I turn now to a prospect of great promise: our Hemispheric relations. The
Alliance for Progress is being rapidly transformed from proposal to
program. Last month in Latin America I saw for myself the quickening of
hope, the revival of confidence, the new trust in our country--among
workers and farmers as well as diplomats. We have pledged our help in
speeding their economic, educational, and social progress. The Latin
American Republics have in turn pledged a new and strenuous effort of
self-help and self-reform.
To support this historic undertaking, I am proposing--under the authority
contained in the bills of the last session of the Congress--a special
long-term Alliance for Progress fund of $3 billion. Combined with our Food
for Peace, Export-Import Bank, and other resources, this will provide more
than $1 billion a year in new support for the Alliance. In addition, we
have increased twelve-fold our Spanish and Portuguese language broadcasting
in Latin America, and improved Hemispheric trade and defense. And while
the blight of communism has been increasingly exposed and isolated in the
Americas, liberty has scored a gain. The people of the Dominican Republic,
with our firm encouragement and help, and those of our sister Republics of
this Hemisphere, are safely passing through the treacherous course from
dictatorship through disorder towards democracy.