative talk informally with the President-
Elect in order to put aside these fears of repraisals as a result
of your experience there some time ago.
2. Mexico regrets that you were unable to travel
there in October. The Government hopes that someone can come to
talk with them before your inauguration. As you may know, during
the campaign, I talked with Bob Finch about his going down. This
was after Mr. Ellsworth had called me regarding a proposed visit.
3. The Presidents of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa
Rica have all cabled congratulations. When I visited Central
America in October, I gave each President, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica, and Panama, your best wishes.
4. Panama is going to be a problem.
In the Canal Zone you have a long time friend,
Minister Raymond Leddy, an authority on Latin America. His back-
ground has been F.B.I., C.I.A., and now State. He can be relied
on for the best intelligence on what is going on in this area.
Congressman Selden from Alabama tells me Felipe
Herrera, head of the Development Bank for Latin America, aspires
to be President of Chile. He is using the bank to this end. It
bears careful watching, as we have no strong representation at
the bank.
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
Tob
The Honorable
Richard M. Nixon
nov,30,
450 Park Avenue
P.S.
New York, New York 10022
The President g Hondwor
is TO the State Dee he for a medical To his checkry
would caming whe To see you before return country
ite its is a melilary man and a goodfund unid States
& Told her who colled on me in meoni,
To make the inquest through Amborrador manyly at State.
when the yournous conference in over, + have
a personal matter TO design with you privately.
it will The about 10 minutes "it"
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
U.S.
it X THE MINIST
AIR
10c MAIL
PM
I DEC
38
1968
The Honorable
Richard M. Nixon
Plene Hotel- 5th one
450 Park Avenue
New York, New York 10022
% Rose Pressured may woods
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 21218
LINCOLN GORDON, PRESIDENT
January 14, 1969
JAN 15 1969
Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Office of the President-Elect
450 Park Avenue
New York, New York 10022
Dear Henry:
Many thanks for your note of January 6. I do
expect to be in New York Wednesday and Thursday of
this week, and may have some spare time Wednesday
afternoon. I shall be calling your office to see
whether you want to try to fit anything in during
this exceptionally busy period.
For general perspective on how I see Latin
America, I am enclosing a copy of a talk I gave in
Nashville a few months back. You will scarcely want
to do more than thumb through it, but I do raise some
questions of policy attitude in the last three pages.
If New York doesn't work out, I know where you
will be in Washington from next week on, and will
expect to be in touch there at a convenient time.
Sincerely,
4
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
Lecture at Scarritt College, Nashville, Tennessee, October 23, 1968
by Lincoln Gordon, President
The Johns Hopkins University
LATIN AMERICA - THE STRUGGLE FOR MODERNIZATION
Dr. Holt, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I was delighted to receive President Holt's invitation to
deliver the second Bishop George Miller Lecture this evening, since
it gives me an opportunity to meet with the intellectual leadership
of Nashville in pursuit of an interest of ten years' standing: the
development of wider mutual knowledge and better understanding among
the Americas.
Since 1959, first as a university researcher, then as Ambassador
to Brazil, and later as Assistant Secretary of State, I have traveled
some hundreds of thousands of miles in this hemisphere. Some of
it was rough riding, but most in jet airliners. The experience makes
me marvel at the endurance of Bishop Miller and his wife, whose
twenty-two years of missionary work, when travel facilities were of
an entirely different type, took them to practically every country
south of the Rio Grande. Among Bishop Miller's many accomplishments
was his vision -- earlier than most -- of the need to develop
national leadership to channel Latin America's growing nationalism
in constructive directions. In microcosm, it might be said, he
anticipated the basic philosophy of the Alliance for Progress.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-2-
My effort this evening will be to clarify some of the critical
issues in the Latin American political, economic, and social scene.
That it is a turbulent, uneasy, and confusing scene requires no
demonstration. Within the past three weeks, the governments of Peru
and Panama have been overthrown by their respective military forces.
In August, the American Ambassador to Guatemala was murdered in mid-
afternoon in the streets of the capital city -- the first such
episode in the whole history of our foreign relations. (For me
personally, this was an especially tragic episode, since Ambassador
Mein had been my Deputy for two years in Brazil and was an intimate
friend as well as a most valiant professional colleague.)
In September, student disturbances in Mexico -- long thought to
be the most stable and one of the most progressive nations of Latin
America -- led to an armed confrontation in which some sixty persons
lost their lives. A year ago, the legendary Che Guevara ended his
life in an abortive effort to mount a rural-based guerilla revolution
in Bolivia. Uruguay, another supposedly outstanding example of
Latin American democratic stability, has suffered violent monetary
inflation and massive strikes throughout this year. I could extend
the list a good deal further, but this is enough to suggest that
all is not well south of the Rio Grande.
Of course Latin America has no monopoly on turbulence in these
uneasy times. France in May; Czechoslovakia in August; Nigeria;
the Middle East; Southeast Asia; and our own recent tragedies of
the King and Kennedy assassinations and of endemic urban violence
are all fresh in our minds. Yet the troubles in Latin America have
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-3-
a longer history. Perhaps they are more deep-rooted than some of
those elsewhere in the world; certainly they are at least as poorly
comprehended.
The widespread failure to understand contemporary Latin America
results in part from the prevalence of myths and stereotypes which
obstruct clarity of vision, and in part from the shallowness with
which the basic dilemmas of the continent are ordinarily discussed.
I intend this evening to speak of three such myths and three dilemmas,
and to conclude with some reflections on the alternatives facing
United States policy in our relations to the south.
*
*
*
*
The Myth of Homogeneity. Among the confusing myths and stereo-
types, perhaps the least important is the myth of Latin American
homogeneity. It is tending to disappear under the impact of broader
travel and somewhat greater attention in the mass media. But it is
still common enough to confuse both analysis and policy-making.
It is true that the common Iberian cultural heritage gives
to Latin America more traits in common than is true of Asia or
Africa. But the diversity within the region is more pervasive than
its similarities. The geographical diversities are obvious, ranging
from crowded tropical Caribbean islands through the Amazon rain
forest, the Bolivian and Peruvian altiplano, the desert of the South
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-4-
American Pacific coast, the temperate central valley of Mexico, and
the fertile Argentine pampas. The ethnic diversities are also well
known, one school of anthropologists referring to three Latin Americas:
Euro-America, Indo-America, and Afro-America.
What is more easily forgotten or ignored is the vast differences
from nation to nation in size and resources, political and social
history, and therefore in national potential. Our minds retain
schoolbook references to twenty republics, twenty constitutions more
or less like our own, twenty flags, and twenty confusingly sketchy
histories punctuated by strange Latin names and episodic points of
contact with the United States. But if one looks closer at, say,
Brazil and Panama, it is easy to see how absurd it is to make
political generalizations applicable on the one hand to a country of
90,000,000 inhabitants, continental dimensions, 145 years of proud
national history, and possessing all the human and natural resources
needed for a diversified economy and a meaningful national culture --
and, on the other hand, a people of 1-1/3 million in a small area,
given sovereign independence from Colombia 65 years ago by foreigners
in order to permit the building of a canal on which Panama's economy
is totally dependent, but whose operations are controlled by Americans
in a Zone cutting the country in two. Of course Panama is juridically
sovereign, with a voice in the United Nations General Assembly equal
to that of the Soviet Union, (and also the Maldive Islands), but in
real economic and political terms how can that sovereignty help but
be highly qualified? There is also the phenomenon of Panamanian
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-5-
nationalism, but in a rational world would this not be one of the
odder historical aberrations?
Even within individual countries, the diversity is enormous.
The great urban centers such as Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo, surrounded
by modern industrial suburbs, are much like their European or
American counterparts, but there are also ancient Indian and colonial
villages where life seems frozen in century old patterns. Traveling
in Brazil, I often had the sense of moving through the centuries as
much as through space. In a continent where pre-Columbian Indian
ways of life still co-exist with new urban middle classes scarcely
distinguishable from their North American counterparts, it is no
wonder that casual visitors glean entirely different impressions,
depending on which reality they encounter. Their error is to
generalize from their partial realities to the Latin American whole.
Nor is this myth of homogeneity restricted to casual American
or European visitors. It was one of the many errors of Che Guevara,
whose stereotyped doctrine convinced him that Bolivian peasants must
be in the same frame of mind as his Cuban friends ten years ago in
the Sierra Maestre. He learned better before he died, as his diary
shows.
*
*
*
*
The Myth of Stagnation. The most persistent and widespread
myth is that of Latin American stagnation. It too is bolstered by
childhood imagery, such as the mustachioed peasant dozing away the
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-6--
day, his eyes shaded from the tropical sun by a wide-brimmed sombrero,
awakening from time to time only to mutter "manana" and return to
sleep.
It is also bolstered by a quite different and more sophisticated
stereotype, which classifies Latin America along with most of Asia
and Africa in a simple category entitled "under-developed areas" or
"third world." Those terms conjure up an image of agrarian societies,
in which illiterate peasant masses are bound in millennial cultural
patterns, and even the village craftsmen simply follow the occupations
and techniques handed down from father to son. The obvious source
of this stereotype is the traditional rural village of India or China.
With not too much effort, there can be found a fraction of almost
every Latin American nation which fairly well matches this pattern.
But it is a minor and dwindling fraction, rapidly being swallowed up
by the dominant trends of change which have set in strongly over the
last forty years. These trends are toward modernization. They can
be summarized under six headings: Industrialization; Agricultural
Modernization; Urbanization; Education; the Evolution of Middle Class
Politics; and Regional Integration. Each of these factors has its
record of achievement and frustration; its challenges and its
obstacles. Each has evoked popular aspirations well beyond accom-
plishments, with resulting social and political tensions. Taken
together, however, they have made the Latin America of today a
semi-developed rather than an under-developed region, whose outstand-
ing characteristic is ferment and change, rather than stagnation.
Let me say a few words about each of these six.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-7-
Compared with Western Europe or the United States, Latin America
did make a slow start in industrialization because in the first
century after independence most of the continent was dominated by
land-owning oligarchies with little interest in industrial development.
Textiles and some food processing were started during the late 19th
century, but the major push toward modern type industry came with
the World Depression and with World War II. The depression ruined the
market for traditional mineral and agricultural exports, forcing the
nations to turn inward for such manufactured goods as could be pro-
duced at home. These efforts were reinforced by the shipping shortages
during the war. By the end of the war, nationalist and development-
minded political leaders were on the rise, prepared to stimulate
industry through tariffs, exchange controls, and sometimes special
incentives for industrial investment by foreign companies.
In the larger countries of Latin America, notably Argentina,
Brazil, and Mexico, the result has been a dramatic entry into the
modern industrial world. In Brazil, the output of manufactured goods
last year was over seven times the 1938 level, including several
hundred thousand automotive vehicles with all their components, a
wide range of consumer durable goods, electrical and mechanical
equipment, chemicals, and many other lines of both light and heavy
industry. Argentina and Mexico have a similar degree of industrial
development, and Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela have all made
spectacular industrial gains during the past few decades. There was
a twenty-fold increase in Latin America's electricity consumption
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-8-
from 1929 to 1965. Per capita consumption in the latter year was
almost 450 kilowatt-hours, less than one-tenth our own level but far
ahead of India (73), Pakistan (43), Ghana (68), Nigeria (20) and
Indonesia (18).
On the agricultural front, Latin America has long suffered from
a dual pattern: moderately efficient plantation organization of the
principal commercial export crops and extremely inefficient small
peasant farms, often affording a bare subsistence to the peasant
families and operating largely outside the market. In the strenuous
development efforts of recent decades, Latin American leadership at
first gave almost exclusive attention to industrialization, which
is technically easier to accomplish and produces politically attrac-
tive, eye-catching symbols of economic modernity.
In recent years, however, it has become apparent that balanced
economic development requires a concentrated effort on the far harder
task of agricultural modernization. The task is harder technically
because it requires changes in the habits of millions of farmers,
a group slow to change in all cultures, and harder politically
because it alters traditional patterns of economic power and social
privilege. Land reform is one aspect of this overdue agricultural
reconstruction, and it has attracted the bulk of political attention
and controversy. Effective agricultural modernization, however, also
requires price incentives for farmers; credit, storage, and marketing
mechanisms; the application of improved seeds, fertilizer, and
insecticides; and a system of agricultural education and extension
services to get known techniques into mass use. Every South American
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-9-
government is doing some work along these lines, often with technical
assistance from the United States.
The resulting "Green Revolution" is slowly bearing fruit. For
Latin America as a whole, total agricultural production in 1967,
excluding Cuba, was 29 per cent above 1958, and food production was
up 38 per cent overall and 6 per cent per capita. Frequent misstate-
ments to the contrary notwithstanding, Latin America is not losing
the food-population race.
Perhaps the most radical recent change in this far from stagnant
region has been the headlong process of urbanization. This is an
old story in Argentina and Uruguay, but mainly a post-war phenomenon
elsewhere. Today over one-half of Latin America's 250 million people
are urban dwellers, and one-third live in cities of more than one
hundred thousand. Huge numbers move in each year, as much pushed by
rural poverty and isolation as pulled by the attraction and opportun-
ities of city life. The migration is a striking by-product of road
building, the transistor radio, and the ubiquitous low-cost omnibus.
In education, likewise, there is ample testimony to the transi-
tional character of Latin American societies. Until recent decades,
little attention was paid to the constitutional provisions for
universal free public education, with the notable exceptions of
Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. As a result, some thirty to forty
per cent of the Latin American adult population is still illiterate.
This also, however, is a far cry from the situation in South and
Southeast Asia or in Africa, and heroic efforts have been made to
expand educational budgets, build schools, and train and recruit
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-10-
teachers. In recent years, primary school enrollment has been rising
at more than 6 per cent annually, and secondary and higher education
enrollments at about 10 per cent. The deficits remain very high,
and the qualitative deficiencies are deep-rooted. Nevertheless,
expanded educational systems are opening the way toward social mobility.
While few children of rural peasants or unskilled urban workers are
yet able to squeeze through the narrow bottlenecks of limited high
school capacity, the groups next up on the ladder are well represented
in both high schools and universities. This is a major factor in
bringing about the expansion in size and influence of the middle classes.
One of the consequences of this quiet social transformation is
a profound change in the character of Latin American politics. At
the time of independence in the 1820's, Latin American constitutions
were largely patterned on the American model, with many of their pro-
visions drawing inspiration from the French Revolution. The 19th
century practice, however, was more in line with the Iberian heritage:
authoritarian and paternalistic. Political influence depended more
on social status and family connections than on individual merit.
Political parties were numerous and short-lived, built to support
some particular leader rather than to combine interest groups for a
common program of governmental action. Periods of civilian rule were
generally unstable, giving way to long intervals of military dictator-
ship.
Nevertheless, the concepts of representative democracy, freedom
of press and political organization, and an independent judiciary
always survived, and they made possible the quite different political
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-11-
patterns which have emerged in recent decades. Their essential
element is middle class participation and leadership, accompanied by
a basic change in popular attitudes and expectations towards govern-
ment. The base of political participation is rapidly broadening,
including today many urban workers organized in labor unions and
even beginning to reach small farmers and rural laborers. More
stable political parties, with meaningful programs and strong roots
in local organization, have developed in many countries. The military
have continued as a major political force in most of Latin America,
but their interventions are no longer in support of a small oligarchy;
they too now reflect the new nationalism and developmental concerns
of the urban middle classes.
Finally, this set of interrelated economic, social, and political
trends has affected relations among the Latin American nations.
During the 19th century, there were many territorial conflicts, some
resulting in long years of bloody warfare. With the gradual develop-
ment of the inter-American system, peaceful settlement of international
disputes has become the accepted practice and there has been no inter-
national armed conflict since 1942. Active economic and cultural
relations, however, have been slow to develop in spite of the common
historical background. Since 1960, the most significant trend has
been toward economic integration, as far-sighted Latin American leaders
came to recognize the limitations of their separate national markets.
The five-nation common market in Central America has made dramatic
gains, and the much larger Latin American Free Trade Association,
which now includes all of South America and Mexico, has also brought
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-12-
about a substantial increase in trade within the continent. The Latin
American presidents in April, 1967 committed themselves to the
development by 1985 of a full Latin American common market. While
this project is encountering severe obstacles, its very adoption as
a goal is a far cry from the separatism of the past.
In economic terms, all this adds up to a continent very much on
the move. It is still a poor continent in absolute terms, with
massive poverty in many parts of the countryside and among the millions
of under-employed city slum dwellers. The Latin American gross
domestic product per capita in 1965 amounted to about $400, compared
with $3,100 in the United States and Canada, and $1,500 in Western
Europe. But the corresponding figures for Africa and for South
and Southeast Asia were $150 and $100, respectively. The potential
for a rapid breakthrough toward general economic modernization in
Latin America, therefore, is far greater than in the rest of the
so-called "third world" -- a misleading term which I wish had never
been invented.
*
*
*
*
The Myth of the Revolutionary Panacea. This brings me to the
third myth, the notion that all of Latin America requires a violent
revolution before any genuine economic, social, or political progress
can be expected. A young American professor recently stated it in
the New Republic in the following words: "Real progress cannot take
place in Latin America without revolution. Latin America is a feudal
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-13-
society, and feudalism will not survive the creation of a flexible,
mass-consumption economy. This revolution may be peaceful, but it
will mean the destruction of the established power structure." Other
advocates of the revolutionary panacea exclude the idea of peaceful
revolution. Among Latin American intellectuals, a large proportion
of whom have one or another form of Marxist orientation, it is often
said that violent revolution is essential to break the crust of
antiquated social and economic structures and lay the foundations for
modern growth with open societies. This school of thought likes to
say that only Mexico, Bolivia, and Cuba have "had their revolutions;"
and that until the rest of Latin America has theirs, all lesser efforts
will be in vain.
I disagree profoundly with this view, on the grounds that violent
revolution is neither necessary, nor humane, nor likely to achieve
the projected results. The fact is that nowhere in Latin America
today does there exist a frozen social system remotely comparable to
pre-revolutionary Mexico. To describe Latin America as a "feudal
society" is to betray a gross ignorance of the nature of feudalism,
of the nature of contemporary Latin America, or of both.
In discussions of this matter with Mexican intellectual friends,
I used to point to the striking example of the state of Sao Paulo
in Brazil. Sao Paulo contains 17,000,000 people, making it larger
than any Latin American country except for Brazil itself, Mexico,
Argentina, and Colombia. Forty years ago, its politics were wholly
controlled by an oligarchy of coffee growers. Today, they have
become a minor pressure group, of far less importance than indus-
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-14-
trialists and bankers, organized labor unions, and the very large
urban middle class of Sao Paulo City, Santos, Campinas, and the
many smaller cities which are spread throughout the state. By any
index of modernization -- industrial, agricultural, educational,
social, or political -- Sao Paulo is as far from feudalism as is
Mexico, but it achieved its transition through a gradual process of
peaceful change.
In Mexico, on the other hand, the revolution which began in
1910 was consolidated only by 1929, after a protracted civil war
which cost one million lives out of a then population of fifteen
millions. And as the students of Mexico City are rather noisily
making clear these days, some Mexicans believe that their revolution
has become too institutionalized, and is now ready for another
revolution. It is also significant that Bolivia, which "had its
revolution" in 1950, was the nation selected by Che Guevara for his
abortive would-be revolution last year. As for poor Cuba, a decade
after Fidel Castro's ascent to power it has settled down to the dull
rationed monotony, stripped of every kind of individual and collective
freedom, dominated by the bureaucratic "new class" which is by now
the familiar consequence of control by totalitarian-minded
Communist parties in Eastern Europe. Only the romantic enthusiasts
for revolution for its own sake, who enjoy the revolutionary process
but have no conception of what to build upon the ruins, can hold
any rational belief in the revolutionary panacea for Latin America
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-15-
as a whole.
Certainly rapid change is needed in Latin America -- change
of a degree and pace which may well be described as "revolutionary." "
But it is revolutionary in the sense of the industrial and agricul-
tural and educational revolutions which have transformed Western
Europe and North America and Japan over the last century, without
the massive liquidations of millions of innocents which marked
the classic revolutions of France and Russia.
*
*
*
*
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-16-
What, then, are the prospects for rapid and progressive
change in Latin America -- change from semi-development and
semi-modernization to open, mobile societies with decent living
conditions, broad equality of opportunity, and the respect for
individual dignity and for personal and collective freedom which
are written as aspirations into all Latin American constitutions?
To evaluate those prospects requires an analysis of three major
dilemmas which affect the region.
The Demographic Dilemma. The first is the demographic dilemma,
which poses a very high hurdle to change at the necessary speed to
meet even a portion of popular desires. The pace of population
increase in Latin America runs between three and four per cent per
year, the highest of any major region of the world. This means a
doubling every twenty years. This population explosion contri-
butes heavily to migration from the countryside to city slums,
and adds a dramatically high need for creation of jobs to the other
demanding tasks of economic development.
The problem is not one of imminent starvation in this hemisphere,
except perhaps in Haiti and a few extremely crowded small Carib-
bean Islands. Latin America has a larger unexploited margin be-
tween actual and potential food production than any other continent,
and as already mentioned, actual food production in recent years has
been rising more rapidly than population. The crucial problem in
addition to the tragedy of large numbers of illegal abortions at
serious risk to the health or life of the mothers, is the drag of
rapid population growth on economic development and living standards.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-17-
Nations poor in capital -- and by definition all the under-
developed or semi-developed countries are poor in capital -- are
fortunate if they can sustain a five or six per cent annual growth
in their total output. If population grows at 3-1/2 per cent a
year, living standards can increase at only 1-1/2 per cent, taking
almost fifty years to double. But if population were growing at
only 1 per cent per year, average incomes could double in only
eighteen years. That is the difference between seeing real hope
for the future and seeing only frustration.
During my term as American Ambassador in Brazil, I used to
discuss this question frequently with Brazilian friends. "How
can we be concerned about population growth," some of them would
ask, "when we have only 85 million in a country as large as the
United States? Don't people mean power?" I would make two answers.
First, for the United States, observing our own problems of urban
overcrowding and air and water pollution, I am sure that we would
off
be better/with a population of 100 or 150 million rather than
with our present figure of 200 million. Secondly, large numbers
of poor people most certainly do not mean power; they mean merely
large amounts of misery. This can be seen by any visitor to the
sub-continent of South Asia.
A number of Latin American governments have faced this pro-
blem squarely, and have made family planning services a regular
part of their public health clinic activities. In Argentina and
Uruguay, birth rates have been low for many years, and it is
understandable that the Argentine government sees no visible
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
-18-
population problem on the horizon. In the rest of the continent,
however, it is not only on the horizon; it is already at the
center of things.
It is true that the great inner frontier of South America,
ranging from the eastern slope of the Andes through the Gran Chaco
of Paraguay to Mato Grosso and west central Brazil -- is the
largest, almost unoccupied, readily developable part of the globe.
Many tens of millions of people could be settled there at an ade-
quate living standard. Parts of it are being rapidly colonized,
as new highways bring easy access to the area. But this is not
where the population explosion is most evident. In Brazil, it
can be seen in the desperately over-crowded city slums and in the
most backward rural areas, such as the subsistence farming region
of the northeast. Until a few months ago, it appeared that a
change in official Roman Catholic doctrine might help ease this
dilemma for Latin America, but the recent Papal Encyclical will
only make the task harder.
The Economic Dilemma. Latin America's economic dilemma is
the heart of the problem. One outstanding characteristic of post-
war Latin American politics has been the coming of economic develop-
ment to the forefront of national goals. A good deal of develop-
ment has in fact taken place, as already indicated. But the pace
is too slow, especially in view of the population explosion, and
it is an open question whether it can be sufficiently accelerated.
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The requisites for more rapid development are sufficiently
well known. They include a greater volume of capital formation,
expanded foreign trade, modernization of economic institutions,
and an educational system geared to modern needs. Each of these
elements, however, has its difficult hurdles to overcome.
Greater capital formation faces the usual problem of all poor
countries: With income levels low, it is difficult to save enough
out of current income to make the necessary investments to raise
those income levels. The urban and rural poor cannot be squeezed
as they were in the British industrial revolution, nor can con-
sumption levels be deliberately held down by the techniques of
Soviet Russia. Some governments have resorted to the monetary
printing press or its equivalent to finance large scale public
investment. This may work for a few years, as it did in Brazil
in the late 1950's, but the price of galloping inflation is very
high for any society, and the system soon adjusts its practices
and expectations to offset the inflation and to concentrate on
a dismal battle by every group to shift its costs to other groups.
(If you suppose that I am referring to anything like our recent
experience in the United States, let me point out that the average
annual increase in the cost of living from 1948 through 1966 in
Bolivia amounted to 34 per cent per year, in Chile and Brazil to
31 per cent, in Argentina to 27 per cent, and in Uruguay and
Paraguay to 21 per cent.)
If anything, the problem of voluntary limits on consumption
has been made harder by the expansion of the Latin American middle
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classes. Being children of the European cultural heritage, what-
ever their racial background, the upper and middle classes of Latin
America are exposed daily to American and European consumption
standards, and they want the automobiles, consumer durable goods,
house furnishings, clothing, and other material paraphernalia ad-
vertised by television and press. These pressures for consumption
can only be offset by systems of taxation deliberately designed
to encourage investment and by the development of capital markets.
And domestic investment also needs to be supplemented by a sub-
stantial volume of net foreign investment.
Hence the importance to Latin America of aid through the
Alliance for Progress and the international lending institutions,
and of foreign business investments. At the Punta del Este con-
ference of 1961, which drafted the original Charter of the Alliance
for Progress, it was estimated that foreign capital of two billion
dollars a year, supplementing a much larger volume of domestic
investment, could make possible overall Latin American economic
growth of 5 or 6 per cent a year. Of that amount, a billion dollars
was to come annually from United States public sources. Until this
year, we have met that commitment, but the recent Congressional
cuts in foreign aid will make us fall short unless remedial action
is taken quickly by the new administration and Congress.
Meanwhile, the dollar has diminished in real value, and the
effective absorptive capacity of Latin America has grown. I would
estimate today that at least three billion dollars a year of out-
side funds, public and private, could be put to very good use in
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speeding up Latin American development. Such amounts of external
capital are unfortunately not presently in sight.
The world trading position of Latin America is also far from
satisfactory. In 1948, Latin American exports accounted for 11
per cent of the world total, while in 1967 this proportion had
fallen to 5.8 per cent. Foreign exchange to pay for needed imports
is a critical bottleneck in economic development, and it can be
secured only through trade, foreign investment, and aid. Hence
the very great Latin American interest in some form of world
trading arrangement giving preference to imports from less de-
veloped countries. The hopes for a world-wide plan having been
frustrated at the New Delhi conference early this year, Latin
American leaders are pressing for United States action to give
such preferences on a hemispheric basis.
The modernization of internal economic institutions and of
the educational system are also of cardinal importance to accele-
rated development. They include reform of public administration
in the economic field, revision of corporation, banking, insurance,
public utility, and other regulatory legislation, and a vast ex-
pansion in secondary education to help fill the "missing middle"
in both public and private institutions. The universities have
been growing rapidly in student numbers, but they remain largely
patterned after obsolete continental European models, with far too
much emphasis on traditional legal studies and far too little on
science and technology, economics, administration, medicine and
the allied health professions, and even law itself as an instrument
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of social engineering instead of juridico-philosophical doctrine.
Most of these reforms require governmental action, and all encounter
one or other type of vested interest opposition. In this field,
the economic dilemma merges into the political dilemma.
The Political Dilemma. The essence of the political dilemma
is that while representative democracy is a formal aspiration
written into Latin American constitutions and solemn international
agreements like the revised Charter of the Organization of American
States, fully effective democracy in the strict sense of the term
does not exist anywhere south of our border. By democracy in the
strict sense, I mean a regime in which the electorate has periodic
opportunities to choose between genuine alternatives, but in which
there is so broad a consensus on the form of government that the
elevation to office of any group likely to obtain power does not
threaten the continuity of the regime itself. Mexico fails this
test because the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution, the
PRI, has a virtual monopoly of power. Chile fails it because the
narrowly defeated opposition in the last presidential election was
dedicated to the overturn of the regime. Everywhere else the
possibility of military intervention or of radical left-wing or
right-wing overthrow is an ever present political fact.
Nevertheless, some elements of working democracy do exist in
most of Latin America, Cuba excepted. Where there are military
regimes, they do not regard themselves as permanent. In a case
like Brazil's, the semi-authoritarian character of the regime is
tempered by a very free and strongly critical press, an elected
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Congress and set of State Legislatures, as well as local mayors,
and a great deal of lively political activity. Moreover, the Latin
American trend during the last several decades has been strongly
in the direction of greater popular political participation.
Even where political organization is unfettered, however,
Latin American politics are generally marked by a multiplicity of
parties, loosely allied in ephemeral coalitions, and by extreme
personalism, i.e., allegiance at the local or national level to
charismatic leaders rather than to well-formed party structures
or programs. In many cases, the real goal of electoral competition
is more the spoils of office than the implementation of programs
or the pursuit of ideological objectives.
For any close student of comparative government and politics,
this situation should not be surprising. It can be argued that in
any period of rapid economic and social change anywhere in the
world, in which major new groups are for the first time being
brought into active political participation, a democratic regime
is especially conducive to populist political demagoguery and to
profiteering by professional politicians at the expense of their
own supporters. This was the typical experience of the American
city machines prior to the movements for municipal reform. It can
be seen all over newly independent Africa and Asia. On a larger
scale than in our cities, and perhaps with more dire results, it
appears characteristio of much of today's Latin American politics.
This poses grave problems for the prospects of rapid economic
development. Such development requires policies with long-time
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horizons, in which some short-term sacrifices must be accepted
by almost every organized group in the community. Even mature
democracies have difficulty in implementing such policies, and
adolescent democracies all the more SO. If one is looking for
foreign analogues to Latin American politics, it is better to
examine the uneasy history of democracy in France or Italy than
to search for models in Britain or the United States.
The weaknesses of transitional politics are the main reason
for the persistence of military intervention in Latin American
political life. In the 19th century tradition, the officer corps
were generally aligned with landowning oligarchies and a very con-
servative clergy. This is not the case in the 20th century. In
a few of the smallest and weakest nations, military intervention may
be designed simply to maintain special privileges for the armed
forces themselves. But in the larger nations, military officers
are rarely protectors of entrenched oligarchies. While the
countries vary greatly on this point, in most cases the officer
corps is now drawn from the middle or lower middle classes. They
often feel themselves trustees of the national interest on a plane
higher than party politics, and their profession gives them prac-
tice in administration. With some outstanding exceptions, they
tend to be honest, not in a position to supplement their salaries
by moonlighting, and therefore sharply affected by inflation. It
is regrettable, but not surprising, that they should succumb to
the temptation of throwing out what appear to them to be "political
rascals," whose apparent concerns for the national interest, or
whose capacity to turn glowing soap-box promises into reality,
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leave much to be desired.
In this connection, one often encounters extraordinarily
simplistic views of the military role in Latin America. I have
seen many newspaper editorials and Congressional comments com-
plaining that the United States military assistance programs are
responsible for military coups, oblivious of the fact that mili-
tary intervention in Latin American politics is a tradition well
established for 125 years before the beginnings of our military
assistance program in 1952.
There is a special dilemma in this field, since police and
military forces are indispensable to internal order. Did they
not exist, society would be at the mercy of any aggressive minority,
and there are very aggressive minorities all over the continent,
many of them subsidized and indoctrinated with Cuban help. To
make the armed forces the servants of constituted civilian authority
is part of the process of broader political development, and this
in turn is related to social and economic development. In the
Mexican case, where the Army is today unquestionably the servant of
the civilian authorities, it took thirty years after the 1910
revolution to bring this condition about. Until the 1940's, all
Mexican presidents had been generals, and securing the support of
the officer corps was much more important for any Mexican politician
than securing honestly counted votes.
I have no easy solutions to suggest for this dilemma. It is
grossly naive, however, to talk in one breath about economic under-
development, crying social injustice, and the need for revolutionary
change, while at the same time expecting Latin American nations to
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be cardinal examples of the smooth working of simon-pure
representative democracy. After all, France has not yet achieved
that Nirvana, although it is one of the oldest nation-states in
the world; Belgium has not achieved it; and as we observe the
year 1968 in the United States, our own political practices
scarcely seem unblemished.
I would therefore expect a great deal of constitutional and
political experimentation in Latin America in coming years, some
along the dominant single party line, as in Mexico, some of the
Gaullist variety, and some on novel and unpredictable lines. Let
us hope that those experiments can be reconciled with the main-
tenance of individual civil liberties, freedom of criticism, con-
tinuing expansion of political participation, and ultimately the
restoration of true representative democracy, with genuine alter-
natives presented to a popular electorate -- a political system
which has taken centuries to evolve but which remains, in
Winston Churchill's famous phrase, the "least bad form of govern-
ment known to man. "
Conclusion: The Alternatives for American Policy. Those
three myths and three dilemmas present you the highlights of a
mixed picture, some good, some bad, and all kaleidoscopic. You
can see why it is difficult to pick out the enduring elements from
the transient ones. What does this picture suggest for American
policy in relation to Latin America?
Perhaps there is a prior question -- whether there need be
an American policy of any kind toward Latin America. The
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neo-isolationist voices now so often heard in the United States,
whether left or right-wing in inspiration, tell us that we have
had too active a foreign policy in the last quarter century, and
would do better to let the rest of the world care for itself unless
it impinges directly on tangible American security or economic
interests. I do not accept that view. On the contrary, it seems
to me clear that civil as well as military technology, communica-
tions, and economic structures are making the world's nations con-
stantly more inter-dependent year by year. If we fail to draw
the policy consequences from those facts, we shall bitterly regret
it.
Do we have any special interest in Latin America, different
from the rest of the world? It is common at Pan American meetings
to say so, in glowing toasts to the memory of Simon Bolivar and
the other past heroes of the idea of Western Hemisphere unity.
But, in truth, it is a bit foolish to regard Argentina and Chile,
6,000 miles away, as "neighbors" in some sense that Britain and
France are not. Nor is it a matter of obvious economic interests.
Latin American raw materials are important to us, but not indis-
pensable, and neither our $10 billion of direct investments nor
our $5 billion of annual exports are as important to our own
economic welfare as the Latin American theorists of North American
"economic imperialism" would like to make out. We do have a criti-
cal security interest in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean,
and the Panama Canal, but this does not extend to the larger
countries of South America.
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What in my mind is more important is the potential of Latin
America as one of the great centers of world influence, which may
be exercised for good or for evil -- for contributing to the kind
of world that we would be happy to live in or creating new centers
of chaos and disruption. George Ball, who is certainly no
isolationist, argues in his excellent recent book on foreign policy
that we should concentrate our attention mainly in the north tem-
perate zone where the main centers of economic, military, and
political power are located. I think he gives insufficient re-
cognition to the potential of Latin America as another such center
over the next fifteen or twenty years, provided that our own
policies help to make it so.
Whatever happens in birth control policies, the Latin American
population by the end of the century will be double the North
American. The ratio of people to natural resources is favorable
for development, and the essential base of semi-development -- in
many respects the hardest part of the transition -- has already
been created. Latin America is at a crossroads, with possibilities
for rapid transition to self-confident societies enjoying self-
sustaining growth on the one hand, or for relapse into internal
chaos on the other. At a relatively modest cost, combined with
good judgment and perseverance in application, American policy
could help to ensure that the right fork in this road is taken.
With apologies for some bias arising from my own deep in-
volvement in the origins of the Alliance for Progress, and despite
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the considerable disappointments of the last seven years, I be-
lieve that the lines of policy set forth in 1961 and amplified
at the meeting of Western Hemisphere Presidents in 1967 constitute
the essence of an effective American policy towards Latin America.
So far they have neither failed nor succeeded; they have yet to
be fully tested. To do so will require somewhat more aid and
technical assistance, within a framework of inter-Latin American
cooperation looking toward a Latin American common market, and
with continued emphasis on the domestic economic and social reforms
required within Latin America for rapid but peaceful change.
Some kind of trade preference for Latin American exports in our
markets would be a natural part of such a policy, but it should
be conditioned on genuine progress towards the common market
endorsed by the Latin presidents last year. Little can be done
through direct governmental relations to foster political develop-
ment, but a great deal can be done indirectly through cultural
and intellectual exchanges, assistance in educational modernization,
scientific and technical collaboration, and other non-governmental
channels.
In ample Congressional contacts in recent years, and in dis-
cussions with opinion leaders in many parts of the United States,
I have encountered widespread sympathy for this line of policy.
In the days prior to the Presidential Meeting at Punta del Este
last year, only an unrelated quarrel between the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and the Johnson Administration prevented the
Senate from adopting a formal resolution to this effect, as the
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House of Representatives had done earlier by a two-to-one bi-
partisan majority. There seems to be an almost instinctive recog-
nition in our public opinion that a successful Latin America could
be a pillar of strength for freedom in the world - - and therefore
for our deepest national interest.
As we become preoccupied, however, with critical domestic
challenges of rebuilding our cities and working out a new basis
for racial harmony --- and I subscribe to the urgent necessity of
facing those challenges -- there is a grave danger that we may
pass up the opportunity for effective cooperation in Western
Hemisphere development at a time when the trends I have summarized
tonight could make such cooperation especially rewarding. Time is
not our ally in this effort, and the opportunity lost in these
years may not soon recur. What we can least afford in our Western
Hemisphere policy is another era of neglect like that of 1947 to
1957. So much hangs, in this as in other respects, on the leader-
ship we elect next month and on the understanding created throughout
the nation by efforts such as your own.
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GORDON
Latin america
January 15, 1969
Mr. Lincoln Gordon
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland 21218
Dear Linc:
Thank you for your letter of January 15
and for your Latin America paper.
I'm sorry I wasn't able to see you when
you were in New York but my schedule just ran
away with me. I look forward to seeingyyou in
Washington, when hopefully, I will have a little
more time.
Warm regards,
Henry A. Kissinger
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