An Un-American Foreign Policy: The Peace Corps Overseas, 1961–71

Abstract

On October 14, 1960, John F. Kennedy, on the road campaigning for the presidency of the United States of America, declared his plan of sending young Americans abroad in order to live and work, for a few years of their lives, among the peoples of the poorer countries. Five months later, the Peace Corps was born, and after another five months, it sent the first volunteers to Ghana. The Peace Corps was an agency of foreign policy. It sought to share American skills and goodwill to the developing countries of the world. However, its activities were often at odds with the United States government s foreign policies.This paper looks into the unique, and often confusing, role of the Peace Corps in American foreign policy during the agency s first decade, 1961-1971. It argues that the overseas work of the Peace Corps, although belonging to overall American foreign policy, often differed, and sometimes even opposed, the official foreign policy of the United States. This study is based only on limited research due to the few sources about the Peace Corps available to the author, but its focus is on the interpretation of these sources, using them to prove the uniqueness of the corps s foreign relations approach.The corps operated differently from the other United States overseas agencies. It went to work in countries without diplomatic relations with the United States. It sent workers (not mere advisers) to live in slums, jungles, and farms of the developing world. The Peace Corps volunteers would also express opinions contrary to the official government position on global issues, such as on the Vietnam War.The nature of the Peace Corps was so different from the rest of American foreign agencies that the host countries peoples were confused. In 1965, during the Dominican Republic s civil war, a volunteer came upon a group of people writing on the walls of buildings in the capital Santo Domingo, Yankees Go Home. Upon seeing this, he said to them, Well, I guess that means me. I ll get packed. The Dominican called him back, Oh, no! I meant the Yankees, not the Peace Corps.