Kennedy Men and the Fate of the Alliance for Progress in LBJ Era Brazil and Chile

The experiences of US ambassadors to Brazil and Chile in the 1960s, Lincoln Gordon and Ralph Dungan, exemplify the contradictory nature of US commitment to reform in Latin America in that decade. Brazil and Chile were two of the three countries which received the most Alliance for Progress money; their leaders were men whom the US ambassadors strongly supported. These countries, however, were heading in diametrically opposite political directions, one toward increasingly despotic government and the other toward greater democracy. In both cases, the ambassadors could claim to be pursuing Kennedy's Alliance goals in the Johnson years even as US interest in the region waned.