ABSTRACT
The Alliance for Progress was a major attempt by the United States and Latin America to alter the course of history, both present and future. Like most grandiose plans, it fell far short of many of its goals. Although Latin America has historically been ignored by US policy makers, the alliance was a principal foreign-policy platform of the Kennedy administration. Many of the social and economic ideas for the Alliance for Progress came from Latin American intellectuals and politicians who were also concerned about developmental problems, but the major emphasis for a democratic approach to the solution of these problems probably came from the Kennedy administration. Historically, Latin America had strongly resisted major social and political changes, although economic evolution had been significant in a number of Latin American countries during the first half of the twentieth century. Therefore, the stream of history was against any major alterations in these systems.
