Editing Alliance for Progress (section)

==Success and failures of the plan==
{{see also|Chilean land reform}}
Growth in regional output per capita in Latin America in the 1960s was 2.6%, exceeding the Alliance for Progress goal of 2.5%. In contrast to 2.2% growth per capita in the 1950s, GDP growth rate per capita in the region reached 2.9% in the latter half of the 1960s and accelerated to 3.3% in the 1970s. Overall nine countries (including Brazil and Mexico) reached the target goal, ten nations did not reach the goal, and only Haiti had lower growth.<ref name="eclac">{{Cite web|url=http://www.cepal.org/deype/cuaderno37/esp/index.htm|title=ECLAC historical economic statistical series 1950-2008|access-date=2011-03-22|archive-date=2016-03-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303204558/http://www.cepal.org/deype/cuaderno37/esp/index.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Adult illiteracy was reduced but not wiped out. In some countries, the number of people attending universities doubled or even tripled. Access to secondary education also showed increases. One out of every four school-age children were provided with an extra food ration.<ref name="Kennedy by Theodore C. Sorensen">Kennedy by Theodore C. Sorensen</ref> Many people were provided with new schools, textbooks, or housing.<ref name="Kennedy by Theodore C. Sorensen"/>

The Alliance for Progress saw the start of long-range reform, with some improvements in land use and distribution, slightly improved tax laws and administration, the submission of detailed development programmes to the OAS, the creation of central planning agencies, and greater local efforts to provide housing, education, and financial institutions.<ref name="Kennedy by Theodore C. Sorensen"/>

Health clinics were built across Latin America. However, success in improving health care was hindered by population growth.

Of the 15 million peasant families living in Latin America, only one million benefited from any kind of land reform. The traditional elites resisted any land reform.<ref name="talon" />

[[Minimum wage]] laws were created but the minimum wages offered to Nicaraguan workers, for example, were set so low as to have no appreciable effect on the wages received.<ref name = "Cambridge">{{cite book
| last =Bethell
| first =Leslie 
| date =June 29, 1990
| title =The Cambridge History of Latin America
| publisher =Cambridge University Press
| isbn =0-521-24518-4 
}} p. 342.</ref>

In Latin America during the 1960s thirteen constitutional governments were replaced by military dictatorships. According to some authors, such as Peter Smith, this was a failure of the Alliance for Progress. Peter Smith wrote, "The most striking failure of the Alliance of Progress occurred within the political realm. Instead of promoting and consolidating reformist civilian rule, the 1960s witnessed a rash of military coups throughout the region...By the end of 1968 dictators were holding sway in several countries."<ref name="talon" /><ref name = "cuba">{{cite book
| last =Wright
| first =Thomas C. 
| title =Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution 
}} p. 68 "...the Alliance of Progress was announced in 1961, Latin America a dozen years later was dominated by men in uniform as at no time since the Great Depression triggered coups throughout the region.</ref><ref name = "dic">{{cite book
| last =Schmitz
| first =David F 
| title =The United States and Right-wing Dictatorships, 1965-1989 
}} Page 89.</ref>