Andrew S. Terrell HIST 6393: Empire, War and Revolution!

Fall 2010

• Rabe, Stephen G. The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts
Communist Revolution in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Stephen Rabe approaches the Kennedy administration and its policies toward Latin

America in his monograph named after the infamous line from the president calling the region

the most dangerous area in the world. Latin America was termed this because of the instability

on such a large scale at the end of the 1950s. In a few short years before Kennedy came to the

Oval Office, ten military dictators had been thrown out of power in the region and the effects of

this large movement led Washington to worry more about Latin America than any president had

since Teddy Roosevelt. Rabe argues the majority of the concern over the future of Latin America

stemmed from the popularity and implications being spread by Castro and the Cuban

Revolutionary ideology that sought to expel imperialism from third world countries. With the

average household making around $200 annually, Kennedy moved quickly (within the first two

weeks of his administration) to announce the infamous Alliance for Progress that was to be the

equivalent of the Marshall Plan for Latin American nations. Rabe uses case studies ranging from

Cuba and Haiti, to the Dominican Republic on through Brazil and Guyana to show how the

Kennedy administration and its Alliance for Progress came into conflict amid the Cold War

years. In the end, Rabe contends that though Kennedy may have approached the alliance as a

sincerely concerned world leader, conflicting policies and limits based on the steady national

interest of anti-Soviet communism made the Alliance a failed attempt at social and state reform

in Latin America.

Writing in the post-Soviet 1990s, Rabe is able to expound on new evidences from the

Kennedy Library, National Archives and many private paper collections from bureaucrats

involved with developing and overseeing foreign policy from 1961-1963. He is masterful at
Andrew S. Terrell HIST 6393: Empire, War and Revolution! Fall 2010

writing neither in high regard, nor in unnecessarily critical prose of Kennedy himself. Rabe

points out from the beginning that Kennedy truly identified with Latin Americans and had a vast

knowledge of the economic, political, and social atmospheres of many nation states within.

Nevertheless, despite what is portrayed as a well-intentioned approach to modernization in the

Alliance for Progress, all efforts failed on a large scale. Economic growth was not stimulated,

land reforms were discouraged or blocked because of American corporation investments, and the

gap between the elite and poor classes widened throughout the 1960s. At one point Kennedy had

aimed to raise real income of all working class citizens by 50%, and for this he became an icon

of progressivism, statecraft, and modernization in much if not all of Latin America.

The main reason for Kennedy’s inability to followthrough on promises and agreements

reached by Latin American leaders and the US involved in the Alliance for Progress, was the

prominence of Cold War mentality. Economic growth and social reforms were overshadowed by

anti-Soviet policies which in the end disallowed Kennedy from following through on much more

than loans to Latin America countries. Much of the money loaned, however, went unaccounted

for or distributed among dictators and the social elites of Latin American societies. Rabe

produced a very important analysis into the Alliance for Progress and the paradox of

modernization amid the Cold War.