BOLIVIA

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Looking through today's CRIMSON, I must say I found the quoted remarks of Mr. Richard W. Patch, concerning Bolivia and Peru, rather remarkable.

Mr. Patch is quoted as saying, "I think [the M.N.R.] is doing remarkably well." "He called Bolivia the outstanding example of a country that has exceeded the goals established in the Alliance for Progress."

I should think that it would be fairly well known that the situation in Bolivia is, to put it mildly, completely loused up; output of just about every kind has fallen, not only the upper classes but also the productive, educated, technically skilled middle classes have largely left the country, inflation is rampant, and the whole place, really, has gone to pot.

If this is an exemplary attainment of the goals of the Alliance for Progress, one shudders at the apparent goals. We seem to have here a case, all too common, of looking too much at form and too little at substance. It is indeed true that the Bolivian governors have "obtained electoral reforms and the nationalization of the tin industry, as well as the breaking up of large feudal estates." But of what value are these things, from the standpoint of the masses, if they are worse off than before, if it now costs more to produce Bolivian tin than it can be sold for on the world market?

Apparently some regard the purpose of the Alliance for Progress as ruining a country for its upper classes. In Bolivia, the country has been ruined for everyone else as well, and if that is what the Alliance for Progress stands for, it is well that it is now as bogged down as it is. Lester O'Shea B63.