Reply #26: Wow. Didn't know how effective he became after Dallas... [View All]

[Octafish]

From Third World Traveler:

U.S. Capitalism and The Multinationals

excerpted from the book

Cry of the People

The struggle for human rights in Latin America
and the Catholic Church in conflict with US policy

by Penny Lernoux

Penguin Books, 1980, paper

EXCERPT...

President Kennedy chose Peter Grace, the archconservative chairman of W. R. Grace, to head a group of businessmen from twenty-five major corporations who were to evaluate the Alliance and recommend useful projects. They did their job so well that by 1964 David Rockefeller detected a "marked change in the attitude of those responsible for the Alliance" and could praise the State Department for recognizing that the Alliance "had had too much emphasis on social reform." AID orders accounted for one third of all U.S. steel exports by 1969; the following year, AID-financed fertilizer exports ran to just under $100 million. According to AID officials, some $2 billion per year in U.S. exports were financed by the foreign aid program.

U.S. aid buttressed corporate interests in America in a host of ways. It was a marvelous stick to hold over recalcitrant governments. Bolivia, for instance, was gradually forced to abandon the reforms begun by its 1952 revolution as the country fell increasingly into debt to the United States. By 1967 AID could boast that "the adoption of reforms . . . in the nationalized tin mines, a revised mining code favorable to private investments . . . and a new investment code and a revised and more equitable royalties schedule designed to encourage private investment is largely attributable to AID assistance." AID could also take credit for undermining Bolivia's attempts to become self-sufficient in wheat and quinoa, a hardy grain grown since pre-Columbian times in the high Andes. Under the P.L. 480 (Food for Peace) program, which was a convenient way to dump surplus U.S. commodities on the world market, Bolivian wheat and quinoa were gradually replaced by cheaper U.S. flour. Of course, when the market for U.S. wheat improved, there were no more handouts, and wheat and flour now represent 43 percent of Bolivia's agricultural imports. That is exactly what the proponents of P.L. 480 had in mind. Said Senator Hubert Humphry, one of its most enthusiastic supporters:

I have heard . . . that people may become dependent on us for food. I know that was not supposed to be good news. To me that was good news, because before people can do anything they have got to eat. And if you am looking for a way to get people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their co-operation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific.

p210
None of the high-sounding goals of the Alliance for Progress were achieved, including income redistribution or tax reform- and not just because the local elites opposed such reforms. Had the tax loopholes been closed and the labor force been given a greater share of national wealth, foreign companies could not possibly have developed lucrative new markets in Latin America. During the Alliance years, according to U. S. Department of Commerce statistics, three dollars went back to the United States for every dollar invested. Foreign subsidiaries compensated for the smallness of the consumer market-in Brazil, for example, it was only a fourth of the 110 million population-with enormous markups that gave these companies twice the margin of profit they earned in the United States. When the Alliance was finally buried at the end of the 1960s, about the only thing the Latin-American countries had to show for it was an enormous foreign debt-$19.3 billion, compared to $8.8 billion in 1961, when the program was launched.

Not only did the Latin-American people fail to benefit from the generosity of the U.S. taxpayer; AID-and CIA-money was also used to help destroy one of the few established outlets of popular opinion, the free trade unions. Not content with funneling Alliance funds into corporate industry, Peter Grace promoted the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), a Trojan horse for the multinationals sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Created in 1962 with the financial support of AID, the State Department, W. R. Grace, IIT, Exxon, Shell, Kennecott, Anaconda, American Smelting and Refining, IBM, Koppers, Gillette, and 85 other large corporations with interests in Latin America, the AIFLD was organized, ostensibly, to combat the threat of Castroite influence in Latin-American labor unions; in reality it was a way for U.S. companies, working in cahoots with repressive governments, to replace independent unions with company ones. Explained Peter Grace, AIFLD's board chairman, the Institute "teaches workers to increase their company's business."

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Latin_America/US_Capitalism_COTP.html