Lincoln Gordon

When Adlai Stevenson toured the ten capitals of South America in June 1961 on a special mission for President Kennedy, one of the questions he raised at each stop was whether the American Presidents should attend in person the closing days of the forthcoming meeting at Punta del Este, Uruguay, which was to draft the basic charter of the Alliance for Progress. Stevenson received conflicting advice. Some Presidents welcomed the idea as a way of giving top-level political impetus and drama to this unprecedented program of inter-American coöperation. Others feared the public relations impact of a possible recriminatory debate, so soon after the Bay of Pigs, between President Kennedy and Cuba's Dorticós-or perhaps even Fidel Castro himself. In his own report, Stevenson reflected these divided opinions, and Kennedy finally decided not to pursue the idea. The delegations at Punta del Este the following August, therefore, were headed by Finance and Economic Ministers-in our own case, by Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon.