ABSTRACT
The United States delegates at Punta del Este, where the Alliance was launched, had in mind a tidier program of credit and technical assistance. Venezuela was the prototype, and Chile, Brazil, and Colombia pressed the United States to mount in the Western Hemisphere something approaching the Marshall Plan in Europe. The United States instead adopted a settlement policy that would favor owner-operated farms. General MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, was convinced by his personal experience in the Philippines that land reform was essential to political stability in much of Asia, including Japan. American efforts to introduce land reform to the Philippines brought the problem to the attention of Ramon Magsaysay, who used rural development as a major issue in his successful 1953 presidential campaign. The land reform experience of the 1960s also demonstrated the superiority of participatory over bureaucratic and legal mechanisms for distributing and redistributing land and other benefits directly to farmers.
