U. S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights Violations in Latin America a Comparative Analysis Of Foreign...

The City University of New York

U. S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights Violations in Latin America: A Comparative Analysisof Foreign Aid DistributionsAuthor(s): Lars SchoultzSource: Comparative Politics, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Jan., 1981), pp. 149-170Published by: Ph.D. Program in Political Science of the City University of New YorkStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/421620 .Accessed: 10/02/2011 20:45

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U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights Violations in Latin America

A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Aid Distributions

Lars Schoultz

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between United States economic and military assistance to Latin America and recipient governments' repression of certain fundamental human rights.' The emphasis of this study is upon the human rights to life, liberty, and the integrity of the person in the sense that they cannot be denied without the impartial application of due process of law. Thus, the human rights violations upon which this study will focus are torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, including prolonged detention without trial. The selection of certain human rights and the exclusion of others is by no means meant to imply that one group has a status superior to others; nor is it an arbitrary focus. Rather it reflects the fact that during the 1970s the U.S. government formulated its human rights policy primarily in terms of what have come to be known as "antitorture" rights.2 This paper is an analysis of the implementation of that policy, not a discussion of what one might wish the policy contained.

The relationship between foreign inputs and the political behavior of Third World governments has been a central theoretical concern of comparative politics for at least two decades. While the analysis of the influence of these inputs now extends to an impressive variety of topics, ranging from the cultural impact of Donald Duck to the political and social impact of twentieth-century technological innovation,3 only a surprisingly few inputs have received detailed, systematic treatment from scholars with a variety of methodological perspectives. One of these is foreign aid.

Until recently, one focus of this research has been upon the purposes of aid. More than a decade ago a number of empirical analyses demonstrated that the U.S. foreign aid program functions as a multipurpose foreign policy imple-

0010-4159/81/0115-0002$05.00/1 @ 1981 The City University of New York 149

Comparative Politics January 1981

ment.4 While one continuing purpose of aid has been to increase the material well-being of poor people in the Third World through the expansion of economic growth rates and the adoption of new production techniques, researchers have indicated that foreign aid has other goals as well. A list of the most transparent nondevelopmental (or "political") purposes of U.S. aid to Latin America would include aid to help allies win elections (Chile in 1964), to consolidate their power following its seizure (Brazil after 1964), and to survive crises which threaten their continued exercise of power (the Domini- can Republic after 1965, Bolivia after 1971). Aid has been used to purchase Organization of American States (OAS) and United Nations votes, to secure military base rights, and to obtain the help of foreign troops.

Although in each of these examples aid has served as an inducement, under different circumstances U.S. economic assistance has been employed as a stick as well as a carrot. The Carter administration's reductions in aid to repressive governments are the most recent and obvious examples. According to Joan Nelson, at the extreme aid has been used in attempts "to alter the composition of a government, outside the context of elections." There is no evidence to suggest that anything has changed since outgoing Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) noted a decade ago how "every kind of conduct by a foreign government that we view as mischievious ends up in some kind of penalty provision that is attached to the aid program.'"6

The evidence to support the claim that economic aid serves as a flexible instrument of U.S. foreign policy has become so massive that in recent years social scientists have tended to minimize further empirical research on the purposes of aid. Instead they have turned to the policy-oriented issues of whether aid for nondevelopmental purposes is desirable and, if it is, which foreign policy goals should enjoy primacy in determining the nature of the U.S. aid program.' It is in the context of these questions that the relationship between aid and human rights became an issue of both theoretical and policy interest in the 1970s.

Observers of United States foreign policy debates are familiar with the allegations and denials that the U.S. government has supported repressive governments through its foreign assistance program.8 While the Carter administration may have sensitized the U.S. public to the question of human rights violations, for nearly two decades the debate over the provision of aid to repressive governments has been a standard, often central feature of foreign assistance policymaking. This ongoing debate has been conducted without the benefit of systematic empirical evidence. The basic reason for the absence of this evidence is that the dependent variable (the level of violations of fundamental human rights by governments receiving economic or military assistance from the United States) has never been operationalized. The problem has not been so much one of selecting certain human rights to defend as it has been one of measuring government violations of these rights in a cross-

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national context. Lacking systematic comparative data, proponents and oppo- nents of U.S. foreign assistance policy have based their arguments upon unrepresentative examples: Persons who posit a positive relationship between U.S. aid and human rights violations regularly cite the cases of Pinochet's Chile and Somoza's Nicaragua, while those who deny the existence of this linkage refer to Costa Rica and (until recently) Colombia.

The country-specific hearings by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations provide a number of examples of this approach to the issue of aid and human rights. Under the direction of its former chairperson, Donald Fraser (D-Minn.), the subcommittee was instrumental in pub- licizing human rights violations and in creating an awareness of the link between U.S. aid and repressive governments. In 1976, for example, hearings were held on such diverse human rights subjects as the psychiatric abuse of political prisoners in the Soviet Union, the role of the United States and the United Nations in Namibia, and human rights at the meeting of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States. The relationship between aid and human rights violations was particularly prominent in country-specific hearings on Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. Almost immediately upon assuming office, Carter administration officials also decided upon a case-by-case approach as the most appropriate way to include human rights considerations in aid decision making. Thus, during the 1970s both Congress and the executive branch tended to concentrate with varying degrees of intensity upon every tree in the foreign aid forest.

Clearly, the case approach has the potential to yield significant insight into the distribution of U.S. aid. But as a means of assessing the overall relationship between foreign assistance and human rights violations by recipient governments, an approach which selects as data atypical examples from the pool of nearly 100 aid-receiving countries is probably of limited explanatory value. The country-specific approach discourages the search for patterns in U.S. aid distributions and, by doing so, it also discourages the identification and analysis of the underlying values which direct foreign assistance decision making.

Data and Procedures

An estimate of the comparative level of human rights violations in Latin America was made by aggregating the judgments of a group of individuals who have devoted their lives to the international protection of human rights. When research for this paper was initiated in early 1976, the universe of experts on comparative human rights in the Western noncommunist world totaled approximately 91 persons. They were defined as the persons who had published widely on the subject or who occupied key positions in non-

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Table 1 Level of Human Rights Violations, Latin America, 1976

Mean Expert Assessment Rank Order* Country (N = 38)

1 .............. Costa Rica 1.00 2 .............. Trinidad and Tobago 1.13 3 .............. Surinam 1.36 4 .............. Jamaica 1.43 5 .............. Venezuela 1.48 6 .............. Colombia 1.52 7 .............. Guyana 1.56 8 .............. Mexico 1.85 9 .............. Ecuador 2.05 9 .............. Panama 2.05

11 .............. Peru 2.13 12 .............. Honduras 2.19 13 ............. El Salvador 2.35 14 .............. Dominican Republic 2.43 15 .............. Bolivia 2.61 16 .............. Nicaragua 2.95 17 .............. Guatemala 3.00 18 ............ Haiti 3.33 19 ............. Brazil 3.35 20 .............. Paraguay 3.44 20 .............. Uruguay 3.44 22 ............. Argentina 3.59 23 ............ Chile 3.79

* Ordered from least offensive to most offensive.

governmental and governmental human rights organizations. Rather than sample this surprisingly small number of experts, questionnaires were sent to each of them. From among the 87 Third World countries which received U.S. foreign aid between 1962 (the fiscal year in which the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 began to operate) and 1976, respondents were asked to rank only those nations with whose human rights record they were familiar on a scale of ascending violations of from 1 to 4, using as a time frame the calendar year 1976.

After two letters to many potential respondents, a number of telephone calls, and six months of waiting, the response rate reached a respectable 42 percent. As might have been expected given the specialized nature of the subject, the thirty-eight respondents form a fairly homogeneous group. In terms of their primary occupations, twelve are employees of nongovernmental human rights organizations (NGOs), eight are professors of international law, seven are social scientists, six are practicing attorneys, three are members of national parliaments, and two are U.S. congressional staff members. All of the attorneys, social scientists, and professors of international law are closely associated with at least one NGO. Most of the respondents have some first- hand knowledge of human rights conditions in Latin America, generally

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gained through participation in an investigation sponsored by nongovernmental organizations. Many respondents have participated in several investigations. As to the respondents' nationalities, thirty-two are from the United States and Canada, five are from various European nations, and one is from Latin America. This disappointing distribution is the result of an extremely low response rate by non-U.S. experts; nearly half of the potential respondents were not U.S. citizens.

In order to reduce some of the hazards of interregional comparisons, the global assessment of the relationship between U.S. aid and human rights violations was reduced in scope to one which considers only the twenty-three aid-receiving nations of Latin America.9 The dependent variable, then, is the experts' mean evaluation of the level of human rights violations by each Latin American government in 1976. This variable has a range of 2.79 (1.00 to 3.79), a mean of 2.35 with a standard deviation of .87. Table 1 presents this composite assessment of human rights performance by Latin American governments. These data represent the experts' mean (averaged) assessment of the level of human rights violations, and not necessarily the actual or "real" level of human rights violations. Although it is possible to defend the survey respondents' expertise in the area of human rights, the only information that they (or anyone else) can provide are assessments of the reputations of each country's government. To the extent that these experts' perceptions differ from the unobservable actual level of human rights violations, the data in Table 1 are not reliable reflections of reality. Although most observers of Latin America in the mid-1970s would probably agree that these assessments are fairly reliable, especially at the extremes, there is no way to be certain.

Given this uncertainty, the reader should be aware that a country's human rights reputation among experts could differ from its actual performance, simply because basic data on violations are not readily available on a comparative basis for all Latin American societies. Moreover, the reliability of some data is questionable for, except in the every extreme cases of rights violations, there has been little attempt at independent validation. The reasons for the lack of comprehensive, comparable data are several, but they focus upon the existence of structural relationships which facilitate international communication. Some societies are more open to foreigners than others, particularly in establishing complex commerical and cultural contacts with the West and in permitting relatively large amounts of foreign press coverage. The differential levels of international communication cause a reinforcing emphasis upon human rights conditions in certain countries.10 Note, however, that there is no known method to determine whether and to what extent this disproportionate emphasis creates distorted perceptions among experts who often are the very persons who have created the emphasis.11

The independent variable is U.S. foreign assistance to Latin America for

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the sixteen U.S. government fiscal years from 1962 through 1977. Primary emphasis is placed upon the three fiscal years of 1975, 1976, and 1977. In addition to the overall aid figures, the data are disaggregated into economic assistance (through both the Agency for International Development [AID] and the Food for Peace [PL480] program) and military aid of various types.

At the present time, there is no consensus on the theoretical significance or the political meaning of foreign aid disbursements. Because it is not the purpose of this paper to address this issue of the function of foreign assistance, aid will not be employed here as an indicator of any professed or ulterior goal. Thus, in this context the size of the U.S. aid program to any specific country demonstrates nothing more than the amount of money the government wishes to provide the government of that country for a variety of reasons related to U.S. foreign policy. While the most frequently cited reason for providing aid is a commitment to socioeconomic development, and while (as noted above) there are abundant data to demonstrate that much aid has nondevelopmental objectives as well, the examination of these objectives is not the focus of this paper. More specifically, the question of causality cannot be addressed with confidence. The theoretical literature on the relationship between U.S. foreign assistance and human rights suggests that the latter is influenced by the former (see note 8), but this association has never been confirmed with systematic empirical evidence. Since there is little empirical theory by which to interpret the causal implications of the data presented in this study, the objective of this paper is simply to determine the extent to which changes in one variable (human rights violations) are related to variation in another (the distribution of foreign aid); i.e., to discover whether there is concomitant variation.

Stated another way, it is impossible to contest an assertion that the correlations in the following tables are spurious. A spurious correlation, it will be remembered, is one where the observed impact of one variable upon a dependent variable is, in fact, the result of the influence of other, unobserved variables. Cases exist which demonstrate that the repression of human rights has been caused or encouraged by U.S. foreign assistance-Chile and Brazil are the most completely documented examplesl2-but even in these cases it remains impossible to determine the level of respect for human rights had no aid been provided by the United States. If we wish to explore U.S. policy toward Brazil in the 1960s or to Chile in the 1970s, we can study the ebb and flow of aid disbursements to the various governments of these two countries and, in conjunction with other data on the purpose of aid, we can relate aid to broader concerns of U.S. foreign policy. What we cannot determine from these or, perhaps, any other data is whether a decline (or an increase) in aid will cause a subsequent change in the recipient government's level of human rights violations.

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Regardless of whether the relationship between U.S. aid and human rights violations is spurious, public law requires that it be analyzed in aid decision making. Over the open and intense opposition of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, since 1973 Congress has added human rights clauses to virtu- ally all U.S. foreign assistance legislation.13 While each piece of legislation is unique in its wording, since passage of the Harkin Amendment in 1975 the executive branch has been severely restricted in its ability to provide aid "to the government of any country which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights." 14 Congress is relatively unconcerned with the causes of human rights violations; rather it has preferred to avoid the issue and simply to obligate the president to conduct foreign assistance programs in a manner which will "avoid identification of the United States... with governments which deny to their people internationally recognized human rights." 15 This paper evaluates the extent to which the pattern of aid distributions during FY 1975-FY 1977 was responsive to Congress' preferences."

Results

The results presented here are for both absolute and relative levels of foreign assistance. Absolute assistance is defined as the gross dollar amount of aid provided each Latin American government. Because the twenty-three nations of Latin America vary so widely, particularly in their population size, a focus upon the absolute volume of aid distorts some aspects of the aid/human rights relationship. Relative (per capita) assistance recognizes these enormous

population differences. The examination of absolute and relative aid levels is complementary, describing from two perspectives United States aid programs in Latin America.

Absolute Levels of Foreign Assistance Total U.S. Assistance. The correlations between the absolute level of U.S. assistance to Latin America and human rights violations by recipient governments are presented in Table 2. These correlations are uniformly positive, indicating that aid has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens. In addition, the correlations are relatively strong: 8 of the 18 coefficients in Table 2 are +.40 or greater.17

Given the low number of cases (twenty-three countries) and the gross character of a single correlation coefficient, scatterplots provide a clearer description of the relationship between aid and human rights violations. In Figure 1, the dollar magnitude of the FY 1975 foreign assistance program is plotted against the experts' evaluation of human rights violations. There are two major clusters of Latin American countries. One group of seven countries

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0"?

tA1 as

Figure 1 Scatterplot of Relationship between U.S. Aid to Latin America in 1975 and Level of Human Rights Violations by Recipient Governments, 1976

3.78 - Chile

3.50- Paraguay Argentina

UruguayB 3.22 - Haiti

Y = 1.27 + 1.00X

-- Nicaragua

0 2.94- r= +.68 r. Guatemala 0 > 2.66-

: Bolivia

a 2.39- El Salvador * C Dominican a Republic Honduras

a 2.11- : Peru

10 .

•

/Ecuador Panama 5 1.83- *

Mexico ..J

1.55- Surinam Guyana

Venezuela *

1.27 - Jamaica

Trinidad and Tobago Costa Rica 1.00

0.0 0.20 0.4 0.60 0.80 0.99 1.19 1.39 1.59 1.79 1.99

United States Aid (Log10 X + 1)

001

l*-4

Lars Schoultz

Table 2 Pearson Correlations between Absolute Levels of U.S. Aid and Level of Human Rights Violations, Latin America, 1975-77*

Total U.S. Aid

Economic and Total (Logl0 X+l) Total Foreign Fiscal Military Economic Food for Military Military Years Assistance Assistance A.I.D. Peace Assistance Sales

1975 .... .68 .46 .50 .34 .57 .53

1976 .... .50 .26 .24 .30 .28 **

1977 .... .49 .29 .37 .31 .34 .27

* N = 23. ** Too few cases available for analysis.

Source: Data on foreign assistance provided by the Bureau for Program Policy and Coordination, Agency for International Development.

received little aid and maintained a relatively high level of respect for human rights, while a second cluster of the remaining sixteen countries received comparatively large amounts of assistance and had a low level of respect for human rights. Colombia is the only major deviation from this pattern.

Figure 2 is a scatterplot relating U.S. aid and human rights violations in 1976. Since data on the level of human rights violations are the same in both Figure 1 and 2, between 1975 and 1976 changes in aid distributions caused the aid/human rights correlation to drop from +.68 to + .50. In Figure 2 the two clusters have largely disappeared, and several cases stand isolated on the scatterplot. Except for the five very deviant cases of Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Colombia, the observed values are much closer to the predicted values in Figure 2 (1976) than they were in Figure 1 (1975).1" As it stands, in Figure 2 the slope of .81 barely exceeds the standard error of estimate of .77. In plain English, the two scatterplots indicate that, while the human rights/foreign aid relationship is far from perfect, in both 1975 and 1976 United States aid tended to flow disproportionately to the hemisphere's relatively egregious violators of fundamental human rights.

Figure 3 is a scatterplot relating U.S. aid in FY 1977 and the level of human rights violations in 1976. While the correlation remains high (+.49), it is obvious from Figure 3 that this simple summary statistic masks several significant changes. Between 1976 and 1977 two countries with very repressive governments (Argentina and Brazil) experienced major aid reductions, and three relatively nonrepressive governments (Costa Rica, Guyana, Jamaica) obtained major aid increases. By 1977 the clear pattern in Figure 1 had disappeared, making the standard error of the regression equation so large that it would be inappropriate to draw a regression line. Nonetheless, the placement of Chile, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Haiti in Figure 3 confirms the

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Figure 2 Scatterplot of Relationship between U.S. Aid to Latin America and Level of Human Rights Violations by Recipient Governments, 1976

3.78 - c Chile

3.50 - Argentina

Uruguay Paraguay Brazil 3.22 - Haiti

0 2.94- Y 1.42 + .81X ZNicaragua Guatemala CO r + .50 o > 2.66-

- Bolivia c 2.39 -

2* Dominican Republic M El Salvador

E * Honduras 1 2.11 Peru I

o Ecuador Panama

wa 1 83- o S1.83Mexico -J

1.55 Guyana* Colombia

Venezuela 1.27 - Surinam

? Costa Rica 1.00 -

Trinidad and Tobago

0.0 0.19 0.38 0.57 0.77 0.96 1.15 1.34 1.53 1.72 1.92

United States Aid (Log10 X + 1)

ir3

Ire

qf

Lars Schoultz

allegation of critics that human rights criteria did not determine several major decisions on the distribution of aid to Latin America. With the single exception of Chile, however, it is instructive to note that of the countries ruled by repressive governments, by 1977 only the neediest (Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti) remained major aid recipients. Unlike 1975, by 1977 aid to countries with repressive governments and relatively few needy people (especially Argentina and Uruguay) had been severely restricted. As the discussion below will indicate, this is because the issue of basic needs became a major part of the aid/human rights debates of the late 1970s.

Economic Aid. One of the two major components of the total U.S. foreign aid program is economic aid which, in turn, is composed primarily of funds from the Agency for International Development and the Food for Peace program.19 The relatively strong correlations between economic aid and human rights violations (see Table 2) suggest that in FY 1975-FY 1977 the international protection of human rights was not a central concern of economic assistance decision making. But it should also be recognized that some of these correlations are not strong and that others tend to fluctuate dramatically over short periods of time. Between 1975 and 1976, for example, the correlation between AID disbursements and human rights violations dropped from +.50 to +.24. Most of this change occurred through major declines in aid to Brazil and Uruguay, and through a substantial boost in aid to Costa Rica. On the other hand, during 1976 the repressive governments of Chile, earthquake-torn Guatemala, Haiti, and Nicaragua continued to receive relatively large amounts of assistance from AID.

Between 1976 and 1977 the correlation between AID disbursements and human rights violations rose from +.24 to +.37. Given the low number of cases from which these correlations were computed, a change of this magnitude should not be considered highly significant. It is worth noting, however, that the correlation did not rise in response to a clear pattern. In FY 1977 AID reduced its assistance to very repressive (Chile, the Dominican Republic), moderately repressive (Panama), and nonrepressive (Colombia, Costa Rica) countries. Similarly, AID increased funding to both repressive Haiti and to nonrepressive Jamaica. The inspection of these individual cases reveals no perfect pattern of AID assistance being directed toward repressive governments. When considering all Latin American countries, however, during FY 1975-FY 1977 AID's funds tended to be directed toward countries with repressive governments. Given the findings in Table 2, it cannot be argued that respect for human rights was a major criterion in AID decision making.

No major changes occurred in the proportional distribution of Food for Peace credits and grants between 1975 and 1977. As a result, the correlations

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*A Figure 3 Scatterplot of Relationship between U.S. Aid to Latin America in FY 1977

and Level of Human Rights Violations by Recipient Governments, 1976

3.78 Chile

3.50 Argentina Paraguay

Uruguay 3.22 - Brazil Haiti

th Nicaragua c 2.4 Guatemala

> 2.66 - Dominican Republic Bolivia

El Salvador

S2.39 - 3c Honduras E M

2.11 Peru Ecuador e Panama

0

> 1.83Mexico -J

1.55- Venezuela Guyana * 0 Colombia

1.27 - * Surinam Jamaica

* Trinidad and Tobago Costa Rica 1.00 - *

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0

United States Aid U. S Bilateral Economic and Military Assistance

(Log10 X + 1)

r"l

~ ~

c3

C

=z 6=

;r

ky V3 oa ky

Lars Schoultz

between this second major form of economic aid and human rights violations remained roughly unchanged. Persons familiar with the Food for Peace program to Latin America are already aware that the positive correlations in Table 2 are almost entirely the result of a truly massive food aid program to Chile, the country with the most repressive government in Latin America. With only 3 percent of Latin America's population and probably no more than its proportional share of undernourished people, Chile received an extraordi- narily large amount of PL480 assistance.20 Under similar circumstances, critics of the Food for Peace program have charged the U.S. government with financing food imports so that repressive governments can use their foreign exchange for arms purchases which are essential to the continued repression of their citizens. Responding to this perceived abuse, Congress in 1977 added a human rights clause to the existing PL480 authorization.21

Military Aid. The second major component of the total U.S. aid program is military assistance which, in turn, is composed of Military Assistance Pro- gram (MAP) and International Military Education and Training (IMET) grants, excess defense stocks transfers, and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) credits. In Table 2, the "Total Military Assistance" column reflects all military aid from these four categories. By far the largest portion of U.S. military aid to Latin America-89 percent in FY 1975 through FY 1977-is in the form of FMS credits.

Each of the military aid/human rights correlations in Table 2 is positive; most are stronger than those generated by U.S. economic assistance programs. As in the case of economic aid, however, major fluctuations occur over short periods of time. This instability is most evident in the substantial one-year decline from +.57 (1975) to +.28 (1976) in the correlation between human rights violations and total military aid. In 1975 the most repressive governments fared unequally in their receipt of U.S. military aid. Three of the six most repressive governments (Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) received a substantial proportion-69 percent-of total military aid to the region, while the other three (Chile, Haiti, and Paraguay) together received less than 2 percent. The positive correlation between military aid and human rights violations existed not only because the United States favored three repressive regimes, but also because the nonrepressive governments of Latin America received almost no military aid. Excluding Haiti (which obtained military aid to train three students and to import navigational equipment for air and sea rescue units), not one of the ten least-repressive Latin American governments was granted more military aid than any of the ten most-repressive governments.

In 1976 the human rights/military aid correlation dropped to +.28, half the size it had been a year earlier. The reduction was accomplished simply by

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Table 3 Pearson Correlations between Relative (Per Capita) Levels of U.S. Aid and Level of Human Rights Violations, Latin America, 1975-77*

Total U.S. Aid

Economic and Total (Logl0 X+l) Total Foreign Fiscal Military Economic Food for Military Military Years Assistance Assistance A.I.D. Peace Assistance Sales

1975 .... .45 .31 .38 .28 .51 .49

1976 .... .29 .22 .13 .35 .27 **

1977 .... .35 .26 .25 .30 .15 .20

* N = 23. ** Too few cases available for analysis. Source: Bureau for Program Policy and Coordination, Agency for International

Development.

cutting aid to repressive Uruguay from $9.2 million in 1975 to $1.0 million in 1976, and by dramatically increasing aid to nonrepressive Colombia ($700,000 in 1975 to $20.3 million in 1976) and Venezuela ($700,000 in 1975 to $10.6 million in 1976). Military aid to two of the hemisphere's most repressive governments, Argentina and Brazil, remained high. In 1976 these two governments received 56 percent of all military aid to Latin America.

In 1977 the correlation between military assistance and human rights violations rose slightly to +.34. Although several substantial changes occurred in the distribution of military aid between 1976 and 1977, the rise primarily reflected a major (36 percent) increase in aid to Brazil and an even more dramatic decrease (99 percent) in aid to Venezuela. As in previous years, Argentina and Brazil continued to receive slightly more than half of all U.S. military aid to Latin America.

Relative Levels of Foreign Assistance The correlations between relative (per capita) United States aid to Latin American countries and human rights violations by recipient governments are presented in Table 3. As in the case of absolute aid levels, these correlations are uniformly positive. Thus, even when the remarkable diversity of population size among Latin American countries is considered, the findings suggest that the United States has directed its foreign assistance to governments which torture their citizens. When compared with the correlations between human rights and absolute aid levels (Table 2), about half of the correlations in Table 3 are of equal strength and the remainder are slightly lower. In no case is a relative aid/human rights correlation stronger than an equivalent absolute aid/human rights correlation.

In considering per capita rather than absolute aid, the most striking change is a precipitous decline in the prominence of Argentina and Brazil. In 1976, for example, Argentina ranked fifth in absolute aid but sixteenth in relative

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aid, while Brazil was third in absolute terms yet twentieth in per capita aid. Since both the Argentine and Brazilian governments are ranked as extremely repressive, the relative aid/human rights correlation would have declined somewhat had not Nicaragua been the third major change in the ranking, moving up from twelfth in absolute aid to second in relative aid. The remaining twenty nations are ranked roughly the same on both absolute and relative scales. In 1976 Chile was first in absolute aid and third in relative aid; Guatemala was second in absolute aid and fourth in relative aid; Bolivia was sixth by either calculation. Because most of the other differences are minor, nearly everything written above regarding human rights and absolute aid levels applies as well to the relationship between aid per capita and the level of human rights violations by recipient governments. In neither case is it possible to find a negative correlation which would indicate that U.S. aid programs favored nonrepressive governments.

While the correlations between various types of aid and human rights violations are far from perfect, these findings for FY 1975-FY 1977 reveal not isolated instances but rather a clear pattern of aid distributions that favored Latin American governments which abused their citizens' human rights. During this period, aid officials regularly denied the existence of a positive correlation between the level of assistance and the violation of human rights.22 In those individual cases where the linkage was evident beyond doubt, officials insisted that other equally important foreign policy concerns required that human rights considerations be minimized in aid decision making.23 Even in the era of relatively intense governmental interest in human rights during the Carter administration, only in isolated instances were human rights factors permitted to become the principal determinant of aid distributions. Aid officials perceived other legitimate reasons for the granting of foreign assistance.

Basic Needs versus Human Rights

Of all the possible criteria by which to determine the distribution of U.S. economic aid, only human need has been formally accepted as superior to respect for fundamental human rights. The original Harkin Amendment (PL94-161, Sec. 310) to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 permitted economic aid to continue to countries with repressive governments if the president (1) determined that the aid would directly benefit needy people, and (2) reported to the Congress on how it would do so. Even the reductions in economic aid to Chile in 1975 and 1976 provided exceptions for food aid through private voluntary organizations. These exceptional clauses were written into law because a majority of the members of Congress believed that, in the event of a conflict between human rights and basic needs, the physical needs of suffering human beings should not be ignored. As Representative

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Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.) noted, "We ought to be helping the poor people all over the world. The fact that they have a repressive regime should not mean they are denied the opportunity to eat." 24

In the view of some members of Congress, aid officials occasionally interpret the needy-people clause as a loophole permitting various types of assistance to governments which otherwise would be ineligible on the basis of their human rights records. Arguments in favor of using human needs to minimize human rights considerations have also been offered by champions of the "trickle-down" approach to economic development. In urging a restoration of aid to Chile, for example, Representative Charles Wilson (D-Texas) argued: "I don't think we serve the cause of human rights by making the Chilean peasants drink dirty water .... The rich can only drink so much water. So surely some of this clean water is getting to the poor."25 A related argument against human rights-induced aid reductions was advanced by former Assistant Secretary of State Terence Todman, who suggested that human rights violations are caused by the lack of fulfillment of basic needs. Thus, the provision of aid can eliminate "the kind of conditions that are the world's most widespread source of deprivation of basic human rights."'26 Most human rights activists agreed with Todman's position, but argued that aid to the Pinochets and Somozas of the hemisphere did little to meet the basic needs of impoverished citizens.

In any event, the original clause in the Harkin Amendment is vague. Its legislative history in unclear, and while some key members of Congress have called it a major loophole, others have insisted that it is a stringent stipula- tion.27 The Ford administration preferred the former interpretation, defining the term in such a way that assistance could be provided to any regime. Adopting Representative Wilson's argument, in early 1976 AID's legal coun- sel wrote an opinion that "the decision on whether assistance will directly benefit needy people.., should be based upon the 'principal purpose' of the assistance. If the principal purpose is to benefit the needy people ... [then] the intent of Congress has been carried out, notwithstanding that the intended class of beneficiaries may not be the initial recipient of resources provided to the project."28 Using this definition, AID effectively ignored the Harkin Amendment.

In 1977 the battle over what constitutes aid to needy people was joined during an attempt to extend the Harkin Amendment to the Food for Peace authorization. This was a particularly appropriate place to decide the issue. Food aid is clearly beneficial to needy people, yet the process of providing this aid under Title I (credit sales) is such that recipient governments can make at least a temporary profit on the transaction. The U.S. Department of Ag- riculture (USDA) provides a purchasing government with low-interest, long-term credit through the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC).29 In turn, the recipient government uses the credit to buy food in the United States and 164

Lars Schoultz

disposes of it on its domestic markets, typically through sales to wholesalers at the prevailing market price. The borrowing government pockets the proceeds until the CCC loan must be repaid. The government also profits whenever the proceeds of a sale exceed the cost of the food. Although data on this spread are unavailable, USDA officials acknowledge that few governments sell the food they have purchased from the United States at a loss.

Representatives Solarz, Fraser, and others focused their criticism upon the time lag provided by CCC repayment schedules. This lag, they asserted, permits some regimes to use the proceeds of PL480 sales to finance the costs of political repression.3a For this reason, the needy-people clause in the 1977 PL480 authorization was crafted to ensure that such aid to a repressive regime reached the poor. Specifically, the phrase "directly benefit needy people" was defined in some detail:

An agreement [for PL480 food] will not directly benefit the needy people in the country for purposes of the preceding sentence unless either the commodities themselves or the proceeds from their sale will be used for specific projects or programs which the President determines would directly benefit the needy people of that country.31

The House report was even more explicit, defining the term "specific projects or programs" as those in the area of agricultural development, rural development, nutrition, health services, population planning, food distribution, education, housing, public works, conservation and storage, and credit and mar- keting facilities.32 Although nonbinding, since 1977 this understanding of aid to needy people has governed all economic aid decision making in the executive branch.

During the entire debate over human rights and human needs, no one ever addressed the empirical question of whether the protection of human rights need necessarily conflict with attempts to respond to basic human needs. In cases of aid to victims of natural disasters, of course, the possibility of such a conflict will always be present. But in day-to-day decision making on the allocation of the severely limited resources of the U.S. economic aid program, it has never been demonstrated that basic needs and human rights are mutually exclusive criteria.

Because there is no consensus on a definition of the variable "needy people," it is difficult to determine with precision the relationship between U.S. economic aid, human rights violations, and the level of human need among Latin American nations. The foreign assistance legislation which provides the exception for need fails to define what is meant by the term, although it can be argued that most of the relevant members of Congress believe the word refers to economic poverty. This definition is roughly congruent with that of aid administrators, who have settled on per capita gross national product (GNP) as the principal indicator of a society's level of human need.33 Social scien-

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Table 4 Zero- and First-Order Partial Correlations between U.S. Economic Aid and Human Rights Violations, Latin America, 1976*

U.S. Economic Aid

(Logl0 X+1)

Total Food for Economic Assistance A.I.D. Peace

Zero-order correlation ............ .26 .24 .30 First-order correlation

controlling for per capita GNP ... .36 .20 .38

* N = 23. Source: Bureau for Program Policy and Coordination, Agency for Interna-

tional Development.

tists, too, rely on per capita GNP as an imperfect but acceptable indicator of human need, although they continue to warn against the simplistic definition of a complex phenomenon.34 Money may not purchase everything, but it does buy a nation off nearly everyone's list of countries with disproportionately large numbers of needy people.

Using economic poverty as their definition of need and following the in- structions of Congress, aid officials have tended to direct economic assistance to Latin America's relatively needy countries. The statistical relationship between per capita GNP and U.S. aid is therefore strongly negative. In 1976, for example, the correlation between per capita GNP and total economic assistance was -.62. With occasional exceptions, the United States clearly directs its economic aid to Latin America's less-prosperous countries.

However, during FY 1975-FY 1977 the level of human rights violations was very weakly related to the level of human need (in 1976 the human rights/per capita GNP correlation was -. 13), and thus the positive relationship between U.S. aid and human need is not a justification for the equally strong positive correlation between aid and human rights violations. When compared to their more-affluent neighbors, in FY 1975-FY 1977 the governments of relatively poor Latin American countries were only slightly more likely to violate their citizens' human rights. But there are many such countries in the region with low per capita GNPs. Therefore the crucial question is not whether aid was directed to these relatively poor countries-it was-but rather to which of these poor countries was U.S. aid distributed? In terms of human rights, the answer to this question can be determined by computing the first-order partial correlation between aid and human rights violations controlling for need. Table 4 presents both zero-order and first-order partials for 1976. As expected, given the relatively weak relationship between human need and human rights, there is no dramatic difference between the two sets of correlation coefficients. At any given level of human need, during FY 1975- FY 1977 U.S. aid remained positively correlated with the level of human

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Lars Schoultz

rights violations in Latin America. In cases of equally poor (or wealthy) Latin American countries with dissimilar records on human rights protection, the United States tended to distribute its aid to the more repressive countries.

Viewed from a more positive perspective, this finding also demonstrates that human rights considerations need not be ignored if aid programs are to focus upon needy people in Latin America. It is possible for the United States to direct its economic aid to impoverished citizens of Latin American countries with governments which respect their citizens' human rights. This possibility would no doubt be greeted with scant enthusiasm by the millions of truly poverty-stricken Latin Americans who are burdened with the added misfor- tune of a repressive government. Terence Todman often articulated this point of view in his aid recommendations. Following his superiors' decision to block a $10 million Food for Peace loan to Chile in September 1977, for example, Todman complained publicly that "poor, hungry, miserable people ought not to be denied food, health care, clean water, medicine-the things necessary to life-just to make a point with a government. All you're doing is adding to their misery." 35 Critics disagreed. In the specific case of Chile, they noted that the proceeds from open-market sales of food aid went to finance the government's arms imports. By 1977 Chile had become one of the best customers of U.S. arms manufactures-fifth in the world behind Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Representative Donald Fraser concluded that "one of the major benefits to Chile of Public Law 480 Title I loans is to indirectly assist Chile in purchasing arms from the United States."36

Conclusion

These data and common sense suggest that there is no simple answer to the dilemma facing aid officials who must weigh multiple criteria in reaching their decisions. Few studies of aid decision making, including this one, would wish to underestimate the difficulties these officials face. What the findings from the data presented here clearly demonstrate, however, is that during the mid-1970s United States aid was clearly distributed disproportionately to countries with repressive governments, that this distribution represented a pattern and not merely one or a few isolated cases, and that human need was not responsible for the positive correlations between aid and human rights violations.

Now that these three facts have been established, researchers can turn to the more intriguing question of why in the mid-1970s the United States tended to award relatively large amounts of aid to Latin American governments which repressed their citizens' human rights. It is tempting to begin such a discussion here, for certain features of the scatterplots, particularly the unusually strong anticommunism of several major aid recipients and, later, the emphasis

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on aid to Latin America's poorest countries, are so evident that they should at least be mentioned. But the conclusion to a paper on one subject-the identification of positive concomitant variation between aid disbursements and human rights violations-is not the proper place to begin another-the reasons for the variation. The data presented in this paper are not able to address the reasons underlying any type of aid distribution. What they confirm is the validity of the concerns of a broad variety of citizens, interest-group activists, and members of Congress, who in the early and mid-1970s insisted that the United States aid program was serving to identify their government with unusually repressive Latin American regimes, and that there was no obvious humanitarian justification for such a policy.

NOTES

1. There is a large literature on the relationship between U.S. foreign assistance programs and the behavior of recipient governments, but to date the only empirical study to address the specific issue of aid and the violation of human rights is a collection of case studies by the Center for International Policy, Human Rights and the U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, Fiscal Year 1978 (Washington, D.C., 1977).

2. For example, this emphasis upon antitorture human rights is found in the original Harkin Amendment, Section 310 of the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1975 (PL94-161): " ... torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person."

3. Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, trans. with an introduction by David Kenzle (New York: International General, 1975); Keith Griffin, The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: An Essay on the Green Revolution (Cambridge, [Ma.], 1974).

4. Edward S. Mason, Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy (New York, 1964), p. 3; Joan M. Nelson, Aid, Influence, and Foreign Policy (New York, 1968), p. 23; William Reynolds Sanford, "The Decision-Making Process in the Alliance for Progress," (Ph.D. diss., University of South- ern California, 1972), p. 305; Abraham F. Lowenthal, "Foreign Aid as a Political Instrument: The Case of the Dominican Republic," Public Policy, 14 (1965), 141-60.

5. Nelson, fn. 4, p. 93. See also President's Committee to Study the United States Military Assistance Program, Composite Report (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1959), pp. 170-71.

6. U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, Rockefeller Report on Latin America, 91st Cong., Ist Sess., November 20, 1969, p. 31. It should be noted that the U.S. has no monopoly on the use of aid as a foreign policy tool. The highly respected Swedish aid program is equally predicated upon the notion that aid recipients must behave in the way the Swedish government deems appropriate. One commentator has noted that the most distinctive feature of the Swedish aid program is "its moralistic and even sanctimonious tone." Goran Ohlin, "Swedish Aid Performance and Development Policy," in Bruce Dinwiddy, ed. European Development Policies (New York, 1973), p. 56.

7. Charles H. Lipson, "Corporate Preferences and Public Policies: Foreign Aid Sanctions and Investment Protection," World Politics, 28 (April 1976), 397; Steve Weissman, The Trojan Horse: A Radical Look at Foreign Aid (San Francisco, 1974), p. 11; Michael J. Francis, "La ayuda econ6mica de Estados Unidos a America Latina como instrumento de control politico," Foro Internacional, 12 (April-June 1972), 433-52. Social science has therefore made some progress in understanding the linkage between politics and economic aid in the years since 1962 when Hans Morgenthau noted that "the very assumption that foreign aid is an instrument of foreign policy is a subject of controversy." Morgenthau, "A Political Theory of Foreign Aid," American Political Science Review, 56 (June 1962), 301.

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Lars Schoultz

8. The hearings by various subcommittees of the House Committees on Foreign Affairs (International Relations from 1975 to 1979) and Appropriations and by the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Appropriations are packed with testimony on both sides of this issue. See, for example, Ra~il S. Manglapus, "Promoting Instability with Military Aid," in U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Foreign Assistance Authorization, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., 1975, pp. 438-41; and the State Department's responses in U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, The Treatment of Political Prisoners in South Vietnam by the Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., 1973, pp. 58-62; U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, Political Prisoners in South Vietnam and the Philip- pines, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., 1974, pp. 87-89; U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, International Protection of Human Rights, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., 1973, pp. 820-23.

9. Latin America is defined to include all nations whose aid disbursements are wholly or partially controlled by the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. This definition of Latin America therefore includes Guyana, Jamaica, Surinam, and Trinidad and Tobago.

10. On this issue see the excellent report from the Congressional Research Service in U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Years 1980-81 (Part 7), 96th Cong., 1st Sess., 1979, pp. 162-65.

11. For a further discussion of this issue, see ibid. and U.S., Congress, House, Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights Conditions in Selected Countries and the U.S. Response, 95th Cong., 2d Sess., 1978, pp. 341-72.

12. U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, United States Policies and Programs in Brazil, 92d Cong., 1st Sess., 1971; U.S., Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., 1975; U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs, United States and Chile during the Allende Years, 1970-1973, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., 1975.

13. The only unopposed amendments came in PL94-302, a 1976 law which added human rights considerations to U.S. participation in the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Fund, and PL95-88, a 1977 law which added human rights considerations to Food for Peace decision making.

14. International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1975 (PL94-161, Sec. 310). 15. The International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976 (PL94-329,

Sec. 301). 16. In interpreting these findings, it is important to note that: (1) until 1976 some of the human

rights legislation was in the form of a nonbinding Congressional resolution; and (2) the Carter administration entered office four months after the beginning of FY 1977 and a full year after the proposed aid budget for FY 1977 had been submitted to Congress by the Ford administration.

17. Since these correlations reflect findings from the universe rather than a sample of Latin American countries, significance tests are not used. For a contrary position, see Robert F. Winch and Donald T. Campbell, "Proof? No. Evidence? Yes. The Significance of Tests of Signifi- cance," American Sociologist, 4 (May 1969), 143.

18. Again, these data only "explain" variance in the statistical sense of the word-the sum of squares-and most emphatically they pretend to no substantive explanation of the level of human rights violations. Thus the r2 of .47 in Figure 1 means that U.S. aid was a fairly successful variable to predict the level of human rights violations in Latin America, not that the former caused the latter.

19. Bilateral economic assistance is defined as official bilateral grants and loans on conces- sional terms for development purposes as designated by the Develoment Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Excluded from the category of bilateral economic aid are Export-Import Bank loans and guarantees, short-term credits under the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act, Overseas Private Investment Corporation direct loans, and private trade agreements under Title I of PL480.

20. In 1975, 49 percent of all PL480 aid to Latin America went to Chile; in 1976 the percentage dropped slightly to 43 percent; in 1977 it decreased further to 34 percent. Had Chile

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received no food aid in 1976, the correlation between the Food for Peace Program and the level of human rights violations would have been +. 13 instead of + .30.

21. Milton Leitenberg, "Notes on the Diversion of Resources for Military Purposes in Devel- oping Nations," Journal of Peace Research, 13 (1976), 113; Hubert H. Humphrey, "Economic Disengagement from Vietnam," New York Times, 5 June 1974; Emma Rothschild, "Is It Time to End Food for Peace?" New York Times Magazine, 13 March 1977, p. 44.

Title II of the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1977 (PL95-88) amended the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 (PL83-480) to include the now-standard human rights clause.

22. Examples of implicit or explicit denials include State Department testimony in the following: International Protection of Human Rights, fn. 8, pp. 819-20; Political Prisoners in South Vietnam and the Philippines, fn. 8, pp. 87-9; and U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Ap- propriations, Foreign Assistance Appropriations, 1965, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 1964, p. 82.

23. See, for example, the statement to this effect by former AID Administrator Bell in Foreign Assistance Appropriations, 1965, fn. 22, p. 82.

24. U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, Subcommit- tee on Foreign Agricultural Policy, Future of Food Aid, 95th Cong., Ist Sess., 1977, p. 73.

25. U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Foreign Opera- tions and Related Agencies, Foreign Assistance and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1978, Part 2: Agency for International Development, 95th Cong., Ist Sess., 1977, p. 159.

26. Terence A. Todman, "Statement before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs, House International Relations Committee," March 1, 1978. (mimeo.).

27. U.S., Congress, House, Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Interna- tional Organizations, Chile: The Status of Human Rights and Its Relationship to U.S. Foreign Assistance Programs, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., 1976, p. 21.

28. Ibid., p. 114. 29. In FY 1977, for example, PL480 sales of $15 million of wheat to Chile were financed for

twenty years at an annual interest rate of 3 percent, with a two-year grace period before the first payment. U.S., National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Policies, Annual Report, 1977, p. 353.

30. Future of Food Aid, fn. 24, p. 72; Chile: The Status of Human Rights, fn. 27, pp. 21-2. 31. PL95-88, Sec. 111(a). 32. House Report 95-240, p. 49. 33. The poverty criterion of the International Development Association, for example, is stated

in terms of per capita annual income. A primary criterion for inclusion on the UN's lists of both Least Developed Countries and Most Seriously Affected Countries is low per capita GNP. Per capita GNP also determines in part the nations included on the list of Food Priority Countries, a category employed by the UN World Food Council.

34. Per capita GNP is used as a primary indicator of human need in R.D. McKinlay and R. Little, "A Foreign Policy Model of U.S. Bilateral Aid Allocation," World Politics, 30 (October 1977), 66. For an alternative to GNP as the definition of human need in the Third World, see Denis Goulet, The Cruel Choice (New York, 1971).

35. In Congress the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations has taken this same position, arguing that "to sever all ties would be to cut ourselves off from the peoples of these countries and to leave them under the dark night of oppression. We can stand afar and curse the darkness, or we can try to bring them light." U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Approp- riations, Foreign Assistance and Related Programs Appropriations Bill, 1978, 95th Cong., Ist Sess., 1977, p. 20. The chairperson of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations has a contrary opinion: "Every conceivable abomination has been perpetrated in the name of the poor and the needy .... We have plenty of poor people we can help without having to pay tribute to a bunch of ruthless dictators." Foreign Assistance and Related Agencies Appropri- ations for 1978, Part 2: Agency for International Development, fn. 25, pp. 374-5.

36. Chile: The Status of Human Rights, fn. 27, p. 2; New York Times, 16 October 1977, sec. IV, p. 3.

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