Our Men in Honduras

Liberals like to regard the Alliance for Progress as a bold, even revolutionary conception. In practice, as in Honduras, it has become something very different, so different that we may speak of two Alliances for Progress.

The first envisions the United States leading the hemisphere in a program of deep social change. We will work out programs for basic structural reforms and for the cooperative phasing out of private U.S. investment in Latin America. In practice, however, the Alliance is a second or realistic Alliance. Under this program the United States is to prod existing elites into an awareness that a modicum of reform is necessary to stave off revolution. The hallmark of the “realistic Alliance” is order—maint...