Alliances for Progress? The Political Economy of Development in Colombia, 1961–66

This paper goes beyond traditional analyses of the Alliance for Progress, with their focus on diplomacy and high politics, to consider the influence that Alliance rhetoric and programs had on multiple levels of the Colombian political system. Employing Colombian and U.S. sources, it shows how U.S. development assistance simultaneously reinforced exclusionary socio-political structures and enabled opposition and popular groups to formulate challenges to the established order. In many cases, clientelist networks controlled by Colombia's traditional political parties diverted international funding toward limited ends. This filtration effect helped to undermine opinions of U.S. aid, as Colombians came to associate the Alliance with the increasingly disgraced National Front system governing their country. By the mid-1960s, neither Colombia's rulers nor their U.S. partners were seen as capable of achieving reform. At the same time, groups on the margins of Colombian politics appropriated the rhetorical and material resources provided by the Alliance to sustain political alternatives. Factions outside the National Front critiqued the selfish politics of the traditional parties, while urban and rural communities sought fulfillment of local goals through new developmental channels. The paper argues that such processes formed the heart of Colombian debates over development and democracy during the crucial National Front period. They also demonstrate how the Alliance operated in a country where the political effects of U.S. involvement fell short of an outright military coup, and how U.S. aid might be understood beyond the usual development-counterinsurgency binary.