If Lyndon Johnson’s administration witnessed a dwindling of the energy and optimism of the early days of John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, then his successor would preside over its disappearance. Johnson’s attempts to promote regional integration were the last significant effort of an era characterized by the belief that the United States could further its own interests by encouraging Latin American modernization and economic development through various forms of aid and assistance. Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, whose experiences during his ill-fated tour of 1958 had helped prompt the Eisenhower administration’s belated interest in Latin America, would abandon the idea of hemispheric development almost entirely. Despite some claims to the contrary during the 1968 election campaign, the region did not play a significant role in the strategic vision of global affairs of Nixon and his chief foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, and the Alliance was not part of their plans. As Nixon stated bluntly: “Latin America doesn’t matter.” To an even greater degree for the new administration than for its predecessors, stability was the key; few promises of economic assistance were forthcoming, and repressive governments would be embraced even more readily than in the Kennedy-Johnson era. “So unambitious as to be embarrassing,” was the stark assessment of Nixon’s regional agenda in the ...
A New Deal for Latin America. The Alliance for Progress