580. Editorial Note
On September 8, Congress approved the extension of $500 million in economic assistance to Latin America (Public Law 735), with the provision that none of the money could be used to assist “any country in Latin America being subjected to economic or diplomatic sanctions by the Organization of American States.” For text of the act, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1960, pages 290–292.
From September 5 to 13, the Third Meeting of the Organization of American States’ Special Committee to Study the Formulation of New Means for Economic Cooperation met in Bogotá, Colombia. On September 13, by a vote of 19 to 1 (Cuba), the Committee approved the Act of Bogotá which contained various recommendations for economic and social development. In approving the act, the delegations, “convinced that the peoples of the Americas can achieve a better life only within the democratic system, renew their faith in the essential values which lie at the base of Western civilization, and re-affirm their determination to assure the fullest measure of well-being to the people of the Americas under conditions of freedom and respect for the supreme [Page 1070] dignity of the individual.” Excerpts from the Act of Bogotá are ibid., pages 293–300. Documentation on the Special Committee’s meeting in Bogotá is scheduled for publication in volume V.
Toward the end of the Bogotá meeting, on September 12, Secretary Herter met with President Eisenhower at the White House to review several foreign policy questions. According to Goodpaster’s memorandum of the conversation, Herter said that the meeting “seems to have gone extremely well. Only the Cubans opposed the resolution, and their position was in some ways ridiculous. They presented a resolution calling on the United States to furnish thirty billion dollars in aid, to be utilized as the Latin American countries might decide.” (Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, DDE Diaries)