Remarks on the Third Anniversary of the Alliance for Progress.

Mr. Chairman and my friends:

Thirty-one years ago this month Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the policy of the good neighbor. Three years ago this month John Kennedy called for an Alliance for Progress among the American Republics.¹ Today my country rededicates itself to these principles and renews its commitment to the partnership of the hemisphere to carry them forward.

¹ See "Public Papers of the Presidents, John F. Kennedy 1961," Item 78.

We meet as fellow citizens of a remarkable hemisphere. Here, a century and a half ago, we began the movement for national independence and freedom from foreign rule which is still the most powerful force in all the world. Here, despite occasional conflict, we have peacefully shared our hemisphere to a degree unmatched by any nation, anywhere.

Here, and in this very room, we have helped create a system of international cooperation which Franklin Roosevelt called "the oldest and the most successful association of sovereign governments anywhere in the world." Here are 20 nations who, sharing the traditions and values of Western civilization, are bound together by a common belief in the dignity of man. Here are 20 nations who have no desire to impose a single ideology or system on anyone else, who believe that each country must follow its own path to fulfillment with freedom, who take strength from the richness of their diversity.

So it is on this--this history and this accomplishment, these common values and this common restraint--that we base our hope for our future. Today those hopes center largely on the Alliance for Progress that you are all so interested in.

John F. Kennedy has been taken from us. The Alliance, however, remains a source for our faith, and a challenge to our capacity. The Alliance for Progress owes much to the vision of President Kennedy. But he understood that it flows from the desires and ideas of those in each of our countries who seek progress with freedom. In its councils, all nations sit as equals. This is the special significance of CIAP--the organization that we honor today. Through it, the Alliance will now be guided by the advice and the wisdom of men from throughout the hemisphere.

It needs and is getting the best leadership that our continents have to offer. It has such leadership in Carlos Sanz de Santamaria, one of our most distinguished Americans.

In the last 3 years we have built a structure of common effort designed to endure for many years. In those years much has been accomplished. Throughout Latin America new schools and factories, housing and hospitals have opened new opportunities. Nations have instituted new measures of land and tax reform, educational expansion, and economic stimulus and discipline.

We are proud of these achievements. But as we take pride in what has thus far been done, our minds turn to the great unfinished business. Only by facing these shortcomings, only by fighting to overcome them, can we make our Alliance succeed in the years ahead.

Let me make clear what I believe in. They are not failures of principle or failures of belief. The Alliance's basic principles of economic development, of social justice, of human freedom, are not only the right path, they are the only path for those who believe that both the welfare and the dignity of man can advance side by side. To those who prize freedom, there just simply is no alternative.

There is no magic formula to avoid the complex and the sometimes painful and difficult task of basic social reform and economic advance. There is no simple trick that will transform despair into hope, that will turn misery and disease into abundance and health. Those who think that the path of progress in this hemisphere will be easy or painless are arousing false hopes and are inviting disappointment.

The criticism which can give us new vigor and which must guide us is of those who share our beliefs, but offer us better ways to move toward better goals. We have learned much about the difficulties and the flaws of our Alliance in the past 3 years. We must today profit from this experience. With faith in our principles, with pride in our achievements, with the help of candid and constructive criticism, we are now prepared to move ahead with renewed effort and with renewed confidence.

The first area of emphasis is increased cooperation--among ourselves, with other nations, with private and public institutions. We will continue our efforts to protect producing nations against disastrous price changes so harmful to their economies, and consumers against short supply and unfair price rises. We will intensify our cooperation in the use of our resources in the process of development. CIAP itself is an important step in that direction, and CIAP has our full support.

But other institutions as well--the Inter-American and World Bank, the private foundations and cooperatives, the savings institutions and sources of agricultural credit-must in every country focus their energies on the efforts to overcome the massive difficulties of capital shortage and hunger and lack of adequate educational facilities.

So that my own country's participation in this cooperation might receive needed leadership and direction, I have given Secretary Mann, who enjoys my highest confidence, broad responsibility for our role in the Alliance. His appointment reflects my complete determination to meet all the commitments of the United States to the Alliance.

Our pledge of substantial external help has been met in the past, and my administration will spare no effort to meet it in the future, and my confidence is reinforced by my knowledge that the people of the United States also support that commitment to our fellow Americans.

We urge and we welcome the constructive contribution of developed nations outside this hemisphere. We believe in diversity in the modern world. We can all learn from one another. Capital, technical know-how, access to markets, fair prices for basic commodities-all of these will contribute to the rapid development which is the goal of all

Of us.

But public funds are not enough. We must work together to insure the maximum use of private capital, domestic and foreign; without it, growth will certainly fall far behind. Such capital will respond to a stable prospect of fair earnings and a chance to create badly needed industry and business on a responsible and safe and sound basis. Those who destroy the confidence of risk capital, or deny it a chance to offer its energy and talent endanger the hopes of their people for a more abundant life, because our abundant life flows from that energy and from that talent that we have given a chance.

The second area of emphasis is the area of stir-help. Progress cannot be created by forming international organizations. Progress cannot be imposed by foreign countries. Progress cannot be purchased with large amounts of money or even with large amounts of good will.

Progress in each country depends upon the willingness of that country to mobilize its own resources, to inspire its own people, to create the conditions in which growth can and will flourish, for although help can come from without, success must come only from within. Those who are not willing to do that which is unpopular and that which is difficult will not achieve that which is needed or that which will be lasting. This is as true of my own country's fight against poverty and racial injustice as it is of the fight of others against hunger and disease and illiteracy--the ancient enemies of all mankind.

By broadening education we can liberate new talents and energies, freeing millions from the bonds of illiteracy. Through land reform aimed at increased production, taking different forms in each country, we can provide those who till the soil with self-respect and increased income, and each country with increased production to feed the hungry and to strengthen their economy.

Fair and progressive taxes, effectively collected, can provide the resources that are needed to improve education and public health conditions and the social structure that is needed for economic growth. Measures ranging from control of inflation and encouragement of exports to the elimination of deficits in public enterprises can help provide the basis of economic stability and growth on which our Alliance can flourish.

The third area of emphasis is the pursuit of social justice. Development and material progress are not ends in themselves. They are means to a better life and means to an increased opportunity for us all. They are the means for each to contribute his best talents and each to contribute his best desires. They are the means to the full dignity of man, for the Alliance for Progress is a recognition that the claims of the poor and the oppressed are just claims. It is an effort to fulfill those claims while at the same time strengthening democratic society and maintaining the liberty of man.

So, no matter how great our progress, it will lack meaning unless every American from the Indian of the Andes to the impoverished farmer of Appalachia can share in the fruits of change and growth. Land reform, tax changes, educational expansion, the fight against disease--all contribute to this end. Everything else that we must do must be shaped by these guiding principles. In these areas--cooperation and self-help and social justice--new emphasis can bring us closer to success.

At the same time, we must protect the Alliance against the efforts of communism to tear down all that we are building. The recent proof of Cuban aggression in Venezuela is only the latest evidence of those intentions. We will soon discuss how best we can meet these threats to the independence of us all.

But I now, today, assure you that the full power of the United States is ready to assist any country whose freedom is threatened by forces dictated from beyond the shores of this continent.

Let me now depart for a moment from my main theme to speak of the differences that have developed between Panama and the United States.

Our own position is clear, and it has been from the first hour that we learned of the disturbances. The United States will meet with Panama any time, anywhere, to discuss anything, to work together, to cooperate with each other, to reason with one another, to review and to consider all of our problems together, to tell each other all our opinions, all our desires, and all our concerns, and to aim at solutions and answers that are fair and just and equitable without regard to the size or the strength or the wealth of either nation.

We don't ask Panama to make any precommitments before we meet, and we intend to make none. Of course, we cannot begin on this work until diplomatic relations are resumed, but the United States is ready today, if Panama is ready. As of this moment, I do not believe that there has been a genuine meeting of the minds between the two Presidents of the two countries involved.

Press reports indicate that the Government of Panama feels that the language which has been under consideration for many days commits the United States to a rewriting and to a revision of the 1903 treaty. We have made no such commitment and we would not think of doing so before diplomatic relations are resumed and unless a fair and satisfactory adjustment is agreed upon.

Those of us who have gathered here today must realize that we are the principal guardians of the Alliance for Progress. But the Alliance is not here, and it is not in office buildings and it is not in meeting rooms in Presidential mansions throughout the hemisphere. The Alliance is in the aspirations of millions of farmers and workers, of men without education, of men without hope, of poverty-stricken families whose homes are the villages and the cities of an entire continent.

They ask simply the opportunity to enter into the world of progress and to share in the growth of the land. From their leaders, from us, they demand concern and compassion and dedicated leadership and dedicated labor.

I am confident that in the days to come we will be able to meet those needs. It will not be an easy task. The barriers are huge. The enemies of our freedom seek to harass us at every turn. We are engaged in a struggle for the destiny of the American Republics, but it was a great poet, William Butler Yeats, who reminded us that there was doubt if any nation can become prosperous unless it has national faith. Our Alliance will prosper because I believe we do have that faith. It is not idle hope but the same faith that enabled us to nourish a new civilization in these spacious continents, and in that new world we will carry forward our Alliance for Progress in such a way that men in all lands will marvel at the power of freedom to achieve the betterment of man.

Thank you.