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

45. Department of State Guidelines Paper¹

Washington, May 1962.

LATIN AMERICA GUIDELINES OF UNITED STATES POLICY AND OPERATIONS

I. Basic Approach

1. The importance of Latin America to United States policy is older than the Monroe Doctrine and stems from the position of two continents whose security is interdependent. Today, three factors of Latin American development are intimately interlinked and together define the challenge facing the United States.

(a) In many countries, social tensions are mounting, and growing public dissatisfaction is directed against privileged groups who have ruled for generations without successfully dealing with major social and economic problems.

(b) There is a growing desire on the part of important governments to demonstrate that their foreign policy is independent of US control.

(c) Using Cuba as a major base of operations, Communist organization is attempting with purpose and skill to capture both of these movements and turn them against the United States.

2. Our strategy in this situation is: a) to lead and assist Latin America, through the Alliance for Progress and other means, in a major effort to satisfy basic human wants, to effect agrarian and tax reforms, and to promote self-help, cooperative efforts; b) to frustrate the efforts of Communists to gain control of the movements demanding reforms, to strengthen Latin Americans’ will and capacity to resist Communist subversion, and to isolate and promote the downfall of the Communist beachhead in Cuba; and c) to strengthen the inter-American system and cultivate closer relations with all the Latin American countries and peoples, especially with those key nations which appear destined to play an important role in the hemisphere and in the world, such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico.

3. In this enterprise we must exert positive leadership. We must cooperate to the fullest with the self-help efforts of countries seeking to modernize themselves. We must disassociate ourselves from reactionary forces which decline to respond to the needs of the people, and learn to discriminate between legitimate expressions of dissatisfaction with the existing social order and Communist-inspired agitation. We must influence and help the military to become guardians of constitutional order and agents of constructive change. We must be patiently understanding of the growing pains of countries which, in striving to establish their national identity, are feeling a temporary need to dramatize their independence from us. We must commit the resources required for the task.

4. During the next decade, our problems will become more complex, rather than less. The tide of change is bound in the short run to work against certain of our immediate interests. Old power groups will be increasingly estranged from us as we press for basic reforms. New groups in power will often be more difficult to deal with than leaders of the past. Through these years, we will have to keep our long run interests clearly in mind—a continent to the south made up of viable political societies capable of maintaining their independence and of dealing adequately with their own internal problems.

[Here follow the remaining 70 pages of this paper consisting of four additional sections: II, “Background,” III, “Objectives,” IV, “Lines of Action,” and V “Contingencies.”]

1. Source: Kennedy Library, Schlesinger Papers, Latin America, Blue Label, May 1962-February 1963. Secret.