Thomas Tunstall Allcock sets out to assess Lyndon Johnson's policy toward Latin America by focusing on Thomas Mann, who was given responsibility for U.S. policy in the region as Johnson ascended to the White House in late 1963. Allcock argues that Johnson's record in dealing with Latin America was “mixed” (p. 4), meaning better than that of most other Cold War presidents, and he says Mann was the reason.
To support this assessment, Allcock puts forth three arguments, all of which revise existing historiography. The first is that Mann, who served as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs and coordinator of the Alliance for Progress aid program and even supervised projects the U.S. Agency for International Development undertook in Latin America, was not the “reactionary, conservative figure” (p. 3) historians have made him out to be. To be sure, he was a committed anti-Communist and a supporter of private...