Remarks at the Ratification of the Protocol of Amendments to the Charter of the Organization of American States.

Secretary Rusk, Secretary General Mora, Dr. Sanz, distinguished Ambassadors, distinguished Members of the Congress, ladies and gentlemen:

Twenty years ago, our American Republics met in Bogota to charter the Organization of American States. Our goal was to consolidate peace and solidarity among our nations in the Western Hemisphere.

Eight years ago, we broadened and deepened our commitment. With the Act of Bogota and the Alliance for Progress, we joined forces to create a social and economic revolution on these continents.

It was 1 year ago that our countries went back to Punta del Este to review our progress-and to declare a new decade of urgency. For we found that, while we had achieved much in the 20 years and in the 8 years, the basic human problems still demanded many new commitments.

The program that we approved a year ago rested on three main pillars: more food, better education, and closer economic integration.

I asked you to come here this morning so I could tell you that we are encouraged by these beginnings:

--Last year Latin American farms produced food at twice the rate of new mouths to feed.

--Since Punta del Este, funds for education in Latin America have increased by more than 6 percent, to $2 billion.

--The Inter-American Development Bank has loaned $81 million in Latin America just to build new roads and industries and to increase electric power across national boundaries.

--Throughout Latin America manufacturing production has increased by about 7 percent.

--The Andean Development Corporation has joined together six nations--Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela--in a new step toward building a common market for all of Latin America.

Today, we take another step toward perfecting the OAS. The Charter amendments we ratify will streamline the political, economic, and cultural machinery of our organization. They will enable the OAS to meet its greatly increased responsibilities-and to meet them far more promptly and more efficiently.

Despite all that we have accomplished over these past two decades, no one knows better than those in this room how far we have yet to go.

As I said only a year ago at Punta del Este:

"The pace of change is not fast enough. It will remain too slow--unless you join your energies, your skills and commitments in a mighty effort that extends into the farthest reaches of this hemisphere.

"The time is now. The responsibility is ours."

I believe that we are moving forward in this hemisphere. The dimensions of poverty, ignorance, and disease to be overcome in our Americas are quite sobering--but they are not crushing. Our confidence in what the Alliance can and will do should spring from what has been done.

At Punta del Este my fellow Presidents and I called for a bold plan to overcome the physical barriers to Latin American unity. The Latin American countries have too long been isolated from each other. They have looked across the seas to Europe and the United States. They have neglected the sinews of transportation and communications which can bind together a continent--as happened here in the United States. For example:

--The man in Lima, Peru, who wishes to talk to a man in Rio de Janeiro must do so through the telephone exchange in Miami or New York.

--The traveler from southern Brazil to Buenos Aires--roughly the same distance, I think, as from Boston to Washington-may take as much as 2 to 3 days for that route.

--Most of all, the nations throughout the continent have great natural resources which their neighbors cannot or do not use. Locked behind the high mountain ranges, deep rain forests, forbidding deserts that divide South America, we find fertile lands and many unknown resources.

Central America has already demonstrated what can be accomplished when such resources are made freely available by an interlocking system of roads and communications. Without these systems, the achievements of the Central American Common Market would have never been made possible.

The new frontiers of the South American heartland beckon to the daring and the determined. A start has already been made. I should like to cite three examples: A satellite for Latin America will be launched this fall, capable of bringing fast communications for the first time to the entire hemisphere. Chile, Panama, and Mexico will be the first to join the satellite network. Next year Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela will join the system.

The marginal highway on the eastern slopes of the Andes is opening a vast new frontier that is offering work and opportunities for hundreds who are living in crowded seaboard cities.

A large dam and powerplant is rising on the Acaray River between Paraguay and Brazil. It will bring electricity into thousands of homes and factories in three countries.

Now, these are just some of the illustrations of what can be done and what is being done. I believe the time is here and the time is now for us to prepare a plan, a specific blueprint for carrying forward this gigantic enterprise--an enterprise that is capable of uniting the continents with roads and river systems, with power grids and pipelines, and with transport and telephone communications.

In order to do this, I would suggest to fellow Presidents and to those who direct our Alliance for Progress, that they establish a high-level task force, the finest collection of planners that we can bring together, under the leadership of a distinguished Latin American, to prepare a 5-year plan for speeding up the physical integration of our own hemisphere. I assure you that the United States will lend its full cooperation and support.

I am reminded of some famous words of Simon Bolivar to the leaders of his own day when he said:

"Do not forget that you are about to lay the foundations of a new people, which may some day rise to the heights that Nature has marked out for it, provided you make those foundations .... "

After almost a century and a half, we are still building the foundations of progress for all of the Americas. But I hope and I believe and I want us to be building them together.

This morning I would observe, let us continue in the spirit of Bolivar who dreamed of an America "sitting on the throne of liberty... showing the old world the majesty of the new."

Thank you very much.