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Revoid. We're prohibited by law. See terms and

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conditions. Hello

1:21

everybody and welcome back to New Books

1:23

and Latin American Studies, a podcast channel

1:25

on the New Books Network. I'm

1:28

Ethan Besser Frederick, the host of the channel, and

1:30

today we'll be talking to Andrew Kirkendall about his

1:32

new book, Hemispheric Alliances, Liberal

1:34

Democrats, and Cold War Latin America.

1:37

Hello and welcome to the show. Thank you very

1:39

much, Ethan. Before we

1:41

get into the book, could you tell our listeners

1:43

a little bit about yourself and how you came

1:46

to write this piece? Well, I got

1:49

my PhD at 38 in 1996 from the University of North Carolina at

1:51

Chapel Hill, wrote

1:57

a couple books about Brazil and

1:59

the United States. Brazilians and

2:03

always intended to be a

2:05

Brazilian-ist more than anything else. But

2:07

even with my second book on

2:10

Paulo Frei, I followed him

2:12

into exile to all

2:15

the different places he went after that. And I

2:17

realized that there were other things

2:19

that I could do if that

2:22

seemed like where

2:24

I wanted to go. I needed to follow

2:27

my intellectual interests, and my

2:29

intellectual interests were bound to

2:32

evolve over time. In

2:35

this case, certainly were influenced by

2:37

my teaching interests because I had created

2:39

a class on the history of Brazil

2:43

here at Texas A&M, but I had also created

2:46

a class on inter-American relations. That

2:49

really, I think, continues

2:51

to be the most important

2:53

book, sorry, the

2:56

most important class

2:59

I teach because I think in many

3:02

ways, particularly now, people

3:04

in the United States don't seem to be all

3:07

that aware of

3:09

the history of U.S. relations

3:11

with Latin America, I think, only

3:13

since 9-11 in

3:16

New York and Washington. The

3:18

memory of U.S. actions

3:21

in Latin America has

3:24

diminished dramatically, and I always

3:27

have students coming into my class saying,

3:29

I didn't know that, I didn't know that, and

3:31

they spend 15 weeks telling me, I didn't know

3:34

any of this stuff. When

3:38

I was working on my second book on Freire,

3:42

I worked in the Kennedy

3:45

Library for the first time and

3:47

realized how rich it

3:50

was in sources

3:52

on Latin America. I

3:56

wrote an article that really is the article

3:58

that led to the this book, but

4:01

at the time it was only a paper for

4:05

a conference of

4:07

the Society for Historians of American

4:10

Foreign Relations, and I

4:12

started going to that conference regularly,

4:14

even as I was finishing my Paulo

4:16

Freire book. And initially I thought

4:18

I was going to write a book on the Cold

4:21

War and Latin American democracy, but

4:25

over time I realized a

4:27

number of things. One is that I wasn't going to

4:29

get the kind of external funding

4:31

that I would need to write a book

4:34

on the Cold War and Latin American democracy

4:36

and go to all the places that I

4:38

wanted to go to. On

4:40

the other hand, my department gives

4:43

me regular funding for

4:46

research every year, and that allowed me

4:48

to start going to all the all

4:50

the presidential libraries from Roosevelt

4:54

to Reagan, and

4:57

this project evolved

4:59

into a project on liberal

5:02

Democrats and the

5:05

legacies of their

5:08

interest in Latin

5:10

America. And

5:13

the turning point was when I

5:16

did a research trip to

5:18

the Wayne Morris papers in Eugene,

5:21

Oregon and the Frank Frank Church

5:23

papers in in Idaho, and I

5:26

realized that, you know, there really

5:28

was a story about liberal

5:31

Democrats and their interest in Latin

5:33

America because both these men had

5:35

been chairs of

5:37

the subcommittee on Western hemispheric affairs

5:40

in the Senate. And

5:44

for times in their career they were

5:47

very focused on Latin America. That

5:50

point that you made about

5:52

American knowledge of awareness of relations with Latin

5:55

America, we see this appear in the book

5:57

where there will be years

5:59

where even people whose job

6:01

it is to think about Latin America don't seem to

6:03

really think about Latin America and then all of a

6:05

sudden something about Latin America

6:07

erupts to the very top

6:10

of people's consciousness or a level

6:12

of concern. And so it's interesting to see that

6:14

same sort of dynamic a little bit of play

6:16

today. Yeah and it was interesting

6:19

to me particularly because

6:21

US influence in

6:25

Latin America was never stronger than

6:27

it was during the Cold War

6:29

and yet you know the United States was now

6:32

a global power. Certainly

6:34

there were places in the world at

6:36

particular times obviously after

6:38

World War II Europe very

6:41

Europe concerned them the

6:43

United States a great deal. Asia

6:46

became of great interest

6:48

and it was really only Fidel

6:51

Castro who made Latin America matter

6:54

in a way that it hadn't since the

6:56

good neighbor policy really. Well

6:58

let's start with the introduction to the book.

7:01

In the introduction you argue that

7:04

quote at key moments

7:06

in the history of the global

7:08

Cold War liberal Democrats in opposition

7:10

to existing Republican administration policies sought

7:13

to create new models for US

7:15

Latin American relations that went beyond

7:17

containing communism. But we also

7:20

see throughout the book how containing communism remained

7:22

a sort of sticky problem or sticky

7:25

agenda item for some of these Democrats.

7:27

So could you talk a little bit

7:29

about this dynamic of the evolution that

7:31

you wanted to trace in liberal thinking

7:34

on Latin America? Yeah and I

7:36

don't ever want to argue that

7:38

containing communism ever stopped being a

7:42

central concern but I think

7:45

that the pressure was on the

7:48

United States as far

7:50

as the liberal Democrats were concerned at

7:53

certain times to offer something beyond containment

7:56

to offer a positive agenda

7:59

and and not just containing

8:02

communism. While it is

8:04

always being forced

8:06

to address the issue that

8:09

they saw of still containing

8:11

communism and a number

8:13

of the reviews

8:16

of the book have suggested

8:18

I paid more attention to some

8:21

countries than to others

8:23

which seemed logical to me because

8:25

the threat perception in even

8:28

among the different Latin American countries was

8:31

always so much greater

8:33

in some than in others and what the

8:35

threat was and how they defined that threat

8:37

was differently. But in terms of the big

8:39

picture I mean

8:42

I think the Alliance for

8:44

Progress something like the Alliance

8:46

for Progress might have developed

8:48

had Richard Nixon

8:51

been elected instead of John

8:54

Kennedy it's certainly possible in the

8:57

election during the campaign Nixon

9:00

sounded more like a liberal he even

9:02

refers to himself as a liberal at

9:04

one point during during the

9:07

campaign and certainly this

9:09

the idea that in the late 1950s that

9:11

the United States had

9:13

not paid

9:17

enough attention to Latin America that

9:19

had not had not been sympathetic

9:21

to reform in Latin America that

9:24

had been paying spending

9:26

too much money on military

9:28

aid and and none on

9:31

foreign aid none on develop

9:33

aid for development that

9:36

there was probably going to be some kind

9:38

of evolution in that direction anyway

9:41

no matter whether it

9:43

had been a Republican or a Democrat in

9:46

elected in 1960

9:48

but the Democrats had

9:50

already begun that critique certainly

9:53

was a very strong critique of

9:55

military aid by by

9:57

Wayne Morse in

9:59

in particular There were a

10:01

lot of criticism of aid for

10:03

Batista, even while Batista

10:06

was still in power. And then

10:08

after Castro came to power and

10:10

moved left,

10:12

a real fear that, well,

10:14

yes, it was U.S. support

10:16

for dictators that led to

10:18

a strong

10:22

and hard left to coming to

10:24

power in Cuba. So,

10:26

you know, the Alliance for Progress, again,

10:29

again, something like that might have been

10:31

put in place as well. But the Alliance for

10:34

Progress, as it evolved,

10:36

became a, as

10:39

it was seen by many people

10:41

anyway, a symbol of U.S. idealism

10:44

in Latin America that the United States

10:46

really was going to have to stand

10:48

for something that was positive

10:53

and that was going to have a real

10:55

impact. Now, whether the

10:57

Alliance for Progress had a real

10:59

impact or not is

11:04

certainly questionable. And certainly many people,

11:07

even over the course of

11:09

the 1960s, thought

11:11

that the Alliance for Progress failed. And

11:15

yet what we see is

11:18

throughout the rest of

11:20

the Cold War, liberal Democrats

11:22

point to the

11:26

Alliance for Progress, particularly under Kennedy,

11:28

as being an example of that

11:31

kind of idealistic foreign

11:33

policy that was needed to effectively

11:36

fight the Cold War. So

11:39

if we take that as the core of

11:41

the book, the how do we get to

11:44

the Alliance for Progress and then its legacy

11:46

and how liberals make sense of Latin America

11:48

after that. That makes a

11:50

lot of sense for how Chapter 1 starts. Chapter

11:52

1 titled Liberal Democrats and Latin America,

11:54

Toward Engagement. You begin at the 20th

11:57

century and continue on leading up to

11:59

Kennedy's election. explaining

12:01

and exploring how Latin America went from

12:03

being a place policymakers kind of wanted

12:05

to avoid a little bit, especially after

12:08

the difficulties of the 1920s and

12:10

30s, and how it went from a low visibility

12:12

issue into becoming a very, very crucial issue, one

12:14

of the most important issues in the 1960 election.

12:18

So could you talk us through a little

12:20

bit how Latin America started to become so

12:22

important in liberal foreign policy minds? Sure,

12:25

I mean, throughout the 1950s,

12:28

there was a small minority

12:30

of people that was really engaged

12:32

with Latin America. Certainly one of

12:34

the most significant figures was a

12:36

woman named Frances Grant, who

12:39

had developed a strong interest

12:42

in Latin America, largely

12:44

for cultural reasons, and

12:46

then had developed a

12:48

strong interest in human rights

12:50

and ended up in 1950

12:52

after a series of coups

12:56

in Latin America and the overthrow of a

12:58

number of different democratic

13:00

governments like the

13:03

government that Romulo Betancourt was

13:05

associated with in Venezuela and

13:08

others. Frances

13:11

Grant created the

13:13

Inter-American Conference

13:16

for Democracy and

13:19

Freedom, and then she

13:21

began to establish

13:24

contacts. She already had

13:26

a lot of contacts with the

13:28

democratic figures of Latin America.

13:31

She began to encourage liberal

13:34

Democrats in particular to pay more

13:36

attention to Latin America.

13:39

She created this organization, which she ran

13:42

on a shoestring for

13:44

the following few decades, and

13:46

she had the first meeting

13:48

met of this organization, or

13:51

what became this organization, met in 1950 in Cuba,

13:54

at that time still a democracy,

13:58

and she began to enlist certain

14:01

people like Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,

14:03

a historian who

14:05

would later become an presidential

14:09

aid in the Kennedy administration. But throughout

14:11

the 1950s, he had a strong, he

14:13

wrote a lot of speeches for Adlai

14:16

Stevenson. He kept trying to

14:18

get Adlai Stevenson, who was the candidate for

14:20

president in 1952 and 1956, to focus on

14:22

Latin America. He

14:27

introduced Adlai Stevenson to people

14:29

like Jose Figueres of Costa

14:31

Rica. And

14:35

Stevenson, frankly, couldn't have

14:37

cared less about Latin America

14:39

for a very long

14:41

time. Robert Alexander,

14:43

the labor economist from

14:46

Rutgers, also very focused

14:48

on Latin America. He wrote a

14:50

lot of letters to Stevenson

14:52

trying to get him engaged.

14:57

But Stevenson had one experience where

15:00

he was giving a

15:02

speech, or was it a

15:04

press conference, I forget. But in any case, he made a

15:08

comment on democracy

15:10

in Costa Rica, and one

15:12

journalist asked him, so,

15:15

Governor Stevenson, what is your

15:17

opinion about the whooping grain? So

15:22

suggesting that this was clearly

15:24

not an interest of much interest to

15:26

anyone. And really, it

15:29

was only with, as with everyone

15:32

else, Castro

15:34

coming to power in 1959 that people began to

15:36

pay attention. Stevenson

15:40

finally went on a trip to Latin America.

15:42

He'd seen most of the rest of the

15:44

world, but he had resisted

15:49

going to Latin America. But finally, in

15:51

1960, he goes,

15:55

which in some ways is kind of ironic

15:57

because it kind of prevents him from running

15:59

it. campaign for his campaign for

16:01

presidency if he had actually wanted

16:03

to run a third campaign, it

16:05

wasn't really clear at the time.

16:07

In any case, suddenly

16:10

with Castro coming to power, people

16:14

are focusing. Wayne

16:16

Morris is very critical

16:18

of Castro early on,

16:21

particularly because of the executions that

16:24

take place. But

16:26

in any case, there

16:29

are meetings that are held,

16:31

people are going to Latin

16:33

America, people are beginning

16:35

to focus again. And Kennedy,

16:38

who ends up being, of course,

16:40

the Democratic candidate

16:42

in 1960, hadn't paid much

16:44

attention to

16:47

Latin America, but was seen

16:49

as somewhat of

16:51

an independent thinker because

16:53

of his support for

16:56

Algerian independence, his seeming

16:58

independence on the subject of Vietnam.

17:03

Certainly a guy

17:06

who was going to be a foreign

17:08

policy president, there was no doubt about

17:10

that, but wouldn't have necessarily been

17:13

focused on Latin America had it not

17:15

been that Castro was

17:17

moving towards the Soviet Union

17:19

and Castro was

17:22

encouraging guerrilla

17:24

war. And there

17:26

was a real sense of

17:28

a threat there if the United States didn't

17:30

start paying more attention to Latin America and

17:33

addressing some of the concerns that

17:36

Latin American leaders had been talking

17:38

about for years, like the need for

17:41

economic development, the need

17:43

for land reform, the need for

17:46

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19:17

first chapter sets up those

19:20

developing liberal ideas and these handful of

19:22

voices and individuals. You're right Francis Grant

19:24

definitely jumps out as a particularly interesting

19:26

individual. I hadn't known

19:28

the relationship between some of those

19:31

figures in Latin America until reading

19:33

about that. The first chapter

19:36

sets up those relationships for the next

19:38

two chapters to explore the Kennedy presidency.

19:41

And so chapter two appropriately titled Let

19:43

Us Begin the Many Fronts of John

19:45

F. Kennedy's Latin American Cold War Part

19:47

One. Now that we've set up some

19:49

of these liberal ideas and developments on

19:51

Latin America in the lead up to

19:53

Kennedy, could you talk a

19:55

little bit about how Kennedy's early administration,

19:57

how was it both in some ways

20:00

a continuity of liberal ideas

20:02

on Latin America that had already been

20:04

developing. And then in what ways did

20:06

he innovate or create new ideas or

20:08

new approaches or at least differentiate himself

20:11

from other liberal thinkers? Well,

20:13

he did obviously carry through

20:16

with the idea of creating

20:18

an Alliance for Progress. And

20:20

that was intended to

20:22

be an ambitious program that would

20:24

involve both US

20:27

governments and Latin American governments. People

20:29

often forget that the United States

20:31

pledged a significant amount of

20:34

money, but 80% of

20:36

the money that was supposed to be spent

20:38

on Alliance for Progress projects

20:41

was supposed to be spent

20:43

by Latin Americans. So

20:45

a big part

20:47

of the concern of

20:49

the Kennedy administration early on was

20:52

to figure out who were

20:54

the leaders they could

20:56

work with, who are the people who are

20:58

already in power in Latin

21:00

American countries that would

21:03

be sympathetic to the

21:06

ideals of the Alliance for Progress or who

21:08

had already begun to institute

21:10

certain kinds of significant

21:13

reforms or attempts

21:15

to promote economic

21:18

development. So above

21:20

all, Romulo Betancourt, who had come

21:22

to power in the late

21:25

1950s, who was already seen as a

21:27

rival of Fidel Castro, even

21:29

though they have both come to power after

21:32

the overthrow of dictators

21:35

in Venezuela and Cuba. They

21:37

soon become rivals

21:39

and Betancourt becomes the

21:42

favorite Latin

21:44

American leader before the

21:47

Kennedy administration. Schlesinger and

21:49

others try and encourage

21:52

a relationship that hadn't previously

21:54

existed between the Venezuelan leader

21:56

and Kennedy. attempt

22:00

to focus on, okay, so what

22:02

countries are willing to engage in

22:05

these kinds of programs, and

22:08

does the United States find

22:10

them as people worth supporting?

22:13

And that was a problem that they

22:15

had, I think, in the Kennedy years,

22:18

that there

22:21

were people who

22:23

weren't reformists, so was the United

22:25

States going to support them?

22:27

So, for example, Elisandre in Chile

22:34

was really more of

22:36

a kind of an Eisenhower

22:38

conservative, and yet the United

22:40

States was very worried that

22:43

when the next presidential campaign happened in

22:45

1964, that if the United States

22:49

hadn't shown

22:52

that democracy can

22:54

result in improvements

22:57

for the ordinary Chilean, then

23:00

the support for the left in the

23:02

1964 presidential election

23:04

would be very strong. So, the

23:07

United States tried to encourage a guy

23:09

like Elisandre, who wasn't particularly supportive

23:12

of things like land reform, to

23:15

move forward on land

23:17

reform programs. On

23:19

the other hand, there were people who

23:21

certainly by Latin American standards would

23:24

be seen as reformists, and

23:28

yet the United States didn't trust them. A

23:31

good example of that would be Juan

23:33

Golar in Brazil,

23:35

that the United States had

23:37

been saying had

23:40

developed the suspicion of Golar since

23:42

the time that he was minister

23:45

of labor during

23:47

the Eisenhower years. And so, he

23:50

was always viewed with a great deal

23:52

of suspicion, and then when he accidentally

23:54

becomes president

23:57

after the resignation of Jean-Lucroix,

24:00

in 1961, the United

24:02

States is really wondering

24:04

whether it can work with this guy.

24:08

Lincoln Gordon, who had met an

24:11

economist who had met with Quasros

24:15

and had really been impressed

24:17

by Quasros, had been named

24:20

the ambassador to Brazil,

24:22

and he almost

24:25

immediately begins to distrust Goulart.

24:29

And so, was the United

24:32

States really going to support this pro-labor

24:35

politician? You would think that a

24:37

pro-labor politician would be someone that

24:39

a liberal Democrat would

24:41

want to support. And

24:44

yet, they weren't certain

24:46

about him, and there was a great deal of

24:48

debate within the Kennedy

24:51

administration about whether or

24:53

not the

24:56

Alliance for Progress would work in

24:58

Brazil, whether Goulart was going to

25:00

support the Alliance for Progress. But

25:03

there was also a real fear, and I

25:06

think this is something that people don't really

25:08

understand about Goulart

25:11

as he was viewed by the Kennedy administration,

25:14

is they think that he's

25:17

going to do something unconstitutional. And

25:21

the United States is worried

25:24

that nothing will be done in response

25:27

to that. And Brazil has seen, of

25:29

course, the largest, most populist Latin

25:33

American country with the biggest

25:35

economy that the

25:37

Kennedy administration was very worried about,

25:40

Goulart. That's

25:43

one of the things that people, who I think have

25:46

neglected before, that I think I make

25:48

a major contribution here, is that the

25:52

Kennedy administration, one, was debating

25:55

about Goulart. There's a lot

25:57

of different opinions. about

26:00

Goulart and whether Goulart is

26:02

in fact dangerous. But

26:05

the planning is always based

26:08

on the... the Kennedy administration planning

26:10

is always based on the assumption

26:13

that Goulart is going to do

26:15

something unconstitutional and in that case

26:18

the military has to

26:20

act. And it's

26:22

also important to remember that the military

26:25

had played a role in

26:27

Brazilian politics since 1937, often overthrowing governments

26:31

but not seizing power. So even

26:33

the idea that yes the United

26:35

States might think that a coup

26:37

might become necessary if Goulart did

26:39

this unconstitutional thing, whatever

26:42

it was going to be, that

26:45

still that didn't mean you're going

26:48

to end up with 21 years

26:50

of military rule there.

26:52

Particularly because one of the things

26:54

that the Kennedy administration implemented or

26:57

that was going to seem seems

27:00

in retrospect to have been rather

27:02

positive is the idea that okay

27:04

the Kennedy administration was not going

27:06

to get rid of military

27:09

governments that existed in Latin America

27:12

but it wasn't going to try and be

27:14

associated with them in any strong way.

27:16

It didn't want to be seen as the

27:20

ally of the Somoza dynasty and it

27:22

didn't want to have be seen about

27:24

the ally of Trujillo. It

27:27

didn't... it wanted to distance itself from

27:30

those governments. And if

27:32

a military coup happened the

27:34

United States would not give

27:36

aid to that new

27:39

government until they established a

27:41

timetable for a return to

27:43

constitutional government. And

27:45

that they actually did carry

27:48

this out in Peru. That was

27:50

the most significant example of a

27:52

country where a coup happened because

27:55

the military didn't like the fact that

27:58

our reformist leaders of the

28:00

afra candidate had won, and so

28:02

the military didn't want him to

28:04

come to power. So the United

28:06

States said, well, we're not going

28:09

to give you any aid until

28:11

you plan a

28:13

new round of

28:16

elections. And so once they do

28:18

set a timetable for return to

28:21

democracy, the United

28:23

States gives aid

28:25

to the Peru

28:28

again, and the elections are held, and

28:30

the afra candidate doesn't win, so it

28:32

works out for both the military and

28:36

the United States in that regard. Now, it's

28:39

extremely important to remember

28:41

that Kennedy believed that

28:45

military aid needed to

28:47

be increased significantly. Counter

28:50

insurgency training needed to be increased

28:53

significantly. Police training needed

28:55

to be increased significantly.

28:59

And Kennedy did seem to

29:01

believe, all the evidence

29:03

that I have seen, he did

29:05

believe that this could happen and

29:07

was necessary because of the threat of

29:09

Castro. It

29:12

could happen without the

29:14

military seeing this as an

29:18

encouragement to come to power. And

29:21

the Kennedy administration

29:23

seems genuinely to have

29:25

been surprised and disappointed

29:28

when coups happened in

29:30

Honduras or

29:32

in the Dominican Republic, and the United

29:35

States, and the Kennedy administration didn't support

29:37

those coups, as

29:39

obviously had been common

29:41

in the past. So I

29:45

think that people who say

29:47

that Kennedy wanted military-led

29:51

modernization in

29:54

Latin America under the Alliance

29:56

for Progress are just wrong.

29:58

He wanted military-supported modern But

30:00

the United States

30:02

didn't want to be represented

30:04

by military governments in

30:08

Latin America. And

30:12

so, again, a certain amount of

30:14

naivete, perhaps, sometimes when some of

30:16

these coups happened, you

30:18

can see that as well with Vietnam,

30:22

when the Noh-Din-Yam

30:25

administration is overthrown. And

30:29

they're killed. The Kennedy administration seems

30:31

appalled that the

30:33

Vietnamese leaders are killed following this

30:35

coup, as if that doesn't happen

30:37

in military coups. But

30:42

I think that the Kennedy

30:44

administration often failed,

30:47

and it's just

30:49

not intended as

30:52

an apology for liberal Democrats in any

30:54

sense. The

30:57

Kennedy administration often failed, and the

31:00

legacies of the Kennedy

31:02

administration are often

31:04

military governments that tank power over

31:07

the next few years after Kennedy

31:09

is dead, in

31:11

which you can say that the

31:14

Kennedy support for military aid,

31:16

counterinsurgency training, etc., was

31:18

a factor in those governments

31:22

coming to power, undoubtedly. I

31:25

mean, that's certainly true. I

31:28

do insist – and I've moved forward

31:30

into the end of the Kennedy years,

31:32

but I do insist that Kennedy

31:35

didn't know he was dying. He

31:37

was going to die in November of 1963. He

31:41

hadn't made any final decisions

31:43

about Latin America. He

31:45

still, at the end of his life,

31:49

believed that Latin America was an area

31:51

of great concern. The liberal Democrats often

31:53

were feeling he did not address the

32:00

Latin America's enough. People

32:03

like Schlesinger and

32:05

others were feeling like they weren't

32:07

being paid attention to, even

32:10

in times

32:12

like the Cuban Missile Crisis

32:15

and elsewhere that their voices

32:17

weren't necessarily being heard. And

32:22

yet, again, Kennedy hadn't

32:24

changed his policies. I think people who

32:26

think that he changed his policy, I

32:28

don't think he had changed his policies.

32:31

He was trying to not back himself

32:33

into the corner. He was still focused

32:36

on Latin America, if

32:38

never enough, as far

32:40

as many of the people I'm

32:43

writing about thought he should. You've

32:48

done a great job here of painting some

32:52

of the tendencies, intentional and otherwise, of the

32:54

Kennedy policies that you describe in chapters two,

32:57

three, and four. Chapter

32:59

three, The Many Fronts of John

33:01

F. Kennedy's Cold War, and chapter

33:03

four, Kennedy's Unfinished Legacy and Intended

33:05

and Unintended Consequences. And

33:08

I want to wrap up this Kennedy discussion by

33:10

looking a little bit more in chapter four about

33:13

a trend that you mentioned here at the end

33:15

that maybe we could explore a little bit, which

33:18

is that some of his original

33:20

sort of liberal allies and advisors

33:22

on Latin America start to feel

33:24

sidelined and frustrated, as Kennedy either

33:28

decides or fully realizes that he is

33:30

quite comfortable with military aid, even if

33:32

it seems to somehow result in these

33:35

military coups. So

33:38

can you talk a little bit about this

33:40

liberal frustration that starts to exist at the

33:42

very end of the Kennedy administration? Yeah,

33:45

I think that there

33:47

always were these tensions that

33:50

develop among people like

33:52

presidential aid, Schlesinger,

33:55

people who develop a real interest

33:58

in the United States. in

34:01

Latin America during the course of their

34:03

time in the Kennedy administration like Richard

34:06

Goodwin, husband

34:08

of Doris Kearns Goodwin, for those who were

34:10

interested, and

34:12

Ralph Duncan, a long-time

34:15

presidential aide of Kennedy.

34:18

All these people had begun to develop

34:21

a great deal of interest in Latin

34:23

America or in Schlesinger's case already

34:25

had a great deal of interest. And

34:30

in Schlesinger's case in particular, always

34:33

felt like the

34:35

whole ideal, all the most

34:38

idealistic parts of the Kennedy

34:40

program were being

34:43

pushed back against by people in the State Department.

34:48

You could even argue in a certain sense

34:51

that Schlesinger believed that there was

34:53

a deep state that

34:56

was fighting against the

34:58

kinds of reforms that he saw

35:00

as necessary. And

35:02

certainly Schlesinger thought there were

35:05

people in the Pentagon who

35:08

had too many friends in

35:10

the Latin American military and were

35:12

opposed to

35:15

the reformist leaders

35:18

that Schlesinger wanted to

35:20

support. People

35:23

like Ralph Duncan, who became

35:25

very attached to, and Hubert

35:27

Humphrey as well, the future

35:29

vice president, were

35:32

very attached to the Christian Democratic

35:34

Party in Chile. Again,

35:40

a lot of these people, I mean, there's

35:42

a, certainly in

35:44

the case of Brazil, a whole lot of

35:46

argument going on between Lincoln

35:50

Gordon, who's very anti-Gullor

35:53

in Rio, and Vernon

35:55

Walters, who's also helping push a very

35:58

kind of overruled Rott

36:00

reporting on what's going on Brazil versus

36:04

Edwin Martin, who's

36:06

the Assistant Secretary of State,

36:09

who says that Golar is,

36:12

Kennedy doesn't want to be seen as

36:15

a reactionary. And other

36:17

people like Ralph Duncan say that

36:19

if once Kennedy eventually goes to

36:22

Brazil, he should meet with the

36:24

leaders of the peasant leagues. I

36:27

mean, really, very diverse, a

36:29

great diversity of opinion about

36:34

what they should do. On the other hand,

36:36

Kennedy, in the case of

36:38

Brazil, keeps

36:41

putting off going to Brazil because the

36:43

Golar administration is seen as anti-American. And

36:45

he doesn't think that'll be good for

36:48

his reelection prospects in

36:50

1964. In

36:54

the Dominican Republic, the

36:56

Kennedy administration becomes very

37:00

suspicious, very

37:03

quickly, of Juan

37:06

Bosch. And

37:09

Juan Bosch is elected as a

37:11

Democratic reformist leader, longtime

37:14

opponent of Trujillo, after

37:17

Trujillo's assassination. There's

37:20

a strong hope that the Dominican Republic

37:22

is going to be a showcase for

37:25

democracy in the Caribbean. And

37:27

Juan Bosch is a

37:30

longtime political activist, but

37:32

also a novelist

37:34

and short story writer. And

37:39

many people in the Kennedy administration aren't really

37:42

certain that they think he's

37:46

their kind of reformist. On

37:49

the other hand, John Bartlow

37:52

Martin, who had been

37:54

a journalist, had been a speechwriter for

37:57

Stevenson, and then Kennedy. had

38:01

a long-time interest in the Dominican

38:03

Republic. He

38:06

doesn't think that Juan Bosch is moving

38:08

fast enough in terms

38:10

of supporting reform. On the other

38:14

hand, he's also very certain

38:17

that the Dominican military has no

38:19

interest at this point in what

38:22

the US has to say about

38:24

a military coup or lack thereof.

38:27

Juan Bosch only lasts in

38:29

power for seven

38:32

months. I think again the United

38:34

States might

38:37

have been more sympathetic to him, but

38:40

it's clear that, to me

38:42

at least, that the coup

38:44

that happens isn't

38:48

what the United States wanted, but

38:50

it is what the military wanted and

38:52

it is what many more traditional politicians

38:55

wanted in. It's really the Dominicans who are making

38:57

that choice,

39:00

not the United States. Once

39:02

Bosch is gone, some liberal

39:05

Democrats in Congress say

39:07

the United States should

39:12

put Bosch back in power. It's

39:14

very clear that the Kennedy administration

39:16

has no interest in doing that,

39:18

and yet they're

39:21

also clearly,

39:23

their program has failed. The

39:26

Dominican Republic is not

39:28

really clear what it's going to be in the

39:30

short term, in the long

39:33

term, but in the short term it

39:35

doesn't look like it's going to become

39:37

a showcase for democracy that many

39:39

people in the

39:41

early Kennedy years at least had hoped

39:43

it would be. And then, as you've

39:46

already said and is important to remember, Kennedy

39:48

didn't plan on that being

39:51

the end of things. He thought he'd have

39:53

time and ideally a second term to Develop

39:55

and maybe resolve some of these contradictions, But

39:58

he doesn't. The

40:00

next chapter chapter five titled

40:02

let us continue toward the

40:04

Johnson and Lions are Johnson

40:06

takes over. And two terms

40:08

that appear a couple times in

40:10

this chapter that I think at.

40:13

My indicates and a gas emissions of

40:15

of how he uses or doesn't use

40:17

the lines for progress or disengagement and

40:20

failure to live up to. And there's

40:22

one quote in particular that I thought

40:24

my It launches into little discussion of

40:26

this transition and page one ten at

40:28

a critical turning point in the history.

40:30

Let America as Cold War liberal democrats

40:32

a failed to live up to their

40:34

democratic ideals. As the part

40:36

about a particular moment in the

40:39

Cold War and America. But perhaps

40:41

you could talk a little bit

40:43

about this transition to the Johnson

40:45

Administration and how the lines for

40:47

Progress doesn't doesn't change I and

40:49

how Us liberal policy towards Latin

40:51

America doesn't doesn't sit. Well

40:55

with lessons or is

40:57

of course they say.

41:00

Are not as admirer of of

41:02

the vice President and not admirer

41:04

of a Johnson once he becomes

41:07

president, and he is certainly one

41:09

of the of the Kennedy own.

41:12

Kennedy. Aids associated with Latin

41:14

America Who is going to

41:17

be done A member of

41:19

the Johnson Administration for the

41:21

shortest shortest period of time?

41:23

Ah. And he's particularly concerned

41:26

when Thomas Mann ah is

41:28

a chosen to said that

41:30

America policy in the Johnson

41:32

Administration The Thomas Mann is

41:35

more than Eisenhower tired. Ah.

41:37

Thomas Mann is is is

41:39

not a supporter of the

41:41

reformist The Democrats. Are

41:45

that this lessons your ah? is?

41:47

So admiring of. Ah, and so

41:50

between us, Messenger himself been out

41:52

of my forced out and he

41:54

he he he knows that there's

41:56

no point in staying staying around

41:59

because Johnson. Listening to the

42:01

to his advice so it's licensure

42:03

leaves a fairly soon now. Some

42:05

of the other people stay on.

42:08

Ah ah. But.

42:11

A number of things happen

42:13

fairly quickly. One is that

42:16

on. Things

42:18

come to a head in in

42:20

Brazil. And a Thomas

42:22

man who was given a secret speech

42:24

in in which he says that the

42:27

An eye of the Johnson administration is

42:29

not going to be worried so much.

42:31

ah his military coups happened and that

42:33

net cap and if you just a

42:35

few weeks later the military takes over

42:37

and in in Brazil So a lot

42:39

of people brazilians and others have found

42:41

that very suspicious of over the years.

42:44

I don't think we need it need

42:46

to be see it that direct a

42:48

line. I think that the Brazilian military

42:50

as rip ready to have colored. Go

42:52

and on. And.

42:56

On and many the traditional

42:58

politics civilian politicians were raised

43:00

have go and else but

43:02

the failure that I specifically

43:04

a reference is the failure

43:06

over Brazil every. Every.

43:09

One Ah. In

43:12

the United States pretty much

43:14

as Cooper in the Us

43:16

Congress in the Johnson administration

43:18

of course supports that. Cool

43:20

is happy to see Go

43:22

Lord Coe. Ah and over

43:24

the next few years of

43:26

opinions about colored simply hardened

43:28

and all sorts of the

43:31

absurd things are said about

43:33

ago large and but what

43:35

he'd what he had done

43:37

to justify the to ah

43:39

even Wayne Morse. oh six.

43:41

That the to is a

43:43

good thing but when several

43:45

weeks later a military man

43:47

becomes to the to the

43:49

first president he is the

43:51

first person to criticize that

43:53

and he is the first

43:56

person to recognize that addressed

43:58

towards military dictatorship has. Started

44:00

ah and will probably

44:02

couldn't continue. I

44:05

everybody else Robert Kennedy,

44:09

Of slices or suspicious but he's

44:11

He's now back to being a

44:13

a pundits and and a historian.

44:17

Donald. The Donald Fraser's later

44:19

going to be a leader

44:21

in in the Human Rights

44:23

movement within the within the

44:25

Congress. Oh, lots of people

44:27

support the coup and are

44:29

quite happy with the new

44:31

military leader who they say

44:34

they contend is is truly

44:36

pro Alliance for Progress in

44:38

a way that goal. Art work

44:40

in Cook was not. Ah, so

44:42

that's. That. Is

44:44

really a turning point because. You

44:47

know, After the Brazilian military

44:49

coup in Sixty Four, a. Very.

44:52

Few civilian government's survive in

44:54

Latin America. Certainly by the

44:57

Nineteen seventies, it's pretty much

44:59

all military dictatorships. But most

45:01

people I think think that

45:03

a six the sixty Four

45:06

coup in Brazil is is

45:08

the real turning point for

45:10

counterrevolution in in Brazil in

45:12

Latin America. and and the

45:14

Liberal Democrats are almost to

45:17

a man and even Francis

45:19

Grant herself is it is

45:21

supportive of. Of that military

45:23

coup out and sixty four not

45:25

so some of them less happy

45:28

with that movement towards our military,

45:30

direct mail or a military leader

45:32

been in charge. But generally speaking

45:34

most people are have quite happy

45:36

with Castelo Branco and and ignore

45:39

a lot of the repression that

45:41

takes place up followed falling the

45:43

coup. Ah,

45:45

the Dominican Republic ends up being

45:48

another place where a in nineteen

45:50

sixty five A there's an uprising

45:52

l m that the intent of

45:55

the people who rebel is to

45:57

rip return one botched up to.

46:00

Our Ah, the United States and

46:02

his troops in immediately the first

46:04

time since the other good neighbor

46:06

policy as invade and an invading

46:09

force and an occupying force ah

46:11

an over the next. Few

46:14

months though, there's a lot

46:16

of criticism of Ah by

46:18

some people, at least of

46:21

of the actual invasion. certainly

46:23

by many the people that

46:25

aren't considered to be allied

46:27

with the Liberal Democrats, people

46:29

like Betancourt, Ah, and others.

46:31

and even at the My

46:33

Boyfriend in in July. And.

46:37

At the nevertheless ah, in Nineteen

46:39

sixties or in Eighteen Sixty Six

46:42

finally, elections are held again and

46:44

Bosh is once again a candidate.

46:46

though he's worried for his life

46:48

and doesn't spend much time in

46:51

the country and many of his

46:53

allies or been brutalized, hurt or

46:55

killed. And Johnson

46:58

is totally in support of

47:00

the rid of a man

47:02

named Lucky in Bulgaria who

47:04

had been a True Heroes

47:06

puppet president. Who

47:08

had been someone that in

47:11

the early Nineteen sixties? Many

47:13

in the Kennedy Administration people

47:15

like Francis Grants, thought that

47:17

someone we never want to

47:19

see come to power in

47:21

the Dominican Republic In Sixty

47:23

Six. Ah, the Administration Johnson

47:25

Administration is firmly behind his

47:27

his election and he is

47:29

of course. Ah ah. Voted.

47:32

Into office and then almost

47:35

immediately the Dominican Republic becomes

47:37

one of the major recipients

47:39

of Alliance for Progress Ah

47:41

funding. And. This is

47:43

something that I certainly have. A

47:46

book by Jeffrey Tacit that came

47:48

back of out a few years

47:50

ago was very good at showing

47:53

how the political needs of of

47:55

foreign aid and a drove foreign

47:57

aid and not necessarily to me

48:00

Id ah and I think that

48:02

are though my only disagreement with

48:04

with. Professor Tacit is that

48:06

I think when he shows in which

48:09

he doesn't recognize that he shows as

48:11

that that that really comes to fruition

48:13

under just isn't. That.

48:16

The military dictatorship of Brazil

48:18

becomes the number one recipient

48:20

of Us foreign aid. The

48:23

Dominican Republic becomes one of

48:25

the four major Us recipients

48:27

of out of foreign aid.

48:29

so they're clearly is a

48:31

that again strong connection between

48:33

a political needs more than

48:35

a socio economic and in

48:37

in. Where. The Alliance for

48:40

Progress Money goes now. the one.

48:43

One. Place where the allies for

48:45

progress is really alive. Is

48:48

intuit where the United States

48:50

covertly provided a lot of

48:52

aid to. Get.

48:54

The bible fray it into office and

48:57

he wins with more than fifty percent

48:59

of the vote. Because the conservatives don't

49:01

run a candidates and are of Salvador

49:04

Allende is is defeated because the United

49:06

States with have been very worried about

49:08

him as he can cluster been elected

49:10

back in Nineteen Fifty eight. So the

49:13

United States head. Of

49:15

firmly. Brown. It's support

49:17

been behind Eduardo Fray who

49:19

was a big a hero

49:21

for the Liberal Democrats of

49:24

the out of the Kennedy

49:26

administration of people like I'm.

49:29

Particularly. Like Ralph them Duncan who

49:31

had been a Presidential aide and he

49:34

was having trouble in the Johnson Administration

49:36

and particularly with Thomas Mann and they

49:38

thought a good thing for him to

49:40

do with the the go down to

49:42

chill a once the fray was elected.

49:46

And and and Overseer of

49:48

the U S A program

49:50

and until it became this

49:52

largest recipient of Alliance for

49:54

Progress eight per person. in

49:57

latin america so that was the one place where a

49:59

guy who had real

50:01

support for land reform,

50:04

real support for rural

50:06

unionization. Heidi Tinsman

50:08

has written a wonderful book

50:10

that can tell you a

50:12

lot about that part

50:15

of those parts of the program. And

50:17

also people who've

50:19

read my second book would remember is

50:21

that that was where Paul Freidie went

50:25

after he left Brazil

50:27

following the coup in 64. Here

50:30

the United States had supported the coup in 64

50:32

in Brazil and then where

50:35

Paul Freidie had done

50:37

his literacy campaigns for

50:40

the national governor was preparing them for the

50:42

national government. And then he ends

50:44

up going to Chile and ends up

50:46

working for the US

50:48

supported government at Eduardo Freidie. It's

50:51

a rather ironic current kind

50:53

of events. The other thing

50:55

that I think is really interesting, other two things

50:57

I think that are really interesting about the Johnson

50:59

years is one is that

51:02

Johnson really moves

51:04

toward even

51:07

despite his overreaction, as

51:09

many people see it, to the rebellion

51:12

in the Dominican Republic and

51:14

his fear that Castro is

51:16

behind that, Johnson

51:20

really moves towards away

51:23

from the Kennedy policy of

51:25

trying to overthrow Castro

51:29

to the containment policy

51:31

which existed until the

51:34

end of, well,

51:36

until the present. Well, we'll

51:39

put it that way, right? More than anything

51:41

else, the US

51:44

policy has been primarily containment

51:46

towards Cuba rather than

51:51

overthrow. And

51:55

that starts under Johnson and

51:57

it continues under the President's

51:59

following him. Now, the

52:02

other thing that I think is interesting

52:04

that is also, it tends to be

52:06

ignored, is what happens

52:08

in Venezuela. Venezuela is

52:12

one of these countries where they

52:14

had serious insurgencies

52:19

that seemingly would have

52:21

prevented the consolidation

52:24

of a democratic government.

52:28

And people often draw a

52:30

direct line between US military

52:33

aid and US counterinsurgency

52:35

training and the establishment of

52:38

military governments. And yet in

52:40

Venezuela, they had a real

52:42

insurgency. Chile didn't have an

52:44

insurgency. Brazil didn't have an insurgency. A lot

52:47

of countries did not have the insurgencies, and

52:49

yet they still had military

52:51

governments established. In

52:54

Venezuela, you

52:56

have serious insurgencies that are

52:58

defeated, and the

53:01

democracy consolidates itself. So I think

53:03

that needs to be taken into

53:05

account as well. The next chapter,

53:08

chapter six, Robert Kennedy, Kennedy Mann

53:10

and the Kennedy legacy and the

53:12

Johnson alliance talks about how liberals

53:14

who are dissatisfied with Johnson's

53:17

policies are

53:19

still a little bit struggling to figure out

53:21

what their alternative is. And so

53:23

they start to turn Kennedy, the memory

53:26

of John of Kennedy, into a particular kind

53:28

of stand. And even those we've already established,

53:30

they weren't always happy with him either. Could

53:32

you talk a little bit about this process?

53:35

Yeah, I think, I mean, a big

53:37

part of that is that it

53:39

always helps that if you're the guys who

53:41

write the history, right? So, you know, they

53:43

always say that the winners are the ones

53:46

who write history. In

53:49

fact, it's the loser who

53:51

writes history. Schlesinger is the

53:54

one who first writes the

53:56

major book, The

53:58

Thousand Days, the biography. of

54:01

John F. Kennedy and he

54:03

does a lot to establish that

54:07

image of

54:09

Kennedy as an idealistic

54:11

realist or a

54:13

realistic idealist and a man

54:17

of great wit and accomplishment.

54:24

Schlesinger begins to criticize

54:27

the policy in

54:29

Latin America. Robert Kennedy becomes

54:31

senator for New York and

54:35

he becomes a very different man

54:38

as after his father, after

54:41

his brother's death he becomes

54:45

very focused on the poor,

54:49

very focused in the United States on

54:51

the Chicano labor

54:54

movement, very focused in the United

54:56

States on issues of

54:58

poverty and

55:01

he goes, Robert Kennedy as senator

55:03

goes to Latin America, goes down

55:06

into a mine

55:09

as he had done in

55:11

the United States, he visits poor

55:14

neighborhoods. Ironically enough

55:16

a neighborhood named after

55:18

João Gollard in

55:21

Santiago and he doesn't

55:23

seem to see the irony of that at all

55:25

but definitely begins

55:27

to be more

55:31

critical of the Johnson

55:33

administration in

55:36

Latin America but it's

55:38

hard to focus on Latin America because in 1965

55:40

of course the United States sends

55:44

ground troops into Vietnam

55:47

and begins bombing Vietnam.

55:51

It's going to be very difficult

55:53

after the crises of Brazil and

55:55

the Dominican Republic to

55:57

focus that much. on

56:01

Latin America. People,

56:05

I think, you know, you can see

56:07

it in all the political, pretty much

56:09

all the political platforms every four years

56:12

that the Democrats produce for

56:17

the rest of the Cold War. There's always

56:19

references to bringing back Kennedy's

56:21

Alliance for Progress that, you

56:23

know, we're going to get

56:25

back to that. It went

56:27

astray under Johnson. I mean,

56:30

they obviously don't say that in 1968 when

56:33

his vice president is the candidate.

56:35

But nevertheless, there is, it continues

56:38

to be, and certainly in 1972 under

56:41

McGovern and elsewhere. After that

56:44

is that the United States is going

56:46

to return to those idealistic days in

56:49

which the United States stood for, in

56:54

which the United States could

56:56

be the moral leader of

56:58

the world in the

57:00

Cold War. Something that begins

57:03

to be seen as being lost under,

57:07

in during Vietnam, the

57:09

United States needs to be regained

57:13

that moral, that claim to moral leadership. And

57:15

I think that you can see this, for

57:18

example, and the fact that what the

57:20

one Kennedy program that we still have

57:22

is the Peace Corps. The

57:25

Peace Corps makes people feel good

57:27

about the United States, whether it

57:30

is effective, whether

57:32

it accomplishes much. It

57:35

may be open to question, but nevertheless,

57:37

it's the United States,

57:40

the way it wants to be seen,

57:42

and the way it wants to see itself. And

57:46

Kennedy, because he's martyred Kennedy,

57:49

because he has killed many

57:53

of the things that he did that were

57:55

idealistic, like establishing the Peace Corps, are

57:58

the things that people tend to

58:00

focus on and particularly that

58:03

Democrats particularly

58:05

during an election year like to

58:08

remember. And so

58:11

Robert Kennedy is not

58:13

going to hear any stories about the

58:17

failures of the United States in

58:21

Latin America. He had been

58:24

very focused on counterinsurgency when

58:26

he was his brother's

58:29

right-hand man and

58:31

yet he doesn't seem any more

58:33

to be interested in counterinsurgency

58:35

and some of his allies

58:38

in the Kennedy administration criticized him for

58:40

that. You know that was the most

58:43

effective program you've had. Why don't you

58:45

remember that? But

58:47

now he wants to focus on

58:50

issues of poverty and reviving

58:52

the Alliance for Progress and things

58:56

like that. Again, while still being

58:59

very suspicious of

59:03

the deposed leader, Gollard, and

59:05

not being willing really to

59:07

criticize the military

59:11

in Brazil to any significant extent,

59:13

some are going to become more

59:18

critical of Brazil as we'll

59:20

see. This ultimately

59:22

percolates and develops this nostalgia

59:25

for the Kennedy administration and for how

59:28

the Alliance for Progress is thought of.

59:31

In your next chapter, chapter seven, the

59:33

end of the Alliance for Progress and

59:35

the origins of human rights issues in

59:37

US Latin American relations, you talked about

59:39

the liberal development of human rights as

59:41

a new kind of way to make

59:43

sense of foreign policy and of issues

59:45

in Latin America and that it really

59:47

becomes associated and liberals

59:49

really pick it up after the coup in

59:51

Chile. Could you talk a

59:53

little bit about this adoption

59:56

of human rights as a centerpiece

59:58

of liberal foreign policy in the region.

1:00:01

Yeah, I think that, you know, one

1:00:04

of the problems after 63

1:00:06

is that

1:00:11

the liberal Democrats begin to

1:00:13

lose a sense

1:00:16

of Latin America as a real place.

1:00:19

And they lose, they

1:00:22

don't have anything to say

1:00:24

other than simply bring

1:00:27

back the Alliance for

1:00:29

Progress as it existed under John

1:00:32

F. Kennedy. And so Nixon

1:00:34

will continue to make

1:00:36

reference to the Alliance for Progress, but

1:00:39

clearly he doesn't like

1:00:42

a lot of the Alliance for Progress

1:00:46

programs that had existed. And

1:00:48

Nixon is, on the other hand, quite

1:00:51

happy with military

1:00:53

rulers. Brazil

1:00:56

has taken a turn to

1:00:58

the more extreme at

1:01:00

the end of 68. And Nixon is very high

1:01:06

on the Brazilian

1:01:10

military government. Obviously it helps that

1:01:13

a Republican is once in

1:01:15

charge so the liberal Democrats

1:01:17

don't feel implicated

1:01:20

in anything that Nixon

1:01:22

does. But again, they

1:01:24

don't have any ideas about

1:01:26

what to do

1:01:30

about Latin America. It seems like more

1:01:32

and more military governments are

1:01:34

coming to power and they're more and

1:01:36

more extreme in terms of their

1:01:39

practices of torturing

1:01:43

and murdering opponents of

1:01:45

their regimes. And there

1:01:52

had been some discussion

1:01:56

of human rights in

1:02:00

in Brazil and certainly

1:02:02

Jim Green in his important

1:02:05

book drew attention to

1:02:07

that and Lars Schulz had done

1:02:09

so earlier in some of

1:02:12

his work. Nevertheless,

1:02:16

Brazil's an awkward

1:02:19

country, again because the

1:02:22

liberal Democrats had been so supportive

1:02:24

of the overthrow back in

1:02:27

64. On the other

1:02:29

hand Chile is an interesting case

1:02:32

because Chile on

1:02:34

the one hand the United States they tried under

1:02:38

Kennedy and Johnson was very worried about Allende

1:02:40

being elected in 64 and the covert aid

1:02:44

that the CIA provided certainly

1:02:46

was a part of the

1:02:48

reason why Allende was defeated

1:02:50

in 64. Nevertheless,

1:02:53

by 1970 people

1:02:56

are a little bit more open

1:02:59

to the possibility that Allende

1:03:01

might do something necessary

1:03:05

for Chile and Ralph

1:03:07

Duncan who had been the US

1:03:09

ambassador under Johnson and

1:03:11

had been very pro-Eduardo Crete. He

1:03:13

is willing to give Allende a

1:03:16

chance once

1:03:18

he's elected and the United

1:03:20

States needs to keep

1:03:22

its hands off and as

1:03:25

far as anyone can tell at that

1:03:27

moment in 1970 people

1:03:29

don't know what Nixon policy

1:03:31

is because it's covert. The

1:03:35

United States seems to

1:03:37

be acting

1:03:40

maturely in response to

1:03:42

the election of a socialist

1:03:45

allied with the Communist

1:03:47

party and

1:03:49

so Edward Kennedy who now has

1:03:51

developed an interest in Latin America

1:03:53

after following the death of

1:03:56

Robert, Edward Kennedy also said that he

1:03:58

was a liberal. He was a liberal. He was a liberal. as

1:04:00

our maturity is going to

1:04:02

be shown by how we

1:04:04

respond to the

1:04:08

Allende government

1:04:11

in that regard. People

1:04:17

are, by this point, I think

1:04:19

generally in society as

1:04:21

a whole much more suspicious

1:04:24

of claims

1:04:27

by the government, the

1:04:30

Vietnam War

1:04:35

had not turned out all that well

1:04:37

and often people felt that they had

1:04:39

been misled about what was going on

1:04:41

in Vietnam. Certainly

1:04:44

once Watergate begins, there's more

1:04:47

reason to be distrustful of

1:04:50

the Nixon administration. Their

1:04:54

revelations about the

1:04:58

international telephone and telegraph and

1:05:00

their role in trying to

1:05:02

prevent Allende's coming to power.

1:05:07

And then of course the coup happens. What's

1:05:10

striking to anyone who looks

1:05:12

at the coverage of the

1:05:16

US coups, US-backed

1:05:18

coups, in 1954,

1:05:20

Guatemala, in 1964, in

1:05:23

Brazil, there's

1:05:26

never an assumption that the US was involved

1:05:28

in those coups. But by

1:05:31

1973, the assumption that the

1:05:33

United States was behind the

1:05:35

overthrow of Allende is

1:05:37

takes hold immediately. And

1:05:40

the US Congress wants to investigate

1:05:44

immediately. Within

1:05:46

days, people are learning about the

1:05:48

numbers of people who are being

1:05:50

killed, who are being rounded up,

1:05:52

who are being held in

1:05:55

the soccer stadium. And the

1:05:57

United States is many people. people,

1:06:00

the US public generally is

1:06:02

much more willing to believe that

1:06:05

the United States had a role in

1:06:07

that, where it would have been absurd.

1:06:10

Only radicals would have thought in 54

1:06:12

or 64 that the United States had had anything

1:06:14

to do with those

1:06:17

coups. And yet people

1:06:19

are suspicious immediately. People

1:06:21

are concerned because of

1:06:24

more, you know, largely

1:06:27

I would say because Chile was

1:06:29

seen as different. Brazil was not

1:06:31

seen as different. But

1:06:33

besides this change in

1:06:35

the US public perspective, there also

1:06:37

had been this strong sense that

1:06:39

Chile is one of the model

1:06:42

democracies of Latin America.

1:06:44

And here, has the

1:06:46

United States been involved in the

1:06:49

overthrow of a model democracy? The

1:06:53

information is coming out very quickly. I mean,

1:06:55

I think that really people didn't

1:06:58

know a whole lot about

1:07:00

the repression that followed the coup in Brazil

1:07:02

in 1964. But by 1973, there are a

1:07:04

lot of, you know, there's amnesty

1:07:09

international has existed for more than

1:07:11

a decade. There is a real

1:07:13

emphasis on private activists

1:07:20

in human rights. And there

1:07:23

are people in Congress who

1:07:25

are really saying that if the United

1:07:27

States wants to regain its credibility in

1:07:30

the world, it's got to pay attention

1:07:32

to what the people who

1:07:35

receive aid from the United States

1:07:37

are doing. So Don

1:07:40

Frazier, congressman from Minnesota

1:07:42

is holding hearings on human

1:07:44

rights. Chile

1:07:47

becomes the Latin American issue

1:07:51

par excellence. And the

1:07:53

most important issue as far as human

1:07:56

rights are concerned. There are other places

1:07:58

where more people will be killed. killed

1:08:01

for their political opposition, but no

1:08:03

country becomes more the symbol of

1:08:05

that. And I think in large

1:08:07

part because again, people saw Chile

1:08:09

as being different. The United

1:08:12

States and many of its politicians,

1:08:14

political leaders have been

1:08:16

deeply involved in Chile since the early

1:08:18

1960s. And so

1:08:20

this mattered in a

1:08:23

way that nothing concretely in Latin

1:08:25

America had mattered since

1:08:27

the early 1960s. The

1:08:30

various trends that you outline in

1:08:32

chapter seven turn into,

1:08:34

or at least are supposed to turn

1:08:37

into administration policy in chapter eight, Jimmy

1:08:39

Carter and human rights in South America.

1:08:42

And these next two chapters look

1:08:44

at the Carter administrations and

1:08:47

just to sort of preview it and some

1:08:50

of your arguments, you close this chapter eight

1:08:52

by arguing in Central America

1:08:54

and the Caribbean, Carter policies were far

1:08:56

more inconsistent and successes there were to

1:08:58

be overshadowed by failures as the following

1:09:01

chapter will demonstrate. So if

1:09:03

we're gonna be rather bearish on

1:09:06

Central American, the Caribbean in the next

1:09:08

chapter, could you talk about some of

1:09:10

the successes or at least how this

1:09:12

human rights approach informs Carter's approach to

1:09:14

South America in chapter eight? Yeah,

1:09:18

I think that, you

1:09:20

know, I think that people

1:09:22

tend to look at Carter as

1:09:27

someone who either was

1:09:29

a naive idealist who failed or

1:09:34

as just a failure without the naive idealism, I

1:09:36

suppose. I

1:09:41

mean, I think even

1:09:43

when I began the research in the Carter Library,

1:09:45

and it took a while because they were still

1:09:47

opening things up, I

1:09:49

didn't realize how focused he was

1:09:55

on Latin America, that no

1:09:57

president had been focused on Latin

1:09:59

America. America, as Jimmy Carter

1:10:01

was since John F. Kennedy. I mean,

1:10:04

the sources

1:10:06

there are very rich. And

1:10:09

again, the

1:10:12

record is very

1:10:15

mixed. I

1:10:18

think one has to balance,

1:10:21

I mean, I think there's

1:10:23

some excellent books already on

1:10:25

the subject. I think the best single

1:10:28

book on how Carter

1:10:30

administration policy towards one

1:10:33

country is William Michael Schmidley's book

1:10:36

on the fate of freedom elsewhere in

1:10:38

which he examines US

1:10:41

policy towards Argentina.

1:10:44

And I think

1:10:46

you have to recognize

1:10:49

where particular countries

1:10:53

stood at the time that

1:10:55

Carter came into office.

1:10:57

Carter came into office saying he

1:10:59

was going to make human rights

1:11:01

the soul of our foreign policy.

1:11:03

Nobody knew what that meant. Nobody

1:11:06

knew what it meant to have

1:11:08

a human rights policy, to prioritize

1:11:10

human rights, what was going to

1:11:13

be done, and how were

1:11:15

they going to be able to

1:11:18

change governance behavior.

1:11:21

Now, you can look

1:11:23

at the various reports about

1:11:25

the human rights situations in

1:11:28

these countries and see that during the

1:11:30

Carter years, human rights

1:11:34

abuses in Chile go down. In

1:11:38

Brazil, human

1:11:40

rights abuses go down during the Carter

1:11:42

years as well. Now, is Carter responsible

1:11:45

for that? When

1:11:48

I taught English in

1:11:51

Brazil in 1984, I

1:11:53

was very surprised because

1:11:56

Carter came to

1:11:59

Brazil And

1:12:01

he was treated, welcomed as a

1:12:03

hero by the democratic forces in

1:12:06

Brazil who were anticipating

1:12:08

the return to civilian rule in

1:12:10

the near term. And I was

1:12:13

like, what's that all about? I

1:12:17

left Brazil immediately after

1:12:20

the 1984 convention, and I had

1:12:22

seen Carter kind of dismissed as

1:12:24

a comical character. And yet here

1:12:26

when I arrived in Brazil, and

1:12:29

he arrived in Brazil, he was

1:12:31

being treated as a hero.

1:12:33

And the

1:12:35

Brazilians told me, he said, well, he ended

1:12:37

political torture in Brazil. Now, you

1:12:40

can argue that that's an exaggerated point

1:12:42

of view, but I

1:12:45

wouldn't mind being known as

1:12:47

a guy who ended political torture in Brazil.

1:12:49

It sounds pretty good. Now, obviously, his wife

1:12:52

met with torture victims. That was a

1:12:54

part of the equation and all

1:12:56

that. Now,

1:12:59

realistically, you have to look at

1:13:01

the situation in Brazil in which

1:13:03

by the late 1970s, in large

1:13:05

part because of economic difficulties that

1:13:08

they were already beginning

1:13:10

to experience

1:13:12

that would culminate in the debt crisis of

1:13:14

the 1980s, Brazil was having to ease up.

1:13:20

The military government was having

1:13:22

to ease up.

1:13:26

They weren't having – they were

1:13:28

beginning a long transition to

1:13:30

civilian rule. And

1:13:32

so whether Carter had this

1:13:34

impact or whether it's merely a

1:13:37

part of domestic affairs

1:13:40

is something still

1:13:42

worth exploring, I think. But

1:13:44

nevertheless, it is important that

1:13:47

a man like Leonel

1:13:50

Brzola, who was the brother-in-law of

1:13:52

Golar, in the early 1960s, and

1:13:54

much more radical than his brother,

1:13:57

than Golar, was very critical.

1:14:00

of Kennedy, he

1:14:03

said that that

1:14:05

Kennedy, that Carter was responsible for

1:14:08

saving his life and while he

1:14:10

was in exile in Uruguay. So

1:14:12

you know again those kinds of

1:14:14

things happen. In Chile, well

1:14:17

you know the human rights abuses

1:14:20

go down during the Carter

1:14:22

years. Well again by

1:14:24

that time, by 1976, 1977, Colonel

1:14:30

Chet had consolidated himself in

1:14:32

power. There was less need

1:14:35

for the torture and murder

1:14:38

that as far as

1:14:40

the military government was

1:14:42

concerned. Nevertheless,

1:14:45

certainly Carter administration kept

1:14:47

the pressure on, particularly

1:14:50

because of the assassination of Orlando

1:14:52

L'Itelier in the year

1:14:54

prior to Carter's inauguration.

1:14:57

And so the United States

1:14:59

was not willing to ease

1:15:03

up on pressure

1:15:06

on on on Pinochet during that

1:15:08

time. Argentina is

1:15:10

the most interesting country because

1:15:13

the military government had been established so

1:15:16

much more recently. But

1:15:18

certainly the Assistant Secretary Pat Darien,

1:15:20

who was in charge of human

1:15:22

rights, this new policy that

1:15:25

existed, she became

1:15:29

very outspoken in

1:15:32

her support for the mothers of the Plaza de

1:15:34

Mayo, very outspoken

1:15:36

in support of the

1:15:40

Argentine journalist, Hagobo Timmerman,

1:15:43

who probably was released because

1:15:45

of US pressure.

1:15:49

You have to remember that Henry

1:15:51

Kissinger at this point was very

1:15:53

unhappy with these things and he

1:15:55

went famously or infamously went

1:15:57

to the World Cup and was seen

1:16:00

sitting next to the

1:16:02

military leaders of Argentina at the World

1:16:04

Cup there in Argentina in 1978. As

1:16:10

Tulio Alperin-Dongi, the great

1:16:12

Argentine historian, said, a

1:16:14

considerable number of Latin Americans probably owe

1:16:16

their lives to Jimmy Carter's efforts, something

1:16:18

that cannot be said of any other

1:16:20

US president. I don't have to,

1:16:22

I did have to look up his first

1:16:24

name, but I don't have to look

1:16:27

up that quotation because I've used it a long

1:16:29

time, in many classes over

1:16:32

the years. And obviously

1:16:34

because Tulio Alperin-Dongi was Argentine,

1:16:36

it may be that he's

1:16:38

viewing the

1:16:40

Carter administration's human rights policies

1:16:42

through the Argentina lens

1:16:45

and that the very strong

1:16:48

pro-human rights policies that

1:16:53

Carter represented and the

1:16:55

Paterian represented towards towards

1:16:57

Argentina certainly is probably

1:17:00

the best example of

1:17:03

a policy

1:17:05

that did make a difference. It

1:17:08

didn't remove these governments from power because

1:17:10

it wasn't a policy for regime change,

1:17:12

it was a policy for changing

1:17:14

people's behavior. And again, it saved

1:17:17

some lives undoubtedly in Argentina.

1:17:22

He didn't really promote democracy.

1:17:24

Peru is the only country

1:17:27

in South America in which democracy,

1:17:31

a transition to democracy takes place

1:17:33

where, and again

1:17:35

it's not really Carter's policy, he

1:17:39

didn't have a policy of democracy

1:17:41

promotion though every now and then

1:17:43

they thought, they suggested they did

1:17:45

have one. So South America, at

1:17:47

least in the most significant countries,

1:17:51

I think the human rights policies did

1:17:54

make a difference, rather

1:17:57

more complicated in Central America and the Caribbean. So

1:18:00

yes, which would you get into

1:18:02

in your next chapter, Chapter 9, the Carter

1:18:04

administration in Central America and the Caribbean, in

1:18:07

which you say the administration policy towards

1:18:10

Central America and the Caribbean vary dramatically

1:18:12

from one country to another. So

1:18:14

could you talk about some of these high and

1:18:16

low points in the region and

1:18:19

this liberal policy of human rights in

1:18:21

the area? Yeah, well, I'm

1:18:23

going to, I mean, in

1:18:26

some, I think in

1:18:28

Central American and Caribbean countries, human

1:18:31

rights didn't end up being

1:18:34

often the issue that it

1:18:36

might have been. Some

1:18:39

of the other issues that get, that

1:18:41

are certainly significant, some

1:18:44

come to fruition and some don't.

1:18:47

For example, obviously the

1:18:49

most significant thing that happens in

1:18:52

this area is the Panama Canal Treaty.

1:18:55

Now Kissinger had been moving towards

1:18:58

a new treaty

1:19:01

that would have done

1:19:03

what treaty that eventually

1:19:06

gets passed under Carter. Would

1:19:08

have done, except for the fact that

1:19:10

in 1976, after

1:19:12

they had, an agreement had been reached

1:19:14

for a kind of an outline of

1:19:16

what Panama, a new Panama Canal Treaty

1:19:19

would look like. Ronald

1:19:21

Reagan challenged Gerald Ford for

1:19:23

the Republican nomination and used

1:19:26

the Panama Canal Treaty as

1:19:28

one of his major issues. And

1:19:31

that meant that Ford didn't want to

1:19:33

go forward on signing

1:19:35

a treaty that would eventually give Panama

1:19:39

possession of the canal. Carter

1:19:42

came in, Carter had run on

1:19:45

being against giving

1:19:47

up the Panama Canal and

1:19:51

then he comes in and he reads

1:19:53

some, reads about things and decides it

1:19:56

would be a great issue. And

1:19:59

as someone as it was sort of,

1:20:01

oh, that's a classic second term issue. And

1:20:04

I said, well, what if I don't have a second term? So

1:20:07

he goes ahead on the Panama Canal Treaty, which

1:20:11

he expects will be a huge success

1:20:14

in Latin America. And that's something

1:20:16

we need a good study of,

1:20:18

because I don't know anyone who's done

1:20:20

a good treatment of that, the

1:20:24

impact of the Panama Canal Treaty on

1:20:28

Latin America would be a worthy dissertation

1:20:30

for someone to undertake. We

1:20:34

don't really know what that treaty meant in

1:20:37

Latin America. But

1:20:40

it undoubtedly was bad for many

1:20:42

politicians in the United States, many

1:20:45

of them were strong supporters of

1:20:47

the Panama Canal Treaty and then

1:20:49

lost their next election. The

1:20:53

thing that seems most disappointing, I

1:20:56

suppose, in many ways is the

1:20:58

failure in Cuba. Carter

1:21:01

comes in suggesting that he's

1:21:03

going to move towards normalization

1:21:05

of relations with

1:21:07

Cuba. He

1:21:09

was expecting it would be a process and that a

1:21:11

lot of things were going to have to happen,

1:21:16

some on human rights, some on property

1:21:19

issues of property

1:21:22

that was taken away after

1:21:24

the revolution. People still

1:21:26

talk about that. I find that rather

1:21:30

daunting issue

1:21:32

to try. I can imagine how they're going

1:21:34

to have the descendants

1:21:37

of people who lost property in Cuba

1:21:40

get their land back after some

1:21:42

period of time. But anyway, that's

1:21:45

another issue. The

1:21:47

most important issue ended up being Africa.

1:21:51

Castro had sent troops

1:21:53

into Angola to

1:21:56

protect the MPLA

1:21:58

government from being. defeated

1:22:00

by the South African invading

1:22:03

forces that have been encouraged

1:22:05

by the United States. Castro

1:22:09

ended up sending troops into Ethiopia

1:22:11

to prevent, to

1:22:13

support their government against an

1:22:16

invading force that was backed by the United

1:22:18

States as well. But so in

1:22:20

the end, the Cuba,

1:22:23

there is no movement towards

1:22:25

national, towards normalization

1:22:28

of relations

1:22:30

and Carter ends his presidency

1:22:33

being as, as strong

1:22:36

staunchly anti-communist, where it comes

1:22:38

to Castro and calls him

1:22:40

a puppet, puppet government and

1:22:42

things like that. Nevertheless,

1:22:46

a number of people had

1:22:49

gone down to Cuba and encouraged including

1:22:51

Kennedy and

1:22:53

others to encourage the release of

1:22:56

political prisoners and that had some

1:22:58

impact. I think

1:23:00

obviously the serious, the most serious

1:23:03

failure of the Carter administration was

1:23:06

in Nicaragua, but not for the

1:23:08

reasons that people often, often

1:23:10

think. If you go down,

1:23:12

I mean, I haven't been to Nicaragua for a

1:23:14

few years, but when I was doing research, I

1:23:17

came across things written

1:23:19

by right-wing Nicaraguans who said

1:23:21

that Carter and the CIA

1:23:24

had, had overthrown Somoza

1:23:26

and that was, that was the

1:23:28

only explanation for why

1:23:31

Somoza lost, lost

1:23:33

power. And I think obviously the

1:23:36

main reason why Somoza lost power is, is

1:23:38

because of his

1:23:41

assassination of Pedro

1:23:44

Joaquin Chamorro and the response

1:23:46

to that, which he didn't know how

1:23:48

to deal with, the spontaneous uprisings and

1:23:51

the violent suppression

1:23:53

that he, he fostered.

1:23:56

But the thing that is, is that Carter,

1:23:59

Carter, was expected to be

1:24:01

strongly in support of improving

1:24:04

human rights in

1:24:06

in Nicaragua and

1:24:08

he failed in that that's the

1:24:10

reason he failed I think most

1:24:13

most clearly because

1:24:15

in fact for a number of different

1:24:17

reasons he didn't pressure samosa

1:24:20

on human rights a big reason was that

1:24:22

he was trying to get the Panama Canal

1:24:26

Treaty through and a lot

1:24:28

of samosa's friends in Congress

1:24:31

including congressman from Texas said

1:24:35

well you're not going to be able to get you

1:24:37

what you want in Panama if you put any pressure

1:24:39

on on on Nicaragua and

1:24:42

there were a lot of people including

1:24:45

Francis Grant who were hopeful that that

1:24:47

that Carter would push more

1:24:49

on human rights and that would he would

1:24:52

push for samosa to be

1:24:56

removed but Carter also had

1:24:58

a strong anti

1:25:00

interventionist streak that

1:25:02

and people in his government

1:25:06

who didn't think that the United

1:25:08

States should be in the business

1:25:10

of regime change for for any

1:25:12

reason and so the

1:25:15

Carter administration ends up playing a

1:25:17

role in the

1:25:20

Sandinistas coming to power but it's

1:25:22

mainly because of the failure of

1:25:24

his pushing hard

1:25:26

enough on human rights and his failure

1:25:29

to to

1:25:32

encourage samosa to

1:25:34

establish some kind of timetable for

1:25:36

for leaving leaving power on

1:25:39

the other hand this makes El Salvador suddenly

1:25:41

a major issue El Salvador had never been

1:25:44

an issue in US Latin

1:25:46

American relations really and

1:25:48

suddenly the United States is worried that there's going

1:25:50

to be another

1:25:53

revolution there that the

1:25:55

Sandinistas are supporting a

1:26:00

supporting revolution in El Salvador and

1:26:06

some reformist military men establish

1:26:10

a government in October of 1979, which

1:26:13

says that they're going to reform

1:26:15

the government, we're going to move

1:26:18

towards democracy, and

1:26:20

Carter immediately begins to support

1:26:22

a kind of mini alliance

1:26:25

for progress in El

1:26:28

Salvador, but also doesn't

1:26:30

want the left to

1:26:33

come to power there since the

1:26:35

United States had failed to

1:26:38

prevent the Sandinistas from coming to power. They

1:26:40

were trying to give aid to the Sandinistas

1:26:42

so that they would moderate them

1:26:44

and they wouldn't go in

1:26:47

the direction of too

1:26:49

close ties to Castro. But

1:26:52

there are some guerrilla movements

1:26:55

in El Salvador.

1:26:57

They're not united. The United

1:27:01

States thinks that it has to

1:27:03

provide military aid to what it

1:27:05

sees as a centrist government, which

1:27:07

is going to institute the kind

1:27:09

of reforms that El Salvador needs.

1:27:13

The military is very unhappy,

1:27:15

one with some of their

1:27:17

fellow military men in the

1:27:19

reformist government, and they're also militaries

1:27:22

determined to crush the

1:27:24

left, including reformist

1:27:30

leaders in El

1:27:32

Salvador in 1980. That leads to

1:27:34

this consolidation of the left, the

1:27:37

mil... the guerrilla movements

1:27:39

all joined together in

1:27:41

a coalition. And so more

1:27:43

and more violence takes place.

1:27:45

People often forget that Archbishop

1:27:48

Oscar Romero was very critical of

1:27:50

the Carter administration for providing aid

1:27:53

to the government,

1:27:56

which he thought was

1:27:58

still dominating. by

1:28:04

anti-reformist leaders and certainly the military

1:28:06

was what didn't deserve the aid

1:28:08

as far as Romero was

1:28:11

concerned. So more of that things got more

1:28:13

and more violent there over the course of

1:28:15

1980. And

1:28:19

even though Carter

1:28:22

tried to moderate

1:28:25

the behavior of

1:28:27

the Sandinistas, it was certainly clear to

1:28:29

him by the end of his final

1:28:31

days in office that

1:28:35

the Sandinistas were supporting the guerrillas

1:28:38

in El Salvador. So

1:28:40

he stops aid to

1:28:42

Nicaragua. On the other hand,

1:28:44

he after briefly stopping

1:28:46

aid to El Salvador, the

1:28:49

final offensive that the guerrillas launch

1:28:52

encourages the Carter

1:28:54

administration to revive

1:28:56

military aid to

1:28:58

El Salvador. So

1:29:05

a very mixed bag,

1:29:07

particularly in Central America and

1:29:10

the Caribbean, not

1:29:13

a really – only

1:29:16

in the Dominican Republic is

1:29:18

the United States able

1:29:21

to definitively support

1:29:24

a movement towards a democratic

1:29:26

government as Bologuera

1:29:28

tries to stay in power. Following

1:29:32

an election which he's clearly losing.

1:29:35

So that's one

1:29:38

plus for democracy. There

1:29:42

in the Caribbean, the

1:29:44

one-time showcase for democracy and transition

1:29:47

to democracy in Peru. But other

1:29:49

than that, the military is still

1:29:52

in charge by and large when

1:29:54

Reagan comes to power. Well, and

1:29:58

that transitions us nicely. to the final

1:30:00

chapter in the book, chapter 10, liberal

1:30:03

democratic resistance and accommodation in the

1:30:06

Reagan Bush years. And

1:30:08

in this chapter, there's a number of

1:30:11

different moments in different countries that you follow, but

1:30:14

I was really struck by the contrast

1:30:16

of on the one hand, liberals are

1:30:19

pretty clearly pushed out of the presidency,

1:30:21

although there are moments where you point

1:30:23

out that Reagan really kind of continues

1:30:26

his pre-necessation policies. But

1:30:28

despite losing the presidency, there's

1:30:30

really quite robust congressional action

1:30:32

by liberal Democrats who continue

1:30:36

trying to enact their vision of human rights

1:30:38

and foreign policies in Latin America. So could

1:30:40

you talk a little bit about both not

1:30:43

being technically in the executive for that

1:30:45

time, but still exerting influence and shaping

1:30:47

US foreign policy in some ways? Yeah,

1:30:51

I mean, for one thing, even

1:30:53

though a number of liberals

1:30:56

are defeated in 1980, including

1:30:59

George McGovern and Frank

1:31:01

Church, and

1:31:04

even though the Republicans gained control

1:31:06

of the Senate, they never gained

1:31:08

control of the House throughout the

1:31:11

two terms that President

1:31:13

Reagan is

1:31:15

in office. And

1:31:18

they make a comeback,

1:31:22

senators make a comeback by the end of the decade

1:31:25

as well. But I think a number of

1:31:27

things happen. One is that I think

1:31:32

definitely need some more research, though there

1:31:34

are books that have been written

1:31:39

about how quickly El

1:31:42

Salvador becomes an issue

1:31:45

for large numbers of US citizens

1:31:47

in 1980, 1981, and how much that

1:31:49

the analogy, the

1:31:57

Vietnam analogy, and how that plays

1:31:59

out. about drives

1:32:02

people into opposition. Reagan

1:32:07

comes into office. It

1:32:09

seems clear that

1:32:11

he is convinced that there's a

1:32:14

military solution in El

1:32:16

Salvador and that the,

1:32:21

as he's told by Secretary of

1:32:23

State El Haig and others, you

1:32:25

could win this one. This

1:32:28

isn't going to be a problem. We

1:32:31

can win in El Salvador. And

1:32:33

yet immediately there's lots

1:32:35

of protests

1:32:37

in the

1:32:40

United States against what

1:32:42

is seen as

1:32:44

Reagan's policies in

1:32:47

El Salvador. I can myself

1:32:49

remember walking down the streets

1:32:51

of Manhattan chanting, no

1:32:53

draft, no war, U.S.

1:32:55

out of El Salvador, no drafts. And

1:33:00

how quickly that

1:33:02

analogy of the

1:33:04

Vietnam analogy comes to be important to

1:33:07

many people, that

1:33:12

the United States has military advisors

1:33:15

in El Salvador, though

1:33:18

the U.S. prefers to call them

1:33:21

trainers. The

1:33:25

fact that the United States had

1:33:27

military advisors in Vietnam under in

1:33:30

the Kennedy years suggested, okay, well

1:33:32

this is just one step towards

1:33:35

full scale war. Reagan

1:33:37

is constantly saying that he's

1:33:40

not going to send U.S. troops anywhere.

1:33:42

That he's actually not interested

1:33:44

in that. But he's the victim of

1:33:46

his own rhetoric

1:33:49

because he makes it sound as if

1:33:51

there really is a serious

1:33:53

danger to U.S. national security coming

1:33:56

from Central America. So if there is,

1:33:58

then why should. shouldn't the United

1:34:01

States be sending troops

1:34:04

into El Salvador?

1:34:07

But the, as

1:34:09

you mentioned, the

1:34:12

Congress is very opposed

1:34:14

to a number of policies

1:34:17

suggested by

1:34:21

Reagan. There's

1:34:23

a great deal of worry about the human

1:34:25

rights abuses in

1:34:27

El Salvador throughout

1:34:30

the early 1980s. In

1:34:34

particular, the

1:34:38

Reagan administration tries to say,

1:34:40

El Salvador is going to

1:34:42

consolidate a democracy. We

1:34:45

can do this. We did this in

1:34:48

the 1960s with Venezuela. Why

1:34:51

aren't we talking about Venezuela

1:34:53

and how an insurgency

1:34:55

was defeated and democracy

1:34:57

was consolidated? Well, nobody knew that. Nobody

1:35:00

knew that history. So it wasn't

1:35:02

something that the Republicans could really use

1:35:06

in their attempt to gain support

1:35:10

for what they claimed

1:35:12

was a similar policy in

1:35:15

El Salvador. The

1:35:17

other thing is human rights. Reagan

1:35:20

nominated a former Democrat,

1:35:23

Ernest Lefever, who had

1:35:26

been a strong opponent of human

1:35:28

rights as

1:35:33

something to drive US

1:35:35

foreign policy. And he was chosen to

1:35:38

replace Pat Darian, Carter's

1:35:41

assistant secretary for human rights

1:35:43

and humanitarian affairs. And

1:35:47

of course, the Senate had to approve

1:35:50

his nomination. And even

1:35:52

though the Senate was under the

1:35:54

control of the Republicans, a

1:35:58

lot of the Republicans by this time, liked

1:36:00

the human rights issue. They knew it was

1:36:02

a popular issue with

1:36:04

the US public. And

1:36:07

particularly after the testimony of

1:36:09

a Hakovo Timmerman, who the

1:36:11

Carter administration had helped free

1:36:16

in the late 1970s, the

1:36:18

Senate Foreign Relations

1:36:21

Committee opposed the choice of

1:36:28

Ernest LeFever as the head of,

1:36:32

as the Assistant Secretary for Human

1:36:34

Rights. Interestingly enough, it's Elliot Abrams

1:36:36

who ends up taking

1:36:38

his place. And for all the bad

1:36:41

reputation that Elliot Abrams has for

1:36:45

certain reasons, he

1:36:47

actually was quite good on

1:36:49

Chile and human rights in

1:36:51

the 1980s. Not so

1:36:53

good on Central America, perhaps, but

1:36:56

nevertheless, a strong supporter

1:37:01

of a transition in China.

1:37:04

So, again, Reagan, at

1:37:07

least some of Reagan administration's policies

1:37:09

are not popular among

1:37:11

the US public, and

1:37:14

some of his foreign

1:37:16

policy agenda is not popular

1:37:25

among even Republicans.

1:37:29

The Democrats are particularly concerned

1:37:31

about the human rights abuses in

1:37:33

El Salvador. They're also very concerned

1:37:36

about the human rights abuses

1:37:38

of the insurgents

1:37:41

in Nicaragua, known

1:37:43

as the Contras. And

1:37:46

so Reagan finds it very

1:37:48

difficult to gain support for

1:37:50

his policies in El Salvador

1:37:52

in the short term and

1:37:54

in Nicaragua over

1:37:56

the long term. Now, in 1984, El

1:38:00

Salvador, a person

1:38:02

who was associated with many

1:38:05

of the people that the

1:38:07

liberal Democrats had liked in

1:38:09

South America like the Venezuelan

1:38:11

Christian Democrats, Jose

1:38:14

Napoleon Duarte, it ends up

1:38:17

being elected president with strong

1:38:19

support of the Reagan administration

1:38:22

in large measure because they

1:38:24

realized that if they support Duarte,

1:38:27

there can get congressional support for US

1:38:30

military aid in El Salvador. If they

1:38:32

support Roberta

1:38:34

D'Auber-Saun, the military man,

1:38:38

they're not going to get support

1:38:40

for military aid in El Salvador.

1:38:45

Interestingly enough, in a number

1:38:47

of different ways, Reagan, though

1:38:49

he became a Republican during

1:38:52

the Kennedy years, he

1:38:56

had been a Democrat during

1:38:58

the Roosevelt era and then he had

1:39:00

started voting for Republicans with

1:39:03

Eisenhower, but he didn't change,

1:39:05

officially change party affiliation

1:39:07

until 1962. Nevertheless, he keeps bringing Kennedy

1:39:09

up in the 1980s. He keeps saying

1:39:11

that you

1:39:17

guys are misrepresenting Kennedy.

1:39:19

Kennedy would never had

1:39:22

such a large insurgency to deal

1:39:24

with as existed in El

1:39:27

Salvador, and which side would Kennedy have

1:39:29

been on in that.

1:39:31

The Kissinger Commission

1:39:33

that gets created to

1:39:36

try and resolve a

1:39:38

creative bipartisan consensus on Central

1:39:40

America says in

1:39:42

the end, well, the best thing we could do

1:39:45

is try and revive the

1:39:48

Alliance for Progress. There

1:39:50

are a lot of ways in which the Kennedy

1:39:52

legacies are still being played out

1:39:54

in the 1980s and different political

1:39:56

parties are obviously trying to claim

1:39:59

them. for themselves, including

1:40:02

the president. That chapter includes

1:40:04

the Cold War, although your conclusion

1:40:07

definitely continues to think about the

1:40:09

legacies of it and the ways that

1:40:12

liberals and then Americans generally struggle to

1:40:14

still think of a policy or a

1:40:16

relationship with Latin America. But

1:40:19

before we go today and before we conclude,

1:40:21

could you tell us a little bit about

1:40:23

what you're working on now or what you're

1:40:25

working on next? Well, I'm

1:40:27

in the odd position

1:40:30

now. Every time I wrote

1:40:32

a book, all my three

1:40:34

books, I would finish the book and

1:40:37

then I'd look around for a publisher.

1:40:39

Well, around the time this book was

1:40:41

published, a book

1:40:44

of British publishers contacted

1:40:47

me and said, would I like to write a

1:40:49

book for classroom use? And

1:40:51

so I'm working on a book

1:40:53

called Paired Lives in

1:40:56

Latin America's Cold War. And so

1:40:58

I have chapters

1:41:00

on people like Pinochet

1:41:03

and Allende and or

1:41:06

Castro and and Guevara

1:41:08

and I have other

1:41:13

people like that. Sometimes I have allies,

1:41:16

sometimes I have rivals, but

1:41:20

they're biographical treatments of

1:41:22

people and of individuals

1:41:25

and their vision of the

1:41:27

Cold War and their contributions

1:41:29

to Latin America's Cold War. It's

1:41:32

very hard for me to write a

1:41:34

book without footnotes and

1:41:37

so I don't make any great

1:41:39

claims for what the future

1:41:41

holds for this

1:41:44

project. As you've seen in this

1:41:47

book, I have a lot of footnotes. They're

1:41:51

heavily footnoted and now I'm trying

1:41:54

to write something and not even

1:41:56

use any quotations, let alone citations.

1:42:00

So we'll see how that goes. I

1:42:05

like that idea. I'm 36

1:42:08

this year. I'm not sure how

1:42:10

many more books I have in me. I

1:42:12

would like to see another

1:42:16

monograph, but we

1:42:18

shall see. I've got ideas about writing

1:42:21

about the United Nations in the Cold War.

1:42:24

I've got ideas about writing

1:42:27

about East Germany and Latin America during the

1:42:29

Cold War. So other people may have more

1:42:31

of the language

1:42:33

skills to get ahead of

1:42:35

me on that front. Well, I

1:42:37

think whether it's that paired symmetry

1:42:40

project or some other project that you

1:42:42

find, I look forward to seeing what

1:42:44

your next project will be. Thank

1:42:46

you again for joining us today for your time

1:42:48

and for sharing your great book with us. Thank

1:42:52

you, Ethan. Thanks

1:42:54

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