The Scholar-Diplomat Seminar on Latin American Affairs: The Promise and Illusions of the State Department Reform Movement

Abstract

We like to believe that ideals and conscious motivation govern history. In an area so controversial as United States-Latin American relations, a preoccupation with ideological determinants of policy and action has been part of a standard approach to problems and issues of Latin American economic, social, and political development, especially in the past decade. The influence of beliefs in the efficacy of the motive in history is illustrated by periodic harassment and quasi-purges of the Department of State, which is perceived by congressional critics as an organizational haven for the disloyal, weak, or misguided, and by diatribes from the left against official Washington which are typically based on some variation of the view that the state department harbors men with evil ideas.