States-to-People Aid

The biggest share of Alliance for Progress aid goes into long-term development programs, and it often takes a desperately long time to filter through government bureaucracies. To give ordinary Latin Americans a sense of progress now, the U.S. is backing a new program called "Partners of the Alliance." The idea is to match a U.S. state with a country, region, or large state in Latin America that shares some common characteristic and let the partners take it from there.

Since the program started 17 months ago, 22 U.S. states have joined, and 13 more are expected to sign up by the end of this year. Alianza officials in Washington establish the first contacts between the state governments and their Latin American opposite numbers. Utah is paired with Bolivia because both have a mountainous, mining economy; Illinois is matched with the big Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, whose booming highly industrialized capital city is Latin America's closest facsimile of Chicago. Most of the U.S. states then send a delegation down south to see how they can be useful, then get in touch with local organizations at home to get the plans going.

A shipment of 21 tons of electrical equipment from rural electrical cooperatives in Kentucky is helping an Ecuadorian cooperative double its output; Wisconsin plans to send a similar shipment to Nicaragua. Idaho has sent sewing machines to an Ecuadorian orphanage where the girls learn to become seamstresses. The Junior Chamber of Commerce in Mobile, Ala., has sent to Guatemala a bookmobile and funds to build a rural school, while Santa Barbara, Calif., has provided $100,000 worth of medical equipment and Pharmaceuticals for Bogota.

Last week a Texas delegation headed by Edward Marcus of Dallas' Neiman-Marcus department store returned from Lima, where the Texans investigated joint-venture possibilities with Peruvian businessmen. And a group of New Jersey civic leaders is just back from a visit to Brazil's underdeveloped north east state of Alagoas, looking for ways to help Brazilians help themselves. In one village the North Americans promised assistance for ten self-help projects, starting with a powerful pump for an irrigation well. Arthur Byrnes, assistant Alianza director for Brazil, explains: "This program is small in terms of dollars. But it is reaching the people directly, bringing about immediate results, and that makes a great difference."

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