The Influence of the Agency for International Development (AID) on Ecuadors's Agrarian Development Policy

Abstract

Since the Alliance for Progress was first established over fifteen years ago, a number of interpretations have been offered for United States agrarian development policy in Latin America. This paper examines two of these interpretations in the light of a detailed study of peasant organization and agrarian reform in Ecuador, a country which received considerable attention from AID from the early 1960s. It has been suggested that AID staff in Latin America are often confused about the role the Agency should play. Indeed, the former Peruvian President, Belaunde, is said to have remarked that ‘AID is very feminine: it never says “no”, but it always says “maybe”‘. It might be added that such prevarication does not seem to have prevented AID from curtailing its more ambitious proposals so as to make them ‘…acceptable to prevailing elites’ However, neither the undoubted conservatism of the Agency, nor its lack of decisiveness are its only notable features. A more penetrating analysis of AID's role in Latin America must begin with the context in which AID operated in specific cases, and consider the legacy of its involvement in particular countries. In this paper it is suggested that AID was instrumental in establishing the outlines of the agrarian development strategy currently being pursued by the Ecuadorian State. As such, its role cannot be considered in inflated conspiratorial terms, nor can AID's activities be interpreted as of only marginal significance in the continent as a whole.